bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gender as an influence in the development of scripted pretend play
Authors: Duveen Gerard , Lloyd Barbara
Published: July 2011

The influence of gender was investigated in target children aged 3 to 4 years engaged in pretend play with gender stereotyped toys with a girl and with a boy partner. Grammatical development was assessed using MLU, and gender knowledge underlying language use was explored using Nelson's (1985) technique of script analysis.

Both girls and boys made longer utterances when playing with a girl. MLU also varied according to whether or not children produced a script; longer MLUs were characteristic of children who produced scripts although this difference was only significant when playing with a boy.

Older children produced more scripts, and during the fourth year the structure of scripts became more clearly differentiated and the roles which were defined more gender marked. At this age children recreated more female roles.
Reading processes in specific reading retarded and reading backward 13‐year‐olds
Authors: Fredman Glenda , Stevenson Jim
Published: July 2011

This study investigates whether 13‐year‐old retarded (SRR) and backward (RB) readers show differences in their use of two reading strategies: phonological and whole word. Thirty‐eight SRR and 63 RB children were compared on their ability to read non‐words (phonological strategy), irregular words (whole word strategy) and the relative facility with which they read regular compared to irregular words (regularity effect). In order to control for IQ and reading level two different two‐group designs were employed: a ‘mental‐age control’ design where only IQ was controlled and a ‘reading‐age match’ design in which reading level and IQ were both taken into account. The findings suggest that in terms of single word reading, retarded and backward readers are not distinct groups, at least at 13 years of age. The overall level of reading proficiency explains most of the difference in reading between the two groups and they do not necessarily use different reading strategies. The implications of these findings for the controversy over subtypes of reading disability and the continuum of reading skill are discussed.
Young children's spontaneous use of spatial frames of reference in a learning task
Authors: Allen Gary L. , Kirasic Kathleen C.
Published: July 2011

Young children (3 to 6 years old) participated in two experiments on their spontaneous use of action‐oriented, and place‐oriented frames of reference in learning to find a hidden object. Under an exhaustive search procedure, the task was difficult in all frame of reference conditions for all but the oldest age group. When a limited search procedure was used, differences among frame of reference conditions were observed. Learning to respond on the basis of an action‐oriented frame of reference was very difficult for 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds in this task setting.
Who's going where?: Children's route descriptions for peers and younger children
Authors: Waller Glenn , Harris Paul L.
Published: July 2011

Previous research has shown that 8‐year‐olds are quite sensitive to the needs of a listener when giving spatial directions. Particularly for younger listeners, they produce a more linear description (i.e. they include an extensive number of informative propositions, connected in an appropriate order by ‘then’ connectives). By contrast, 5‐year‐olds fail to make adjustments for a younger listener.

The present experiment examined possible reasons for this insensitivity on the part of younger speakers. Children aged 5 to 8 years were asked to describe a route after they had been given one of three prompts: a general prompt which asked for clarity but gave no other clues; an age‐specific prompt in which the age of the listener was underlined; and a task‐specific prompt in which some of the characteristics of the more helpful linear route description were mentioned. The results indicated that even with the vague general prompt, 8‐year‐olds made adjustments for younger listeners. The 5‐year‐olds only adjusted their message following the task‐specific prompt, whereas both the task‐specific and the less explicit age‐specific prompt led to adjustments by the 6‐year‐olds. The implications of these results for the development of route description skills are discussed.
Effects of order of drawing head and trunk on their relative sizes in children's human figure drawings
Authors: Thomas Glyn V. , Tsalimi Athina
Published: July 2011

Two experiments were performed to investigate the effect of the order of drawing the head and trunk on the common tendency to exaggerate the size of the head in drawings of a man made by children aged 3 to 8 years. In Expt 1, all children were first asked to make a free drawing of a human figure. As expected, most children spontaneously drew the head before the trunk and overestimated the size of the head. Contrary to expectation, the greatest overestimation was found in the older age groups, not the youngest. The drawings of the children who drew the trunk before the head portrayed relatively smaller heads. All children were then asked to draw a head to complete a predrawn headless man, thus reversing the normal order of drawing the head before the trunk. A narrow neckline on the predrawn figure reduced the size of the added head, particularly in the youngest age group. On a predrawn figure without neck cues, the 5–6‐ and 7–8‐year‐old groups drew heads which were, on average, correctly proportioned and, therefore, smaller relative to the trunk than the heads portrayed in their free drawings. In Expt 2, children were asked to start their drawings with either the trunk or the head. When the head was drawn first, the children often left insufficient space for a visually correct depiction of the trunk, which was then drawn relatively too small. When the trunk was drawn first, the children always left enough space for the head and the figures were on average correctly proportioned. Thus the typical overestimation of the head seems to reflect the children's planning rather than their concept of the human figure.
The development of handedness in children
Authors: McManus I. C. , Sik G. , Cole D. R. , Mellon A. F. , Wong J. , Kloss J.
Published: July 2011

