bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The early development of position constancy in a no‐landmark environment
Authors: Lepecq Jean‐Claude , Lafaite Monique
Published: July 2011

Position constancy was investigated in 7‐, 11‐, 14‐ and 19‐month‐olds in a no‐landmark environment. The infants were passively rotated through six complete turns inside a circular unpatterned enclosure. The procedure was intended to inform the infant about the constant location of an event during body rotation and to test the infant's ability to retrieve the non‐framed event site when no exteroceptive information specified the event location. The event was sometimes present and sometimes absent. Two levels of position constancy were tested during the phases with the event absent: a directional one and a positional one. If the infants oriented their head towards the side where the event should reoccur rather than towards the other side, they were presumed to be able to directionally localize the non‐ perceivable event location. If they adjusted their head orientation to the event location, they were presumed to be able to positionally localize the non‐perceivable event location. The results indicate directional ability in 11‐, 14‐ and 19‐month‐olds, and positional ability in 19‐month‐olds only.
Children's drawings of topics differing in significance: Effects on size of drawing
Authors: Thomas Glyn V. , Chaigne Elizabeth , Fox Tania J.
Published: July 2011

Two experiments investigated the effects of the significance given to a topic on the size it was drawn by children aged between 4 and 7 years. In Expt 1, children were asked to copy the outline of a man. Immediately afterwards, all the children were asked to make a second drawing of the outline, either imagining that the outline was of a nice person or a nasty person, or so that the second drawing was the same as their first. Compared with the control condition, drawings of the nasty man were made reliably smaller, and drawings of the nice man were made non‐reliably larger. In Expt 2, children were asked to make drawings of an apple which was then characterized as ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’ for different groups of children. The nice characterization reliably increased the size of apple drawings; however, nasty apples, unlike nasty men, were not drawn significantly smaller than in the control condition. We discuss the implications of these results for the hypothesis that the significance of a topic is reflected in the size of the drawings children make of that topic.
Development of rehearsal in short‐term memory: Differences between pictorial and spoken stimuli
Authors: Hitch Graham J. , Halliday M. Sebastian , Dodd Alison , Littler Janet E.
Published: July 2011

Two experiments on the development of subvocal rehearsal in short‐term memory (STM) are reported in this study. According to the articulatory loop model of adult performance, rehearsing the names of visually presented stimuli involves extra mental operations compared with rehearsing items that are heard. We used this analysis to predict that rehearsal will appear later in the development of STM for pictured objects than for spoken words. To provide an indication of rehearsal, we manipulated the word length of these two types of stimuli. Experiment 1 tested children's ability to recall sequences of fixed length, while Expt 2 used a memory span procedure. The results supported our prediction in that STM for spoken words was sensitive to word length at all ages from 4 years upwards, while STM for pictured objects showed equivalent effects only in children aged over 8 years. Subsidiary analysis of the relation between recall of spoken words and speech rate confirmed previous evidence that the capacity of the articulatory loop remains approximately constant during development. We conclude that this rehearsal system is present from an early age, and that development involves a broadening of the range of stimuli which can gain access to it.
Differential course of development of spatial and verbal memory span: A normative study
Authors: Isaacs Elizabeth B. , Vargha‐Khadem Faraneh
Published: July 2011

Children ranging from 7 to 15 were given memory span tests for both digits and blocks, each consisting of forward and backward recall components. Both types of span showed developmental increases. Digit span performance was influenced by order of recall but block span was insensitive to this variable.
Encoding and storage effects in 7‐year‐olds' and 10‐year‐olds' memory for faces
Authors: Ellis Hadyn D. , Flin Rhona H.
Published: July 2011

In an attempt to examine children's encoding and storage of faces, two experiments are reported on temporal factors in recognition memory for unfamiliar faces by 7‐year‐old and 10‐year‐old children. In Expt 1, viewing durations of 1 and 3 seconds and delay intervals of 0 and 1 week were examined. The younger children were less accurate at immediate test: no difference between the two age groups was evident after a week's interval. Faces presented for 3 s were recognized more accurately than those shown for 1 s. Experiment 2 involved a modification in design and temporal parameters: faces were shown for either 2 or 6 s and testing followed immediately, a day later, or a week later. The performance of 7‐year‐olds was unaffected by duration of encoding or length of interval. In contrast the 10‐year‐old children performed better with 6 s compared with 2 s exposure. They also made more accurate recognition at immediate test compared with intervals of 1 day or 1 week. The results of these two experiments provide the first systematically derived data on the way children process facial information as a function of viewing duration and delay interval. Theoretical and practical implications of the observations are discussed.
Blood lead levels, reaction time, inspection time and ability in Edinburgh children
Authors: Raab Gillian M. , Thomson George O. B. , Boyd Linda , Fulton Mary , Laxen Duncan P. H.
Published: July 2011

The influence of blood lead levels on measures of inspection time (IT) and reaction time (RT) was studied in a sample of 501 6‐ to 9‐year‐old children. Both IT and RT performance were worse at higher blood lead levels, but the relationship was stronger for IT. The relationship between blood lead and RT was no longer significant after control for social and family background, whereas that between blood lead and IT remained significant. It is suggested that the IT task described here measures the ability to sustain attention, rather than perceptual speed per se.

