bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Test‐retest reliability of a new delay aversion task and executive function measures
Authors: Kuntsi Jonna , Stevenson Jim , Oosterlaan Jaap , Sonuga‐Barke Edmund J. S.
Published: February 2003

Despite the wide adoption of measures of executive functions and motivational tendencies in studies of developmental disorders and child psychopathology, few studies have investigated their test‐retest reliability. The present paper examines the reliability of a new measure of delay aversion, three measures of working memory, a response inhibition measure and a measure of dual task performance. The children, aged between 7 and 15 years, performed the tasks twice, with a 2‐week period in between the sessions. Using a relatively conservative criterion, only the delay aversion task and one of the working memory measures (delayed response alternation) demonstrated satisfactory test‐retest reliability. The other two working memory measures (sentence span and counting span) showed modest reliability. For the inhibition measure (stop task) the results were mixed, with poor to modest reliabilities obtained for the various derived measures. The dual task failed to demonstrate adequate test‐retest reliability. These differential reliabilities need to be borne in mind when interpreting the results of studies using these measures. In particular the effect of low reliability on statistical power and the Type II error rate should be considered.
Is prosocial behaviour a good thing? Developmental changes in children's evaluations of helping, sharing, cooperating, and comforting
Authors: Jackson Melanie , Tisak Marie S.
Published: February 2003

This study investigated the development of prosocial thinking in children. The participants were 83 children (7–12 years of age) who responded to questions concerning helping, sharing, cooperating, and comforting. Specifically, for each of the prosocial behaviours studied, participants were asked: (1) whether they would respond in a prosocial manner (Expected Behaviour); (2) whether they thought it would be alright if they did not respond in a prosocial manner (Obligation); (3) whether they would feel good about themselves for not responding prosocially (Selfevaluation); (4) whether it would bother them if others thought they were mean for not responding prosocially (Peer Evaluation). The results revealed age and prosocial behavioural differences as well as an interaction between age and prosocial behaviour type (e.g. curvilinear relationships are reported).
Football participation in the primary school playground: The role of coordination impairments
Authors: Smyth Mary M. , Anderson Heather I.
Published: February 2003

Children with movement impairments, as identified by the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (Movement ABC), have been shown to be more isolated than others in the school playground and to play team games such as football less often than others. The goal of the present investigation was to examine whether early coordination impairments were related to later football participation in the school playground. The participants were 64 boys, 32 in a movement impaired group and 32 in a non‐impaired group, who were divided into groups of those who were often alone and those who were not. The not‐alone group was further subdivided into those who played football for considerable periods and those who did not. There were 10 boys with poor scores on the Movement ABC who were not often alone and who played football for considerable amounts of time. Analyses of the subscales of the ABC indicated that the balance subscale was significantly related to participation in football, but that some boys with relatively poor balance scores did play football. Only extremely poor performance on the balance tasks of the Movement ABC was related to non‐participation in football. Some of the key differences between groups of children with movement impairments in terms of their inclusion in social and physical games like football may not relate to hand/eye coordination and manual control, but to the ability to maintain posture while carrying out other movements, particularly when balance skills are extremely poor.
Social understanding, attachment security of preschool children and maternal mental health
Authors: Greig Anne , Howe David
Published: February 2003

Studies on children's social understanding tend to assume that understanding the minds and emotions of others are theoretically and methodologically indistinct. This study, however, aimed to assess differential effects, with particular reference to the quality of the attachment relationship and maternal mental health. The participants were 45, 40‐month‐old children who were assessed on tasks of social understanding (false belief, Bartsch & Wellman, 1989, and emotion understanding, Denham & Auerbach, 1995); attachment security was assessed by a story completion task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990), and maternal mental health was assessed by Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961). The hypotheses were (a) that insecure children would have mothers scoring higher on the BDI than secure children and poorer performances on the social understanding tasks; (b) that insecure children need not be any worse than secure children in mind appraisal, rather, it was anticipated that their difficulties would be with emotion appraisal. It was found that, relative to secure children, insecure children had lower verbal mental ages, poorer performances on emotion understanding and had mothers scoring higher in depression. Interestingly, no significant effects were found for mind understanding. A regression analysis showed that verbal mental age and attachment were significant predictors of the child's emotion task performance whilst depression and SES were not. In the light of these results, this paper considers the need for a move towards an integration of theories and methods.
Thematic and taxonomic relations in preschoolers: The development of flexibility in categorization choices
Authors: Blaye Agnès , Bonthoux Françoise
Published: February 2003