Direction and degree of handedness were assessed in children aged 3 to 9 years old, in transverse and longitudinal studies, using a 10‐item performance battery. Item analysis revealed a single underlying factor with a bimodal distribution. Direction of handedness appears to be more or less fixed by the age of 3. Degree of handedness increases at least over the range 3 to 7 years, and perhaps more slowly from 7 to 9. Degree of handedness increased more rapidly in left‐handers than in right‐handers. Degree of handedness showed no correlation with reading ability or general intelligence. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, and interpreted in terms of a hypothesis whereby degree of handedness is a phenomenon sui generis.
Linguistic processes in disagreements occurring in young children's dyadic problem solving
Authors: Garton Alison F. , Renshaw Peter D.
Published: July 2011

Conflict and collaboration between children have been postulated as causal mechanisms in cognitive development, but the constitutive processes of such interaction patterns remain largely unstudied and unspecified. This study examined dyads of young children as they worked together on a goal‐directed problem‐solving task. Pairs of 7‐ and 9‐year‐old children were classified as joint or disjoint collaborators on the basis of their early interaction, enabling predictions to be made regarding the linguistic processes during disagreements. Dividing disagreements into antecedent, opposition and resolution events enabled comparisons to be made between dyads regarding the specific linguistic processes of disagreements. While the dyadic types were more similar than different, it was found that disjoint dyads required more language to solve their disputes and joint dyads marked disagreements in ways that promoted social monitoring or identified the specific cause of the disagreement. Older children disagreed more but acknowledged the social nature of the problem‐solving task and the need to communicate. Such verbal use of problem‐solving strategies may allow young children to benefit cognitively from working together.
Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing
Authors: Leslie Alan M. , Frith Uta
Published: July 2011

In this study we establish that autistic children have severe and specific difficulty with understanding mental states. Even with a mental age of 7 years, these children mostly fail in tasks which are normally passed around age 3 and 4. We confirm previous results on the poor understanding of false belief but also find that autistic children's grasp of the notion of limited knowledge is grossly delayed. We rule out various other explanations for these results and further show that the autistic child's performance is not limited by failure to understand the causal notion of seeing. Likewise, memory failure cannot be blamed. Language delay can be ruled out as a cause of failure since a group of children with specific language impairment, matched for verbal mental age, performed at ceiling. We propose that autistic children are specifically impaired in their meta‐representational capacity and that this impedes their construction of a ‘theory of mind’.
Spontaneous, instructed and elicited play in relatively able autistic children
Authors: Lewis Vicky , Boucher Jill
Published: July 2011

This paper reports a study of the play of relatively able autistic children and that of learning‐impaired and young normal controls. Play was assessed in three conditions: spontaneous, instructed and elicited. Two types of material were used: conventional toys and junk objects. In the spontaneous condition autistic children produced significantly less functional (reality) play than controls. Very little symbolic play was produced by any children in this condition. By contrast, in the elicited play condition the autistic children produced as much functional play and as much symbolic play as controls. Other measures of play quality showed the autistic children's play to be unimpaired relative to controls with either type of material in any of the three conditions. From these findings it is argued that autistic children's lack of spontaneous creative play relative to controls is associated with conative abnormalities, rather than with a defective symbol system.
Girls' and boys' success and strategies on a computer‐generated hunting task
Authors: Hay Dale F. , Lockwood Randall
Published: July 2011

In two experiments, 6‐ and 10‐year‐old girls and boys played a computer game that simulated a hunting problem for an animal forager. Girls and boys were equally successful at this stereotypically masculine spatial task, and both girls and boys foraged optimally in terms of the theoretical predictions of the ecological theory of optimal foraging. Only one minor sex difference appeared: girls tended to use slightly more careful strategies than did boys. This finding corroborates other reports that sex differences in spatial problem solving may be due in part to girls' excessive use of caution.
Development of planning and control of hand movement to moving targets
Authors: Bairstow Phillip J.
Published: July 2011

Development in the way the hand approaches and intercepts a moving target was studied with children aged 6–11 years. The speed and trajectory of the target was varied. Hand movement was analysed in terms of: the speed and direction of the initial part of the response; ongoing modifications to the speed and path of movement; the speed and accuracy of the hand when close to the target. Results showed that the speed with which the hand moved initially was planned specifically for the target's speed and trajectory, while the direction of movement was planned only roughly. During the movement, there was usually only one adjustment to the speed of the hand, but frequent adjustments to the path of movement. The data show there are two important stages in the development of reaching to targets of different speed. By 8 years there is an advance in ability to plan a movement, while at 10 years there is development in ability to control the ongoing movement.
The performance of congenitally blind children in cognitive developmental tasks
Authors: Ittyerah Miriam , Samarapungavan Ala
Published: July 2011