All the IT and RT measures correlated with ability and attainment, assessed by the British Ability Scales. The correlations with the combined ability score were modest, .31 for the IT error rate at long presentation times and .30 for median reaction time. The median reaction time and the IT error rates contributed independently to the prediction of the ability score. The influence of lead on the IT error rates no longer achieved statistical significance after control for ability, whereas the influence of lead on ability remained significant after control for IT error rates.
Development in children's perceptions of epistemic authorities*
Authors: Raviv Amiram , Bar‐Tal Daniel , Raviv Alona , Houminer Daphna
Published: July 2011

The study examined children's perceptions of epistemic authorities in various knowledge content areas. Children from kindergarten, first and third grades were asked to rank their father, mother, teacher and friends as epistemic authorities in seven areas of knowledge contents. In general, the results showed that, with few exceptions, the perception of the parents as epistemic authorities remains stable during childhood. One or both parents were found to be the most important epistemic authorities for all the age groups in almost all the investigated areas of knowledge contents. The increased perception of friends as epistemic authority was relative to other sources in all the age groups, mostly in the social areas of knowledge. Teachers functioned as generalized epistemic authority in the early years of the elementary school.
Love is not enough: Determinants of adolescent preference for other‐sex and same‐sex peers
Authors: Eshel Yohanan , Kurman Jenny
Published: July 2011

Determinants of social acceptance of same‐sex and other‐sex peers were investigated. Seven hundred and seventy‐four sixth, seventh and eighth grade students rated their acceptance of each of their classmates, boys and girls, using a social acceptance scale, ranging from casual to intimate diadic interactions. It was found that: (a) males' friendships were as intimate as those of females, (b) status attributes of the target affected choice of friends made by males and females to about the same extent, (c) cross‐sex choices (which presumably increased the respondent's status) were associated with a smaller number of desirable qualities of the target, compared to same‐sex choices, and (d) similar patterns were also found for intimate interactions characterizing relations between best friends. Differences between the present data and former findings were related to differences in questions raised and measures employed.
Social background, phonological awareness and children's reading
Authors: Raz Ita Standen , Bryant Peter
Published: July 2011

A close connection has been found between children's phonological awareness and the progress that they make in reading, but little is known about the role played by the children's social background in the development of this connection. We report a large‐scale, partly cross‐sectional and partly longitudinal, study of two groups of children—one from middle‐class homes and the other from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds. We found that the socially disadvantaged children did not fall behind the middle‐class children in phonological awareness until they went to school. After that a serious gap emerged between the two groups in tests of phonological skills. The disadvantaged children also made a great deal less progress in reading. Some of this difference in reading can be explained as the product of differences in phonological awareness. The difference between the two group's ability to read single words and connected prose was reduced and in some tests was even abolished after controls for differences in phonological awareness.
Young children's use of knowledge in everyday biology
Authors: Inagaki Kayoko
Published: July 2011

It is claimed, on the basis of some experimental data, that everyday biological reasoning by young children before schooling has two characteristics which school or laboratory cognition does not seem to have. First, it is characterized as generative, i.e. children produce predictions for an animate object's behaviour in novel situations by making maximal use of knowledge about some other animate object that they are very familiar with (usually a human). Second, it is constrained so that the predictions are plausible; in other words, children use their knowledge in a flexible, not mechanical, way to generate fairly reasonable predictions. Whether other everyday sciences also possess such characteristics and whether they produce equally ‘correct’ predictions (judged by formal scientific criteria) are discussed.
The influence of the imagination on reasoning by young children
Authors: Dias M. G. , Harris P. L.
Published: July 2011

Young children are often prone to an ‘empirical’ bias when asked to reason from premises that do not conform to their everyday knowledge. Experiment 1 identified three cues that help 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds to suppress this bias: when the premises are presented with a make‐believe intonation; when they are presented in the context of a remote setting, such as another planet; and when they are accompanied by visual imagery. The facilitatory effect of all three cues suggests that children will accept premises that violate their empirical knowledge as a basis for reasoning so long as they are presented in a make‐believe mode rather than a literal mode. Experiment 2 showed that this facilitatory effect on logical reasoning occurs for 4‐ and 6‐year‐old children alike. The pattern of results is linked to other developments in young children's imaginative abilities.
Fear and attachment in 2.5‐year‐olds
Authors: Stevenson‐Hinde Joan , Shouldice Anne
Published: July 2011