Two experiments examined the development of flexibility of categorization in children aged from 3 to 5, using a picture‐matching task. During a pre‐test, spontaneous matches were observed. Children were next presented with a scene aimed at inducing an alternative match. Finally, they were given a post‐test identical to the pre‐test to assess whether they would maintain their initial choice. Both experiments showed that preschoolers were able to produce different types of categorization choices. In Experiment 1, children had to choose between a thematic and a taxonomic option. Five‐year‐olds showed flexibility and changed their mode of response more often in the presence of the scenes (experimental group) than in their absence (control group). In contrast, 3‐year‐olds' responses seemed to reflect spontaneous variability since their switches were not related to contextual information. In Experiment 2, two more choice options were added. Three‐year‐olds' data replicated the findings of Experiment 1. However, a majority of 4‐year‐olds were consistent on the thematic mode of response and adapted their responses to the scenes only to a limited extent. Overall, the data suggest a developmental path from spontaneous variability to flexibility, via a predominance of one mode of response.
Actions really do speak louder than words—but only implicitly: Young children's understanding of false belief in action
Authors: Garnham Wendy A. , Perner Josef
Published: February 2003

Children show understanding of a mistaken story character's actions in their visualorienting responses before they show this in their answers to test questions. Clements and Perner (1994) interpreted the visual responses as reflecting implicit understanding (implicit‐knowledge hypothesis). The present study explores three possible ways of saving the hypothesis that different bodies of exclusively explicit knowledge are involved (explicit‐knowledge‐only hypothesis): the lack‐of‐confidence hypothesis asserts that children are just not confident of the novel but correct answer and the misinterpretation hypothesis claims that children are simply misinterpreting the test question. The temporal stacking hypothesis assumes that children consider first the novel idea that the protagonist will go where he or she thinks the object is and then they consider the more established idea that the protagonist will go where the object really is. It explains the original finding by assuming that visual responses are governed by the earlier and the verbal answers by the later considered idea. The results offered little support for the first two of these attempts to save the explicit‐knowledge‐only hypothesis. Although parts of the results are compatible with the temporal stacking hypothesis, the overall pattern of results is not. Rather, it is very similar to findings from implicit visual perception, where people experience a lack of conscious awareness. This similarity reinforces the original interpretation of a dissociation between implicit and explicit understanding of belief‐based action.
Links between time of day, sleep and unhappy mood in early infancy: An intensive case study
Authors: Totterdell Peter
Published: February 2003

Crying in early infancy is usually worse in the evening, peaks about six weeks after birth, and then gradually decreases, but it is not known why. This study tests the idea that the pattern of affect in early infancy is related to the development of circadian control over the sleep‐wake cycle. Sleep and unhappy mood measures for a female infant were recorded in a diary by her parents for 210 consecutive days, starting a fortnight after her birth. Analysis of variance and cosinor analysis of the data revealed a circadian rhythm in unhappy mood that peaked in the evening, was present irrespective of food intake, and declined in strength after a few months. Developments in the diurnal pattern of unhappy mood were paralleled by increasing circadian rhythmicity in time of falling asleep and sleep duration. Regression analysis showed that unhappy mood was influenced by an interaction between time of sleep and duration of sleep. The results were in accord with recent research on mood in adults and suggest that the pattern of affect in early infancy may occur because the sleep‐wake cycle is not yet aligned with the circadian timing system.
What is a picture? Children's conceptions of pictures
Authors: Thomas Glyn V. , Nye Rebecca , Rowley Martin , Robinson Elizabeth J.
Published: February 2003

In an exploratory study we examined children's selections of ‘pictures’ or things ‘good as pictures' from various sets of items. Most children regardless of age discriminated pictures from real objects and models. Many 3‐ to 4‐year‐olds selected pieces of paper with abstract forms, patterns of Os and Xs, letters, written words and numbers. Some selected as a picture a piece of plain white paper. Most rejected an image on the side of a drinking mug or a solid cube, even when asked to point to things ‘with pictures on’. English‐speaking children's early conception of a picture perhaps includes writing and number notations as subcategories, and for some it may include the paper substrate on which pictures are characteristically produced. In contrast, most children of age 6–8 years and older selected as pictures only drawings that had recognizable subject‐matter, rejected abstract figures, patterns, letters and numbers, and disregarded substrate in deciding picture status.
Children's drawings of emotional faces1
Authors: Sayõl Melike
Published: February 2003

In their drawings of facial expressions, children show a preference for the mouth and some other representative indicators over the eyebrows to reflect emotion in faces. The present study aimed to understand the preference for mouth and the exclusion of eyebrows in children's facial drawings. In order to test the three alternative explanations ‐ greater demand to comprehend the eyebrows, relative saliency of the mouth/the eyebrows according to emotion and difficulty in drawing with eyebrows as oblique lines ‐ drawing‐completion, selection‐construction and copying tasks were designed respectively. Four‐ 6‐, 8‐ and 10‐year‐old children performed on happy, sad, angry and surprised emotions. Results revealed that children's mouth performance was better than the eyebrow performance in copying and drawing tasks, but not in the selection construction task. Eyebrow selections were more successful than mouth selections on angry. Children's copying and selection‐construction performance improved with age but interacted with emotion and feature. Children drew the mouths more successfully than the eyebrows on all emotions (except happy) and at all ages. Children's mouth preference and eyebrow exclusion in their emotional facial drawings were related not only to their drawing inability with oblique lines and not paying attention to the details but also to their inability to capture the expressive aspect of line drawings.
Memory for an observed event in the presence of prior misinformation: Developmental patterns of free recall and identification accuracy1
Authors: Roebers Claudia M. , Schneider Wolfgang
Published: February 2003