The study compared the performance of a group of congenitally blind children and two groups of sighted children, one of which was blindfolded and the other, visually informed. All the three groups were compared on a set of tasks, most of which have been used repeatedly to differentiate between the two developmental levels found to correspond roughly to the period of post‐infancy, early childhood and middle childhood, respectively. The purpose was to test whether:

There is a developmental difference reflected in the performance of the blind group and the extent to which such a difference, if any, parallels that of the sighted groups.

There is any global or task specific cognition deficit in the blind group as compared to the sighted groups.

There is any difference in the performance of the sighted groups who undertook the tasks either visually or factually.

Results indicate that cognitive development in the blind is not identical to that in sighted groups. Moreover, the differences in performance between groups are content or task specific and do not take the form of a global deficit across all developmental tasks. Furthermore, performance deficits are a function of both long‐term absence of experience and absence of direct or immediate visual information about the stimulus at hand.
Cognitive profiles of learning disabled children
Authors: Elliott Colin D.
Published: July 2011

Van der Wissel (1987), on the basis of computer‐generated data, has recently concluded that there is no ground for the supposition of aetiologically based different types of failing children. The study reported in this paper examines van der Wissel's conclusions for two samples of children with reading difficulties: (a) 145 poor readers subdivided into SRR (specific reading retardation) and GRB (general reading backwardness) groups, using Rutter & Yule's (1975) criteria; and (b) 121 dyslexic children subdivided into three groups on the basis of cluster analyses. Results provided partial confirmation of van der Wissel in the GRB group, and disconfirmation in the SRR and clinical dyslexic groups. It is concluded that van der Wissel's suggestion that a single aetiology can account for all school failers is incorrect, and that there is likely to be a number of cognitive profiles and aetiologies associated with failure in reading.
Adolescent cigarette smoking: A developmental analysis of influences
Authors: Morgan Mark , Grube Joel W.
Published: July 2011

This study investigated the influence of various factors associated with smoking behaviour among a randomly selected sample of 3000 Dublin post‐primary school pupils. A specific focus was the extent to which these influences change with age during adolescence (13–17 years). Normative influences on smoking behaviour increased up to age 15–16 years and then declined. This curvilinear pattern seems largely due to the rise and decline of peer influences over these years. On the other hand, the influence of parents (both in terms of parental example and approval) is constant over this period. Beliefs about the consequences of smoking were also affected by age. The distinctive contribution of such beliefs to the prediction of smoking doubled during the years under consideration. These results have important implications for the understanding of susceptibility to social influence during adolescence and for the design of effective smoking prevention programmes.
Naming emotion in faces and voices: Abilities and disabilities in autism and mental retardation
Authors: Hobson R. P. , Ouston J. , Lee A.
Published: July 2011

Groups of autistic and non‐autistic retarded adolescents and young adults, individually matched for CA and verbal MA, together with a group of normal young children individually matched for verbal MA, were tested for their ability to name photographs of emotionally expressive faces and emotion‐unrelated photographs of objects, and to name corresponding sounds recorded on audiotape. The results indicated that although BPVS‐matched autistic and non‐autistic retarded subjects were not significantly different when the emotion tasks were considered in isolation, autistic subjects differed from non‐autistic retarded and normal subjects in being relatively poor at naming feelings vis‐à‐vis naming non‐personal objects. On the other hand, there was evidence that group differences between non‐autistic mentally retarded and normal subjects were not specific to the task of naming emotions. This raises doubt about claims that non‐autistic mentally retarded individuals have specific deficits in emotion recognition.
Deficits in the planning, control and recall of hand movements, in children with perceptuo‐motor dysfunction
Authors: Bairstow Phillip J. , Laszlo Judith I.
Published: July 2011

A group of 40 children aged 7 to 11 years with perceptuo‐motor dysfunction from mainstream schools were examined on two eye‐hand coordination tasks: one requiring the interception on a television monitor of a moving target of variable speed and trajectory, the other requiring the tracking and recall of a target moving slowly in a circular path. Performance was compared to developmental norms. Results show, that children with perceptuo‐motor dysfunction are heterogeneous, and have various ways of carrying out a motor action. Some do not plan a movement, others do not control an ongoing movement like their peers. Yet despite marked abnormalities some children can compensate and be very accurate. Kinaesthetic disability is associated with motor disability. Process‐orientated treatment—including kinaesthetic training—improves motor functioning in some domains more than others.
Children's perceptions of effort and productivity as granting a right for reward
Authors: Nisan Mordecai
Published: July 2011