Security of attachment ratings were significantly negatively related to indices of fear of strangers and separation distress/protest in 2.5‐year‐olds (r = − .32 and − .31 respectively, N = 82). With the attachment classifications, significant between‐group differences occurred even among the secure groups. Secure‐reserved and secure‐ambivalent children were significantly more fearful of strangers than very secure children. Secure‐ambivalent children showed more intense separation behaviour than very secure and secure‐reserved children.

Two groups, one secure (secure‐ambivalent) and another insecure (ambivalent), were above the mean of the whole sample on all indices of fear and separation distress/protest, suggesting a particular behavioural ‘style’ independent of security of attachment. Such a style could reflect an influence of family relationships as well as early appearing temperament.

Correlations between maternal and observer assessments were not significant for security of attachment (r = .11) but were significant for fear of strangers (r = .40). For both relations, significant discrepancies appeared: Mothers of children with secure classifications of attachment (very secure, secure‐reserved, secure‐ambivalent, and secure‐controlling) rated them as both less secure and more fearful of strangers than indicated by corresponding laboratory assessments, while mothers of insecurely attached children (avoidant, ambivalent, and controlling) rated them as more secure and less fearful.
Factors related to verbal abilities in Swedish preschoolers
Authors: Broberg Anders G. , Hwang Carl Philip , Lamb Michael E. , Bookstein Fred L.
Published: July 2011

In a prospective longitudinal study concerned with the effects of in‐ and out‐of‐home care 140 Swedish children were studied. These analyses using partial least squares analysis procedures focus on the 84 children who remained in home care, family day care, or centre day care through the two years of the project, beginning when the children averaged 16 months of age. Griffiths scale C scores 12 and 24 months later were best predicted by earlier Griffiths scores and contemporaneous measures of the quality of home care, measures which were themselves moderately stable over time. Contemporaneous measures of the children's sociability were also significantly correlated with Griffiths scale C performance. Neither the type nor quality of out‐of‐home care was predictively important. These results show that the quality of care received by children at home is more influential, where verbal abilities are concerned, than either the type or quality of out‐of‐home care.
Parent—child correlations in heart rate reactivity to a psychological stressor
Authors: Sharpley Christopher F. , Tillinh Helen , Plail Elizabeth
Published: July 2011

Heart rate reactivity to a brief psychological stressor (mental arithmetic or puzzle solving) administered under timed and competitive conditions was assessed for children from two age groups (5‐year‐old preschoolers and 10‐year‐old primary school children) and their parents. Although there were significant differences in resting heart rate and heart rate reactivity between the two groups of children according to age, these differences were not consistent for their parents. When examined within each age group, there were no significant correlations between parents' and children's heart reactivity to the stressor they received. Implications for some previously suggested familial effects regarding cardiac reactivity are discussed.
Theoretical explanations of children's understanding of the mind
Authors: Astington Janet Wilde , Gopnik Alison
Published: July 2011

This is a state‐of‐the‐art review of children's understanding of the mind. It examines both empirical evidence and explanatory theories. Considering evidence, the key issue of children's understanding of false belief is first discussed. Then other evidence for children's folk psychological understanding is summarized, from late infancy to the end of the preschool period. Considering explanations, the dominant idea in the field, the ‘heory theory’, is discussed first. Then five other perspectives are considered: enculturation, nativism, folk psychology based on procedural knowledge, on experience, or on scripts. The positions, and the empirical predictions each would make, are compared. The paper concludes with a synthesis of the different views and a brief consideration of where the field is headed.
Against the theory of ‘Theory of Mind’
Authors: Hobson R. Peter
Published: July 2011

The purpose of this paper is to argue against the view that young children develop a ‘theory’ that people have minds, and to suggest reasons why children's concepts of the mind and of mental states are not adequately characterized as ‘theoretical’ in nature. I propose that what children acquire is knowledge of persons with minds, and that they do so through experience of interpersonal relations. I emphasize that infants' capacity for personal relatedness, the psychological bedrock for their understanding of persons, is partly constituted by innately determined perceptual‐affective sensibilities towards the bodily appearances and behaviour of others. It is likely that children come to make inferences in the course of enriching and systematizing their concepts of mind, but this does not justify the view that ‘mental states’ are hypothetical constructs.
Young children's knowledge about visual perception: Lines of sight must be straight
Authors: Flavell John H. , Green Frances L. , Herrera Carla , Flavell Eleanor R.
Published: July 2011