The present study compared developmental patterns of children's and adults' abilities to give a free narrative of a videotaped event and to identify the persons involved from a set of faces and explored consistency of performance across the two tasks. A total of 284 participants from four age groups (6‐, 8‐ and 10‐year‐old children, and adults) were included. The results revealed that on the one hand, free reports of an event showed a steady improvement during childhood. On the other hand, children aged 6 years and up were proficient at recognizing faces they had seen in the film: there were no age‐related increases in face identification competencies in terms of hits or discrimination index. The presentation of misleading faces between encoding and retrieval led to more false alarms and fewer hits, regardless of age. Adults were more conservative than children in their selection of faces, and thus, their number of correct hits was exceeded by children. However, adults outperformed children on face identification in terms of providing more correct rejections. Consistency of performance across verbal recall and face recognition abilities was only significant in the group of 10‐year‐olds.
Taiwan and Mainland Chinese and Canadian children's categorization and evaluation of lie‐ and truth‐telling: A modesty effect
Authors: Lee Kang , Xu Fen , Fu Grenyue , Cameron Catherine Ann , Chen Shumin
Published: February 2003

This study examined Taiwan and Mainland Chinese and Canadian children's concepts of, and moral judgments about, lying. Participants aged 7, 9 and 11 years in those locations were read stories involving child characters doing something good or bad, and telling a lie or the truth about their own deed. They were asked whether a story character's verbal statement was a lie or the truth, and whether the statement was good or bad. Results show that most children of both cultures labelled a lie as a lie, and the truth as the truth. The major cultural difference lay in children's moral evaluations of truth‐ and lie‐telling in the good deed conditions: for both Taiwan and Mainland Chinese children, as age increased, lying about one's own good deeds became increasingly positive, whereas truth‐telling about good deeds became less positive; for Canadian children, regardless of age, lying about good deeds was negative, and truth‐telling about a good deed was positive. This effect was because of Taiwan and Mainland Chinese children's increasing awareness of the need to be modest and self‐effacing in prosocial deed situations. We replicated the modesty effect of Lee, Cameron, Xu, Fu, and Board (1997) that only involved Mainland Chinese children. Given the major differences in political, economical and educational systems between Taiwan and Mainland China, the modesty effect is likely owing to children's socialization of Chinese traditional values in home and at school.
Children's individual differences in capacity: Effects on strategy production and utilization
Authors: Woody‐Dorning Janet , Miller Patricia H.
Published: February 2003

One issue concerning strategy development is whether the same causes underlie the development of strategy production and strategy effectiveness (benefit for recall). This research examined the role of individual differences in memory capacity in the production and effectiveness of a selective processing strategy. Kindergartners and first graders (N = 84) chose, by opening doors, certain objects to view from a set of objects during a study period. The most appropriate strategy was a selective one ‐ viewing only the objects to be recalled. Individual differences in capacity were assessed by five measures of memory span. Several measures of capacity predicted recall overall or strategy effectiveness, but none were related to strategy production. The fact that digit span predicted recall for strategic children, but not non‐strategic children, suggests that those strategic children who have a relatively large capacity can engage in additional mnemonic activities that increase recall.
National identification and intergroup evaluations in Dutch children
Authors: Verkuyten Maykel
Published: February 2003

This study conducted among Dutch children age 10–12, focuses on friendships with Dutch and other nationality contemporaries. The study was designed to test among older children several hypotheses derived from intergroup theory. Particular attention is paid to the self‐affective consequences of group evaluations. It is found that children make a clear distinction between friendships with own and other nationalities. In addition, stronger national identification is related to less social distance towards Dutch contemporaries and to more social distance towards other nationalities. Furthermore, own group ratings in particular had a self‐enhancing effect among children scoring high on national identification; children indicating little social distance towards the own group reported more positive momentary self‐feelings after the group evaluations. It is concluded that different psychological mechanisms determine the own group and other group aspects of national differentiation.
Training 3‐year‐olds in rule‐based causal reasoning
Authors: Brooks Patricia J. , Hanauer Julie B. , Frye Douglas
Published: February 2003