The general hypothesis of this study is that reward allocation by schoolchildren is founded on the perception of right, and that both effort alone and productivity alone are perceived as sufficient conditions for granting a right to an equal share of rewards. One hundred and twenty children and adolescents, equally divided between the sexes, three age groups (6–7, 10–11, and 15–16) and two environments (urban and kibbutz) were individually interviewed. They were presented with scenarios of two children working at a task, each investing a different amount of effort and/or reaching a different level of production. The resulting reward allocations proposed by the subjects, as well as the reasons they gave for them, support the general hypothesis stated above. Only the sufficiency principle, based on right, fits the allocation of rewards across variations of invested effort and productivity. A few differences were noted between age groups, whereas quite a consistent pattern was revealed for both genders and both environments. An explanation of allocation in terms of right is shown to be more appropriate than one in terms of equality.
The human figure drawings of normal children and those with severe learning difficulties
Authors: Cox Maureen V. , Howarth Claire
Published: July 2011

Two age groups of normal children (4‐year‐olds and 9‐year‐olds) were asked to draw a man, draw the arms on a series of incomplete figures, and copy lines in four different orientations. A group of children with severe learning difficulties (SLD) who had a chronological age of 9 years 2 months but a mental age of 3 years 9 months was also tested. The responses of the SLD children resembled those of the younger normal subjects, suggesting that their responses reflect a developmental delay rather than a disorder of the complex skills involved in drawing.
A naturalistic investigation of gender constancy in three‐ to four‐year‐old children
Authors: Leonard Susan P. , Archer John
Published: July 2011

A naturalistic interview study of gender constancy was carried out on a sample of 30 children, aged 3 to 4 years, asking questions about stability of gender through time and across situational transformations for the child her/himself and for known others. No perceptual transformations or props were used, and the children were asked supplementary questions in order to establish whether transformations were ‘real’ or ‘pretend’. Most of the children showed an understanding of gender stability across time, but there was a substantially lower number of correct responses for situational transformations. However, all the incorrect responses were found to be due to ‘pretend’ responding. It is concluded that gender constancy is established at an earlier age than Kohlberg (1966) suggested, and that it is important to distinguish between real and pretend transformations.
Piaget's theory of serial memory development: Some new evidence
Authors: Marsh R. W. , Chen May Jane , Lei Lau Lei
Published: July 2011

As children aged 4 years could not reproduce seriated shapes shown to them on a previous occasion but 6‐year‐old children could, Piaget & Inhelder (1973) concluded that serial memory is absent at age 4 years but present at 6 years with a transition period in between. Their experiments, however, take no account of the maturation of sensorimotor skills the children were required to use to reproduce the shapes (drawing, tracing, construction) over that period. The present study was designed to recognize these effects and showed that serial memory is probably present at age 4 years.
Perceptual and cognitive perspective taking in two siblings with callosal agenesis
Authors: Temple Christine M. , Vilarroya Oscar
Published: July 2011

Two children with callosal agenesis, who were born without the 200 million nerve fibres of the corpus callosum, which normally connect the two hemispheres of the brain, were tested on the Piagetian and post‐Piagetian tasks of perceptual perspective taking and a task of cognitive perspective taking. Unlike children with autism and despite the discussions of the relative distributions of cognitive skills which followed the studies of commissurotomy patients, the children with callosal agenesis could accomplish these tasks. There is thus no evidence that absence of the corpus callosum causes a failure to establish a ‘theory of mind’, nor do acallosals display a duality of mind such that deductions relating to belief states and viewpoints are unavailable to conscious perception and logical verbal analysis.
Naughty animals or naughty experimenters? Conservation accidents revisited with video‐stimulated commentary
Authors: Eames David , Shorrocks Diane , Tomlinson Peter
Published: July 2011

Although work on ‘conservation accidents’ furthered study of the cognitive processes in Piagetian conservation tasks, there has been little attempt to use children's meta‐cognitive awareness as access to such processes. The present study sought (a) to replicate effects on number conservation of variation in transformation conditions and (b) to investigate children's processing of such tasks by means of their commentaries on silent video‐replays of their performances.