Four studies were done to test the hypothesis that, although knowledgeable about some important facts concerning visual perception, 3‐year‐olds have not yet learned that lines of sight must always be straight. Subjects of 3 to 5 years of age were asked whether they (Study 1) or toy observers (Studies 2–4) would be able to see objects via looking paths that were curved rather than straight: for example, by looking through a bow‐shaped hollow tube or along the curve of its outside wall. Consistent with the hypothesis, 3‐year‐olds gave no evidence of possessing this straight‐line‐of‐sight rule. In contrast, 5‐year‐olds showed at least some command of it.
The development of deception in young children
Authors: Sodian Beate
Published: July 2011

The ability of 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children to deceive a competitor in a hiding game was studied in three experiments in a paradigm similar to the one introduced by Woodruff & Premack (1979) for the study of deception in chimpanzees. The first two experiments showed a significant increase with age in the frequency of deceptive pointing, with children below the age of about 3 1/2 years consistently failing to deceive a competitor even under very conducive conditions. The third experiment showed that two deception tasks (deceptive pointing and telling a lie) were significantly more difficult for 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children than parallel ‘sabotage’ tasks (i.e. tasks testing the ability to physically prevent a competitor from gaining a reward). These findings are consistent with previous research on false belief representation in indicating a conceptual deficit in 3‐year‐old children. They are discussed with regard to recent controversies on the early acquisition of a theory of mind.
Mind and emotion: Children's understanding of the emotional consequences of beliefs and desires
Authors: Wellman Henry M. , Banerjee Mita
Published: July 2011

We investigated preschool children's understanding of mind and emotion by examining their understanding that emotions such as happiness and surprise depend on the actor's desires and beliefs. We report four investigations: a study of 3‐year‐olds' ratings of actors' happiness and surprise, a natural language analysis of adults' use of the word surprise in conversation to a preschool child, and two studies of 3‐and 4‐year‐olds' abilities to explain the causes of desire‐dependent and belief‐dependent emotional reactions, such as happiness and surprise respectively. We demonstrate that children as young as 3 years appropriately understand the relevant mental states underlying happiness, sadness, surprise and curiosity, although they misunderstand the usage of some related lexical terms, especially surprise. The findings are discussed with regard to the early development of children's understanding of emotion and their understanding of mind, including children's early understanding of the notion of belief and their ability to distinguish beliefs from desires.
Children's judgements of whether slightly and grossly discrepant objects were intended by a speaker
Authors: Mitchell Peter , Russell James
Published: July 2011

Five‐ and 9‐year‐olds heard stories in which a speaker described an object s***he wanted a listener to fetch. The listener found an object which was either slightly or grossly discrepant in relation to the description. Children of both ages sometimes judged positively that the discrepant object was the one the speaker intended, but only 9‐year‐olds judged positively more frequently when the discrepancy was small rather than gross. Therefore, children in both age groups seemed to acknowledge misdescription, but only older children utilized size of discrepancy as a clue to misdescription. We discuss the possibility that although 5‐year‐olds know about misdescription, unlike 9‐year‐olds they are weak at utilizing situational clues in judging whether misdescription has or has not occurred.
The theory of mind deficit in autism: How specific is it?*
Authors: Baron‐Cohen Simon
Published: July 2011

Abnormalities in the social and communicative development of children with autism have recently been related to an impairment in their ability to attribute mental states to others, that is, in the development of their ‘theory of mind’. The present paper investigates if this deficit is specific to understanding mental states, or if it extends to domains of social cognition in autism which do not involve a theory of mind. This is tested in three areas: (1) relationship recognition, (2) interpersonal reciprocity, and (3) understanding the animate‐inanimate distinction. Results from experiments in these three areas show that subjects with autism are unimpaired in all three domains, relative to non‐autistic mentally handicapped or normal control groups. This suggests that the deficits in their theory of mind may well be highly specific.
The ‘windows task’ as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects
Authors: Russell James , Mauthner Natasha , Sharpe Sally , Tidswell Tom
Published: July 2011

We gave 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children and autistic subjects (plus a group of Down's syndrome children of equivalent ability) a task which measured their capacity for strategic deception. This was a competitive game played between the subject and an experimenter in which the participants tried to win chocolates. In the training phase the subjects learned that it was in their interest to tell the experimenter, by pointing, to look into an empty box for the chocolate, although subjects did not know until after the search which box was empty. In the testing phase, the boxes had windows facing the child so he or she could now see which was the empty box. The 4‐year‐olds and the Down's children, but not the 3‐year‐olds and the autistic subjects, generally pointed to the empty box on the first trial. Moreover, the younger children and the autistic subjects frequently continued to point to the baited box for the full 20 test trials. We also found that the ability to apply the correct strategy on the ‘windows task’ was associated with success on a standard ‘false belief’ task and argue from this that both tasks may be difficult because they require subjects to inhibit the tendency of salient knowledge about object locations to overwrite knowledge of epistemic states.
Clearing up at 2.5 years
Authors: Achermann John , Dinneen Emma , Stevenson‐Hinde Joan
Published: July 2011

In a sample of 51 mothers and their 2.5‐year‐old children, indices of attachment and behavioural style were related to interactions while clearing up toys in a laboratory setting. Correlations between ratings of the child's security of attachment to mother and mother/child interactions showed that the more secure the child, the more mothers were constructively involved in free play and approached the clear up more enthusiastically using warmer tones. A lower proportion of their statements attempted to control the child, but more of those that did were positive. Children with higher security ratings tended to ignore mothers' control statements less and show fewer babyish actions on being asked to clear up. Between‐group comparisons involving secure, insecure avoidant and insecure ambivalent classifications of attachment produced significant differences between secure and insecure ambivalent groups which reflected the above correlations. No significant differences involved the frequency of compliance.

Those individual characteristics (Behavioral Style Questionnaire: McDevitt & Carey, 1978) most reflecting expression of feeling (i.e. intensity of reaction, negative mood, low threshold of responsiveness) correlated significantly with low compliance and other negative behaviour.

Significant sex differences occurred just before and over the first 30 seconds, but not over the first 3 minutes, of the clear up. Girls' mothers played more constructively beforehand and were more positive in their approach to clearing up, whereas boys' mothers were more negative in tone and were often ignored by their sons.
Skill, content and generative strategies in autistic children's drawings
Authors: Lewis Vicky , Bouchet Jill
Published: July 2011

The drawing skill, picture content and strategies for generating ideas for drawings were compared in 20 drawings collected over the course of one year from 12 relatively able autistic children, not selected for drawing ability, and 12 learning‐impaired children. The drawing skills of the two groups and the content of their pictures were very similar. However, the autistic children generated ideas which were more closely related than those of the controls. The implications of the findings for our understanding of autism are discussed.
Semantic processing in the free recall of autistic children: Further evidence for a cognitive deficit
Authors: Tager‐Flusberg Helen
Published: July 2011

Two memory experiments were conducted with groups of autistic, mentally retarded and normal children, matched on verbal mental age and digit span. In the first experiment free recall of semantically related and semantically unrelated word lists was investigated. Autistic children were found to be comparable to the control groups in recalling the unrelated list; however, they were significantly poorer in recalling words from the related list. The second experiment utilized a cued recall paradigm, comparing the subjects' ability to use semantic and rhyme cues to retrieve unrecalled words from memory. This time the autistic children were no different from the retarded and normal children in using semantic cues. These findings extend earlier work on cognitive deficits specific to autism, suggesting that autistic children cannot make use of linguistic knowledge to facilitate retrieval of stored information. It is speculated that this failure to use memory strategies is related to autistic children's hypothesized deficit in developing a ‘theory of mind’.
Changes in embarrassment as a function of age, sex and situation
Authors: Lewis Michael , Stanger Cathy , Sullivan Margaret W. , Barone Phillip
Published: July 2011

While much research has been conducted into primary emotions, little work on secondary emotions and their development has taken place. Embarrassment was studied in 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children in order to determine its short‐term developmental course. Situational and sex differences were also explored. Embarrassment increased with age, and situations of self‐exposure produced more embarrassment than other situations.
Development of auditory memory span: The role of rehearsal
Authors: Henry Lucy A.
Published: July 2011

Two experiments test the hypothesis that articulatory rehearsal causes the increase in memory span with age. This is an important issue, because, according to the working memory model, children as young as 4 years use rehearsal in memory span tasks. The developmental improvement is argued to be in the speed of rehearsal with age. However, other developmental evidence suggests that the improvement in span is actually due to an increase in the use of rehearsal with age. As most of this evidence is based on visual, not auditory, presentation, two converging approaches were used to test whether rehearsal was implicated in the age‐related increase in auditory memory span. Experiment 1 trained children aged 5, 7 and 9 years to rehearse, and Expt 2 prevented children aged 5–6 and 8–9 years from rehearsing. If rehearsal is the major factor in span development, training rehearsal should improve span in younger children more than in older children, whereas preventing rehearsal should reduce spans of older children to the level of those of younger children. In neither experiment did the effects of training or preventing rehearsal differ at different age levels. The results suggest that articulatory rehearsal is not a major factor in the development of auditory memory span up to the age of about 9 years.
The effect of context change on children's recognition of unfamiliar faces
Authors: Markham Roslyn , Ellis Diane , Ellis Hadyn
Published: July 2011