Two separate groups of 64 children aged 5–7 years participated in two similar experiments, each comprising four transformation conditions involving a human experimenter or a toy fox. Neither between‐ nor within‐subject data showed any evidence of transformation condition effects upon conservation in either experiment. Children generally denied that the counters had really been moved by the fox and overwhelmingly asserted the necessity of the experimenter's presence. Theories concerning the effect of repeating the equivalence question, the role of toy animal interference and the influence of meta‐cognitive awareness in conservation were further contradicted by the failure of performance to relate to any aspect of the video‐replay commentaries gathered in Expt 2, including reported correctness of children's pre‐transformation judgement, their belief in the agency of the toy animal, and their construal of the purpose of the task. Memory lapses before and during the video commentary confirm the usefulness of this procedure as well as the need for caution in interpreting what it yields. The possible role and implications of experimenter effects in this area of research are briefly suggested.
A sex difference in the salience of cues for inductive inference
Authors: Hort Barbara E. , Taylor Marjorie
Published: July 2011

In a recent study by Gelman & Markman (1986), boys and girls were found to show different patterns of inductive inference. Children were asked to infer whether an object (e.g. a shark) would be more likely to share a property with a dissimilar‐looking object from the same category (e.g. a tropical fish), or with a similar‐looking object from a different category (e.g. a dolphin). Boys made more category‐based inferences than predicted by chance for objects from biological categories like fish, but not for non‐biological objects such as gold. Girls showed the reverse pattern, making more category‐based inferences than predicted by chance for non‐biological objects, but not for biological items. The present study tested the possibility that the sex difference was due to the way the properties were described rather than the biological‐non‐biological difference in the items. In the Gelman & Markman study, the properties of biological items were presented as actions or states, while the non‐biological properties were presented as the consequences to the object due to an outside agent. The results of the present research indicated that the content of the items (biological versus non‐biological) is irrelevant; sex differences in patterns of correct inference are a function of the way items are described (actions/states versus consequences). Boys made significantly more correct inferences than chance for items whose properties were described as actions or states, while girls made significantly more correct inferences than chance for items whose properties were described as consequences. Thus, it appears that boys tend to use an object's actions as a basis for inference, while girls tend to use the consequences for an object when categorizing the object and making inferences about it.
Preschool children's social competence and production and discrimination of affective expressions
Authors: Waiden Tedra A. , Field Tiffany M.
Published: July 2011

This study investigated the relationship between the ability to discriminate and produce facial expressions and social acceptance by peers of young preschool children. Multiple measurements of affect discrimination ability, production ability (posed and spontaneous) and sociometric status (ratings and preference scores) were included, along with one measure of verbal labelling of affective expressions. Results indicated that abilities to discriminate and produce expressions were unrelated when the contribution of age and IQ to the relation was removed. Furthermore, posed and spontaneous productions of expressions were not related. Sociometric preference scores but not rating scores were predicted by the ability to discriminate affective expressions (R2 = .68). Sociometric preference scores were also predicted by spontaneous expressivity scores (R2 = .38) but not by the ability to pose affective expressions. No gender differences were observed on any measures. Thus, results indicate that children's discrimination ability and spontaneous expressivity predict social competence, as indexed by liking by peers. Results are discussed in terms of a social information processing model of social competence.
The effects of raising animals on children's biological knowledge
Authors: Inagaki Kayoko
Published: July 2011

The types of knowledge acquired through raising goldfish at home for an extended period were examined for 5‐year‐olds. Goldfish‐raising children acquired a greater amount of not only factual knowledge about goldfish but also conceptual knowledge, from which they could reasonably predict the reactions of goldfish and explain the raising procedures more accurately than children who had never raised any animal. In addition, the goldfish‐raising children could use their knowledge about goldfish as the source in making analogies about an unfamiliar ‘aquatic’ animal (i.e. a frog), and tended to produce reasonable predictions with some explanations for its reactions to novel situations more often than their counterparts. Since the goldfish‐raisers and non‐raisers did not differ in amount of factual knowledge about mammals or in rate of reasonable predictions for humans, it is concluded that the differences found between the two groups were primarily due to the specific experience of raising goldfish.
Ethology, sociobiology and developmental psychology: In memory of Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz
Authors: Smith Peter K.
Published: July 2011

Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz, who both died recently, contributed enormously to the development of modern ethology; and, both indirectly through the influence of ethological thinking and methodology, and directly through their own interests, they have both had profound influences on the study of human development. Their names are linked through their personal friendship and collaboration, and also through their joint award (with Otto von Frisch) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973; the only behavioural scientists so far to receive this honour. In September 1989 a symposium in their memory, with the title of this paper, was held at the Annual Meeting of the Developmental Section of the British Psychological Society. This article summarizes the content of that symposium, and in particular reviews the lives of Tinbergen and Lorenz, and the contributions which ethology, and the more recent ideas of sociobiology, have had on the study of human behavioural development.
Sibling relationships in childhood: Links with friendships and peer relationships
Authors: Stocker Clare , Dunn Judy
Published: July 2011