This study investigated the effect of context on face recognition by children. Three groups of children, aged 6, 8 and 10 years, and an adult comparison group, were presented again with children's faces in either the same or different backgrounds from those in which they originally appeared and with either the same or different expressions. Distractors were presented in an old or a novel background. Changing the background context for targets had an equally detrimental effect on hit rate for children in each age group, although it was less for adults, possibly due to a ceiling effect. Hit rate increased overall with age. Number of false positives was similar across age groups when distractors appeared in new contexts, but decreased with age when presented in old contexts. Change in expression affected adults more than children. The results show that context affects face recognition in all the age groups tested but indicate that the processes underlying the effect may differ somewhat for children and adults.
Judgements and justifications: Criteria for the attribution of children's knowledge in Piagetian research
Authors: Smith Leslie
Published: July 2011

In empirical research, developmentalists attribute knowledge to children on the basis of performances on assessment tasks. Since knowledge is not itself observable, criteria are needed for reasonable decisions to be made about how to classify different intellectual states, such as false belief, empirically true belief, necessary knowledge. In Piagetian research, there are two distinct views about the selection of such ‘response criteria’. One view states that knowledge can be attributed on the basis of children's judgements‐alone (J‐view). A contrary view states that such attribution requires children to justify their judgements (JJ‐view). An objection to the J‐view is discussed by consideration of the two dominant philosophical accounts as to the nature of knowledge, namely the foundationalist and causal accounts. It is argued, firstly, that the foundationalist account requires the elimination of the J‐view with which it is incompatible through its failure to deal with cases of knowledge at all. It is argued, secondly, that the causal account places a limitation on the J‐view which fails to deal with cases of necessary knowledge. Since one of the main problems in Piagetian research is the construction of necessary knowledge, only the JJ‐view should be used when this problem is addressed. Developmental research which is based on the J‐view alone could not, without circularity, be concerned with the substantive issues which are outside its conceptual scope.
‘Twisted perspective’ in young children's drawings
Authors: Dziurawiec S. , Derȩgowski J. B.
Published: July 2011

In two experiments an attempt was made to determine young children's use of ‘typical’ outlines in their drawings of models. In the first experiment children aged 6, 8 and 10 years were asked to draw heads, bodies and tails of two animals, singly and in concordant and discordant combinations. It was expected that children would use ‘typical’ outlines and that this tendency would be stronger in the younger children. In addition, it was expected that children would adopt a drawing‐by‐parts strategy for the combinations, irrespective of actual viewpoint, resulting in ‘twisted perspective’. The data confirmed these predictions with the exception that there were no age effects. A second experiment, undertaken to resolve the ambiguity in the drawings of one of the model bodies, found that a model with more distinctive contour elicited more typical drawings. The results of the first experiment were strongly confirmed. The relationship of the findings to the phenomenon of size constancy is discussed. An enduring perceptual mechanism is proposed to account for the ‘distortions’ which were found.
A functional analysis of decomposition and integration in children's cylinder drawing
Authors: Caron‐Pargue Josiane
Published: July 2011

A sample of 1186 children from 3 to 11 years had to draw a cylinder in one of three different conditions: (1) cylinder lying on its side; (2) cylinder standing up; (3) cylinder freely manipulated by the child. A typology of the drawings is presented which corresponds with an age‐related change. Initially, children produce holistic units, as yet unanalysed. Then a double process is manifest: first, children tend to decompose the units into meaningful subparts in order to encode more information; then the next step consists in re‐composing, from those independent parts, a larger, integrated unit. It is argued that the process of hidden line elimination implies the achievement of this double process: in order for a non‐visible line to be eliminated, it must be considered as a meaningful unit integrated into a larger one. The different experimental conditions led the children to focus on different aspects of its properties thus hindering or facilitating the achievement of the process.
Staff—child interaction styles in multi‐ethnic nursery schools
Authors: Ogilvy Carole M. , Boath Elizabeth H. , Cheyne William M. , Jahoda Gustav , Schaffer H. Rudolph
Published: July 2011

Nursery staff‐child interactions were analysed to determine if adult style varied according to the ethnicity of the child. A series of situations was set up to highlight certain specific educationally important aspects of adult‐child interaction. Individual adults were paired with a Scottish child and an Asian child in counterbalanced order. Across the three situations staff adopted a more controlling style with Asian children; they were moreover less responsive to Asian children than to Scottish children. The implications of these findings for Asian children's educational, language, social and emotional development are discussed.
Levels of categorization and the development of referential descriptions
Authors: Camaioniy Luigia , Ercolani Anna Paola
Published: July 2011

In the present study an analysis is made of the type of noun descriptions used by 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children in a typical referential communication task as an indicator of the underlying categorization process and of the corresponding level of children's semantic development. On the basis of Rosch's theory of categorization the following hypotheses were proposed: (a) that children may form initial basic‐ level categories different from adult‐basic categories, which later undergo a process of conventionalization towards the adult norm; (b) that exemplar typicality may influence category attribution and the corresponding reference patterns. The subjects consisted of 94 Italian native speakers, 50 aged 4 years and 44 aged 5 years. The results support the first but not the second hypothesis and also allow us to explore how children proceed from a generic level of reference to more specific (subordinate) levels of reference, as well as how they correct previous attribution errors.
Age differences in the retention of knowledge by young and elderly students
Authors: Cohen Gillian , Stanhope Nicola , Conway Martin A.
Published: July 2011

Nearly 400 former students aged between 25 and 77 were tested for retention of knowledge from an undergraduate degree course in cognitive psychology. Retention intervals ranged from three months to 12 years. Tests were designed to examine both recognition and recall of names and concepts; general and specific facts; conceptual relations and principles of experimental design. Retention interval and the grade originally achieved were found to be the most important predictors of retention. There was no age difference in the rate of forgetting. Small effects of age were apparent in memory for highly specific facts but memory for general facts, principles and conceptual relations was not significantly affected by age. The pattern of results suggests that general knowledge Schemas are age‐resistant although lower‐level specific knowledge is slightly age‐impaired. Overall, the findings indicate that intelligent, highly motivated elderly people show very little deficit in the retention of formally acquired knowledge.
Inspection time in two childhood age cohorts: A constant or a developmental function?
Authors: Nettelbeck T. , Vita P.
Published: July 2011

The development trend of inspection time (IT) was investigated by comparing performances of eleven 5–6‐year‐olds and thirteen 11–12‐year‐olds, matched for IQ using Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM). Initial age‐related differences in IT were substantially reduced by extended practice but remained statistically significant after practice across 20 and more successive estimates had reduced IT performance to asymptotic levels. Relative rate of improvement in IT performance was not related to CPM and consideration of attentional variability and possible fatigue effects suggested that these variables could not account for the final difference between the samples in mean IT. Early 1T‐CPM correlations within cohorts were above − .5 but after eight estimates diminished steadily, eventually to negligible proportions in both age samples. This outcome was interpreted as the consequence of a shift in the type of information being processed, since a majority of children in both age samples reported learning to use post‐stimulus cues of apparent movement. Overall, results supported the hypothesis that speed of central processing increases as a function of mental age; but also highlighted methodological shortcomings in IT as an index of mental speed free from the influence of cognitive strategies.
Connectionism and developmental theory
Authors: Plunkett Kim , Sinha Chris
Published: July 2011

The main goal of this paper is to argue for an ‘epigenetic developmental interpretation’ of connectionist modelling of human cognitive processes, and to propose that Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) models provide a superior account of developmental phenomena than that offered by cognitivist (symbolic) computational theories. After comparing some of the general characteristics of epigeneticist and cognitivist theories, we provide a brief overview of the operating principles underlying Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and their associated learning procedures. Four applications of different PDP architectures to developmental phenomena are described. First, we assess the current status of the debate between symbolic and connectionist accounts of the process of English past tense formation. Second, we introduce a connectionist model of concept formation and vocabulary growth and show how it provides an account of aspects of semantic development in early childhood. Next, we take up the problem of compositionality and structure dependency in connectionist nets, and demonstrate that PDP models can be architecturally designed to capture the structural principals characteristic of human cognition. Finally, we review a connectionist model of cognitive develop ment which yields stage‐like behavioural properties even though architectural and input assumptions remain constant throughout training. It is shown how the organizational characteristics of the model provide a simple but precise account of the equilibration of the processes of accommodation and assimilation. The article concludes that a coherent epigcnctic‐developmental interpretation of PDP modelling rquires the rejection of so‐called hybrid‐architecture theories of human cognition.
Effects of early rearing environment on twin similarity in the last half of the life span
Authors: Pedersen N. L. , McClearn G. E. , Plomin R. , Nesselroade J. R.
Published: July 2011