Links between children's relationships with younger siblings, friends and peers were studied in a sample of 5–10‐year‐olds. Measures of children's sibling relationships were collected during home visits. Mothers and children were interviewed about children's friendships. Teachers and mothers reported on children's peer relationships and rated children's temperament. Results showed that children's sibling relationships were not associated with peer relationships; however, there were some links between children's relationships with siblings and friends. Ratings of children's temperament were associated with the quality of children's relationships with both friends and peers. Taken together these predictors accounted for 7–35 per cent of the variance in children's friendships and peer relationships. Results highlight the importance of distinguishing between close friendships and peer relationships when studying children's development.
A developmental analysis of everyday topology in unschooled straw weavers
Authors: Saxe Geoffrey B. , Gearhart Maryl
Published: July 2011

Two studies are summarized on the development of topological concepts in unschooled child straw weavers from rural communities in northeastern Brazil. Study 1 is an analysis of videotaped observations of everyday teaching interactions in which expert weavers taught a targeted weaving pattern to novices. Study 2 is an analysis of weavers' topological understandings, contrasting weavers of different age levels (5 to 15 years) and weavers with age‐matched non‐weavers. Results of Study 1 showed that experts presented more topological information more often in demonstrations of weaving actions than in verbalizations concerned with weaving actions or verbalizations of weaving patterns; in their communications, experts tended to accommodate to learners' difficulties. In Study 2, weavers showed greater skill with increasing age and were more able to construct homeomorphic patterns for novel weaves than age‐matched non‐weavers. Despite their expertise, weavers performed poorly on tasks that required them to verbalize how to weave known patterns. The results suggest that weavers' generally represented topological knowledge in sensorimotor action schemes (e.g. folding under, pushing through, separating) that could be generally adapted to weaving new patterns or known patterns with new materials. The results point to the importance of investigating the various possible semiotic forms that mediate teacher‐learner interactions and children's representations in everyday problem solving.
Everyday and curriculum‐based physics concepts: When does short‐term training bring change where years of schooling have failed to do so?
Authors: Levin Iris , Siegler Robert S. , Druyan Sara , Gardosh Rami
Published: July 2011

Children and adults appear to believe that all parts of an object must move at the same speed. Third, sixth, and ninth graders, and even university students, exhibited this single‐object/single‐motion assumption in their judgements on problems involving concrete objects, computerized displays, and imagined motions. For example, they judged that in the rotational movement of a rod with a fixed pivot, a point near the centre moved at the same speed as a point near the outer end, despite the fact that the point more distant from the centre traversed a longer distance in the same amount of time. A manipulation intended to help subjects grasp the logical contradiction implied by the intuition did not lead many subjects to abandon the intuition. In contrast, an experientially based contradiction was effective. Peer group discussion involving logical and experiential argumentations also proved successful in creating cognitive change. The sources of the intuition and the conditions needed for successful training were discussed.
The nature of everyday science: A commentary
Authors: Harris Paul L.
Published: July 2011

In his excellent introduction, Giyoo Hatano identifies several key issues for research on everyday science. I shall take up three that he mentions. First, why should there be distinctive disciplines in everyday science? Second, how can work on informal expertise be linked to work on conceptual development? Finally, are we inherently more prone to error in tackling certain disciplines? I shall amplify some of my remarks by mentioning research on another discipline of everyday science—folk psychology.
Adolescent representations of socio‐economic status
Authors: Dickinson Julie
Published: July 2011

The development of beliefs about the nature, causes and fairness of occupational prestige and income differentials, in subjects aged 10 to 16 years, was studied in relation to age and social class. Slight but stable age and class differences were found in perceptions of socio‐economic inequality and the kind of explanations postulated for inequality. Open‐ended questions produced a wide variety of explanations for prestige and income differentials but the reasons most commonly employed by all age and class groups were the ‘importance’ or ‘social contribution’ of the job, the ‘effort exerted’ doing the job and the ‘education’ or ‘training’ needed. Strong and stable class effects and some age effects were found in the use of references to ‘education’ or ‘training’. Judgements of the fairness of inequality were subject to class effects but largely unaffected by age. The results are discussed in relation to cognitive developmental theory and the role of social influence and socially transmitted information in the construction of socio‐economic beliefs.
Understanding of causal expressions in skilled and less skilled text comprehenders
Authors: Oakhill Jane , Yuill Nicola , Donaldson Morag L.
Published: July 2011

This experiment investigated the. relation between 7‐ to 8‐year‐old children's reading comprehension and their understanding of causal expressions. A group of skilled comprehenders was compared to a less skilled group on two oral tasks involving because sentences: a questions task and a sentence completion task. For each task, the subjects received deductive items (where because introduces the evidence for a conclusion) and empirical items (where because introduces a cause). The experiment also investigated the effect of modifying the instructions for the deductive items so as to focus the subjects' attention on the source of evidence for a conclusion. Skilled comprehenders performed significantly better than less skilled comprehenders on the deductive, but not on the empirical, items. Performance on deductive items was poorer than that on empirical items. However, scores on the deductive items were increased by the modified instructions.
The effects of overt and covert rehearsal on the emergence of the phonological similarity effect in 5‐year‐old children
Authors: Johnston Rhona S. , Conning Alison
Published: July 2011

It has been found that adults show better recall of lists of phonologically dissimilar words than lists of phonologically similar words with visual presentation. This phonological similarity effect is usually attributed to the use of covert verbal rehearsal. Previous studies, however, have shown that 5‐year‐old children do not show this effect with purely visual presentation. In the present study, 5‐year‐olds were trained to carry out either overt or covert verbal rehearsal. Both groups showed significant effects of phonological similarity, but the overt rehearsal group produced a significantly larger one. A third group of children received no training in verbal rehearsal, and did not show differential recall of the two types of stimuli, thus replicating earlier work on 5‐year‐olds. This group did, however, show a primacy effect, despite the fact that this is generally thought to be a product of verbal rehearsal.
The assessment of ethnic sensitivity among Northern Ireland schoolchildren
Authors: Houston Jennifer E. , Crozier W. Ray , Walker Peter
Published: July 2011

The utility of the release from proactive interference paradigm as a technique for the indirect assessment of ethnic sensitivity was explored. Children in Northern Ireland, aged 7 and 11, recalled sets of names that changed in religious affiliation between the third and fourth sets. Only the older age group demonstrated the predicted improvement in recall following change in name type, findings consistent with studies that have taken approaches to the assessment of ethnic sensitivity.
Preschoolers' grasp of a desire for knowledge in false‐belief prediction: Practical intelligence and verbal report
Authors: Freeman N. H. , Lewis C. , Doherty M. J.
Published: July 2011

Preschoolers often fail a false‐belief test. Competing explanations have been offered from two perspectives: the theory of mind and the theory of reasons for action. A concept which unifies the two has been overlooked—the concept of a ‘need to know’, whereby someone has a reason for directing actions to the goal of forming a mental representation. Current tests that present the actor as a passive information user rather than an active information collector might underestimate preschoolers' conception of psychology.

In Expt 1, a theory of mind test presented a false belief as the outcome of an actor's plan of action involving her need to know something. Preschoolers showed 85 per cent success when the test took the form of hide‐and‐seek, whilst success in a standard false‐belief test was 48 per cent. In Expts 2 and 4 it was found that success was not due to a low level heuristic: in the former, asking children to act out the plan of action gave 94 per cent success compared with 66 per cent from a modified standard task. Success from conventional verbal questioning was reliably lower. Further probes revealed flexibility; in a true‐belief test children recognized that the actor's plan would succeed, and in an ignorance test (Expt 3) they showed understanding that the seeker would not know where to search.

We suggest that traditional tests underestimate preschoolers in two ways. One is in neglecting practical intelligence in favour of verbal questioning. The other is in challenging them with tests which pose an inferential problem about the intentionality of the actor and thus disturb children's ‘intentional stance’. Traditional tests reveal an important limitation on preschoolers' use of a theory of mind but not an organizational gap in their construction of psychology.
Cognitive linguistic correlates of ‘theory of mind’ ability in autistic children
Authors: Eisenmajer Richard , Prior Margot
Published: July 2011

A specific deficit in theory of mind has been proposed to explain the distinct pattern of social/cognitive deficits in autistic individuals (Frith, 1989). However, it is clear that a number of children are able to demonstrate knowledge of mental states in others (Prior, Dahlstrom & Squires, 1990), hence an important question is what particularly characterizes those autistic children who do show theory of mind. Baron‐Cohen (1988) has argued that pragmatic language skills and theory of mind ability ought to be intimately related since they draw on similar representational abilities. We examined the cognitive linguistic correlates of this ability in 29 high functioning autistic children. The 11 children who could reliably show this ability were compared with those who could not, on CA, verbal MA, pragmatic language skills, WISC Vocabulary, Comprehension and Similarities, and were superior on all measures except Vocab and CA. A stepwise discriminant function analysis showed an 86 per cent correct classification of the two groups with pragmatic skills and abstract thinking as the best discriminators.