In the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study on Aging (SATSA), 99 identical and 229 fraternal pairs of reared‐apart twins were studied at the average age of 58 years on 34 phenotypic measures of personality, legal drug use and physical health and stature. Variation in age at separation and in degree of separation for reared‐apart twins provides a unique opportunity to assess the long‐term impact of rearing environment on bio‐behavioural measures later in life. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the relationship between degree of separation and spirits and total alcohol consumption is in the expected direction; greater similarity in rearing environment leads to greater twin resemblance as adults, indicating the importance of shared rearing environment which accounted for 2 per cent of the variance in these measures. For personality, the greatest number of significant effects were for number of years separated. However, the effects were small (accounting for at most 3 per cent of the variance) and significant primarily for identical twins. The results provide additional support for the hypothesis that environmental factors important to personality development are those experienced differentially by children from the same family, so called non‐shared environmental influences.
New directions in referential communication research
Authors: Lloyd Peter , Boada Humbert , Forns Maria
Published: July 2011

This paper traces the history and identifies current issues in referential communication from a European perspective. It is argued that an understanding of how children handle verbal messages is important for theoretical and applied (especially educational) reasons, but that a methodological shift is needed. An approach is outlined that uses tasks with clear goals that enable children to perceive the purpose of communication. Telephones replace the customary talking‐through screens, which also removes the distorting presence of the experimenter. The implications of the experimenter traditionally playing the dual role of investigator and task communicator are examined. When the age of the children demands the presence of an adult, that person's contribution must be measured. Detailed coding of verbal and non‐verbal behaviour, drawing on developments in discourse analysis, are outlined together with some illustrative findings. The paper concludes with some proposed future fruitful lines of enquiry.
Reaching for toys through apertures
Authors: McKenzie B. , Slater A. , Tremellen S. , McAlpin S.
Published: July 2011

In this study 10‐month‐old infants were presented with a vertical or horizontal toy that was obtainable only by reaching through an aperture. In each of three experimental conditions there were two apertures of the same size and of differing orientation—horizontal and vertical. In the first condition the toy was visible only through the aperture of congruent orientation and in the second only through the aperture of orthogonal orientation. In the third condition it was located between two apertures and equal portions of it were visible in both of them. Infants reached successfully for the toy in the first and third conditions but experienced greater difficulty in the second. This was reflected in indices of first and successful reaches, reaching efficiency and anticipatory hand orientation. In the presence of the apertures (experimental trials) infants were more likely to reach with the hand that was ipsilateral with the side of toy presentation than when reaching was unobstructed (baseline trials). Since most indices reflected behaviour prior to contact with aperture or toy, it was concluded that infants of this age perceive that a match in orientation of toy and aperture better affords access to the toy than does a mismatch.
Using the mother's actions as a reference for object exploration in 6‐ and 12‐month‐old infants
Authors: von Hofsten Claes , Siddiqui Anver
Published: July 2011

The questions asked in the present paper concern the role of the social context in the early development of perception and action. How do infants acquire the various means of manual exploration and how do they get to apply these means appropriately to specific exploratory problems? An experiment is reported testing the possibility that infants learn these skills by observing adults doing them. Six‐month‐ olds and 12‐month‐olds were presented with four different objects which varied in form, size, texture, substance and sound potential. The subjects' mothers were also participants in the experiment and presented the objects to the infants after modelling a specific manipulation with it. Four different manipulations were modelled; banging, shaking, rubbing and rolling/sliding. These actions were paired orthogonally with the four objects. Amount of manual activity in each condition was compared to an initial baseline at which the objects were presented to the child without modelling. It was found that infants selectively imitated the actions performed by adults on objects. For the same object, some behaviours demonstrated by the mother were repeated much more frequently than others. Finally, the implications for perceptual development of the idea that infants utilize their adult surroundings for finding out about the world is discussed.
Age and the divided attention costs of category exemplar generation
Authors: Perfect T. J. , Rabbitt P. M. A.
Published: July 2011

The ‘resource deficit model of aging’ (e.g. Craik & McDowd, 1987) proposes that differences in memory retrieval efficiency between younger and older adults are due to a global reduction in information processing resources with advancing age. So far, this model has only been tested for retrieval of recently acquired information or for data held in immediate memory. To see whether the resource deficit model of aging would apply to memory tasks requiring retrieval of overlearned information from long‐term memory, middle‐aged (50–59) and elderly (70–79) adults were compared on a dual‐task paradigm in which the primary task was category exemplar generation and the secondary task was two‐choice auditory reaction time. The respective resource demands of two conditions of exemplar generation, hard and easy, derived from Battig & Montague's (1969) potency norms, were compared with a neutral condition of reading English words aloud. Results indicated that retrieval of overlearned information from long‐term memory is indeed a resource‐demanding (effortful) rather than a resource‐free (automatic) process, and that the amount of resources (effort) it requires depends upon the familiarity of the word being searched for. However, the divided attention costs of the two retrieval tasks did not interact with age, fluid intelligence or crystallized intelligence. The implications for the resource deficit model of memory aging are discussed.