Procedural and instructional variables were also assessed in this study, as was reliability of theory of mind ability from one year to the next. Most children were stable in their demonstrated knowledge. The addition of the word ‘first’ to the false belief question (Where will Sally first look for the marble?) allowed 50 per cent of the originally failing group to answer the question correctly, suggesting the need for extreme care in the details of replication experiments of this kind. Our results support the likelihood of a developmental delay in theory of mind in autism rather than endorsing the notion that this is a specific deficit with pervasive explanatory power. However, the findings might also support the ‘continuum’ conceptualization of autism with more mildly autistic children able to demonstrate knowledge of mental states and to develop adequate pragmatic language competence.
Children's perspectives on conflicts between student and teacher: Developmental and situational variations
Authors: Adalbjarnardottir Sigrun , Willett John B.
Published: July 2011

This study examines the ways that elementary schoolchildren think about everyday situations in which conflicts occur between student and teacher. Applying a balanced design, 60 Icelandic elementary schoolchildren (30 girls and 30 boys) between the ages of 7 and 12 were interviewed twice, one year apart, using two ‘dilemmas’ in which the teacher criticizes the academic work and the classroom behaviour of a student. For each dilemma, the children's expressed interpersonal communicative action — their definition of the problem being faced, their proposed choice of action, the justification they offer for their proposed action, and their evaluation of the feelings of each protagonist — were classified at one of four developmental levels. Hypotheses that age, time, gender and conflictual situation would predict level of communicative action were tested. The findings indicate that level of communicative action differs according to conflictual situation. Regardless of age, children express a greater reciprocity when academic work rather than classroom behaviour is being criticized by the teacher (with girls being more likely to take a reciprocal perspective than boys). Finally, older children are less unilateral than younger children, suggesting that communicative action becomes more reciprocal as children develop, although these developmental changes appear to decelerate with age.
Children's use of display rules in pride‐eliciting situations
Authors: Reissland Nadja , Harris Paul
Published: July 2011

Toddlers' (21–63 months) use of display rules was investigated during competitive interaction between siblings. The toddlers were judged to show pride when, after winning the game, they drew attention to their achievement. All children, with the exception of three younger siblings (mean age = 23 months), showed pride. Older siblings (mean age = 58 months), however, used display rules significantly more often than younger ones (mean age = 34 months) in order to mask their pride.
The validity of word age‐of‐acquisition ratings: A longitudinal study of a child's word knowledge
Authors: Jorm A. F.
Published: July 2011

The age at which a child first said and read each of 94 picturable nouns was recorded. At ages 9:6 and 11:6, the child was asked to estimate the age she first said these words. Her age‐of‐acquisition estimates were found to be highly correlated with the actual ages of first saying and reading the words. Age‐of‐acquisition estimates were also highly stable over the two‐year‐period. Frequency of saying the words and ease of saying them appeared to be important factors used in making age‐of‐acquisition judgements. The results support the validity of age‐of‐acquisition ratings used in memory research.
Visual and haptic spatial coding in young children
Authors: Hatwell Yvette , Sayettat Guy
Published: July 2011

Three experiments compared the evolution of visual and haptic spatial modes of responding in localization tasks. It was predicted that object‐referred coding would be delayed in the haptic modality because the number and the salience of available external cues are reduced in haptics. Children aged 3–7 years were tested in a 180° observer's rotation task (Expt 1) and in two display rotation tasks (Expts 2 and 3) in which ambiguous instructions could orient the child either towards an object‐referred coding (in which the target was localized by reference to the geometric properties of the display supporting it) or towards an “object‐independent” coding (in which the target was localized as if no spatial displacements occurred). Results revealed similar age changes in visual and haptic responses. However, the shift from one response mode to the other occurred consistently later (two years delay) in haptics as compared to vision. Finally, cross‐modal effects of set were observed when subjects aged 5 and 6 years performed the same task in the two modalities successively: the coding mode elicited by the first modality activated tended to generalize to the other modality activated in the second. These results are discussed in relation to developmental and information‐processing approaches to spatial coding in children.
Collaboration as a facilitator of planning and problem solving on a computer‐based task
Authors: Blaye Agnès , Light Paul , Joiner Richard , Sheldon Sue
Published: July 2011

Recent concern in the developmental psychology literature with peer facilitation of children's learning is matched by a corresponding concern in the cognitive science literature with user‐user interactions in the context of computer use. A study is reported in which 11‐year‐old children (N = 39) worked over three successive sessions on a problem‐solving task making heavy demands on planning and information handling, implemented in HyperCard. Children worked on the computer either in pairs or individually on the first two sessions, and all worked individually on the third. By the second session, the performance of the pairs was significantly superior to that of the individuals. On the final session, with a slightly modified task, those who had previously worked in pairs showed a substantial advantage. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.