Preschoolers' understanding of causal rules was examined using a marble and ramp apparatus operating in two distinct configurations. Experiment 1, conducted with 32 3‐year‐olds and 16 4‐year‐olds, examined whether children could predict where a marble would emerge when given verbal rules indicating the marble's trajectory. Over two sessions, 4‐year‐olds made correct predictions, irrespective of the apparatus's configuration. Three‐year‐olds, in contrast, were unable to alternate between rule sets and performed poorly when the marble rolled diagonally across the apparatus. In two additional experiments, with the ramp uncovered to reveal mechanical shunts and feedback given on each trial, the verbal rules were presented with (Experiment 2) or without pointing gestures (Experiment 3). Generalization was tested using the original protocol of Experiment 1. Older 3‐year‐olds in both experiments benefited from training, and most continued to perform well when gestures, feedback, and visual access to the mechanism were eliminated. Of the younger 3‐year‐olds, only those exposed to rules with gestures showed any improvement, and the improvement did not generalize. The results indicate that providing redundant non‐verbal cues may facilitate preschoolers' use of complex rule systems, with poor generalization attributable to young children's dependence on cues to access the relevant rules.
Effects of language and social behaviour on children's reactions to foreign people in television
Authors: Durkin Kevin , Judge Jasmine
Published: February 2003

This study investigated children's reactions to people speaking a foreign language on television in either prosocial or antisocial representations. It was predicted that prejudice would be greatest in the condition in which the targets were shown speaking a foreign language and behaving in an antisocial manner, and that this would be most marked in younger children. Participants aged 6, 8 or 10 years viewed short programmes in which the same family appeared as English‐speaking or foreign‐speaking, prosocial or antisocial. The language was created for this study, circumventing the possibility of pre‐existing biases affecting responses. Children completed three prejudice measures. The results indicated bias against foreign speakers in the 6‐ and 8‐year‐old groups, but not in the 10‐year‐olds. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental changes in prejudice and implications for media portrayals.
Dynamic aspects of visual event perception and the production of pointing by human infants
Authors: Butterworth G. , Franco F. , McKenzie B. , Graupner L. , Todd B.
Published: February 2003

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between pointing production in infants and two types of event perception factors: spatial localization (e.g. eccentricity of visual events with respect to an initial fixation point) and salience of targets (addition to visual events of sound or object translation through space). Three experiments revealed that target characteristics, such as internal movement, sound, vanishing and translation through space (including disappearance) significantly influenced the incidence and latency of pointing, whereas the main effect of target localization was to determine which hand does the gesture. In particular, there was an advantage to the right side of the visual field in eliciting pointing when there is competition between targets. Finally, for events involving auditory‐visual stimulation females made more right‐handed points than males. The general advantage of the right hand for pointing may offer further evidence for a specific link between pointing, cerebral dominance and the transition to speech.
Young children's understanding of the roles of knowledge and thinking in pretense
Authors: Davis Debra Lee , Woolley Jacqueline D. , Bruell Marc J.
Published: February 2003

In two studies, we assessed children's understanding that pretense involves mental representation. Three‐, 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds were told stories and asked questions designed to assess their understanding of the role of both knowledge and thinking in pretense. In Study 1, children were found to understand the role of knowledge in pretense. Study 2 revealed that children of this same age also understand the involvement of thinking in pretense. These results support the view that preschool age children understand that pretense involves mental representation. We discuss the implications of these results for the broader issue of children's understanding of the mind.
Children's understanding about white lies
Authors: Broomfield K. A. , Robinson E. J. , Robinson W. P.
Published: February 2003

In three experiments, children suggested and justified a verbal response for a story character who received a disappointing gift. In Experiment 1, responses suggesting falsely that the recipient liked the gift were increasingly common over the ages 4–9 years. Children who suggested false responses judged that the giver would believe the gift was liked and would be happy following the falsehood. They also predicted that the giver would be unhappy had the truth been told, and passed a test of second‐order false belief. However, many children who suggested truthful responses, that the gift was disliked, also revealed a full understanding of the consequences of giving true and false responses, and also passed second‐order false belief. Mental‐state understanding was developmentally prior to suggesting a false response. In Experiment 2, involving 6‐, 8‐ and 10‐year‐olds, more children suggested false verbal than false facial responses. In Experiments 2 and 3, giving children the pro‐social reason for falsifying increased the incidence of false responses, even amongst children who appeared not to be able to handle second‐order mental states. In Experiment 3, 6‐year‐olds suggested truthful responses just as frequently, whether the speaker was an adult or a child. Many young children apparently place more weight on truth‐telling than on protecting the feelings of a gift‐giver.
Understanding of intention and false belief and the development of self‐control
Authors: Lang Birgit , Perner Josef
Published: February 2003

We tested the prediction that there is a direct developmental link between understanding false belief, understanding that reflex movements are not intentional actions and the ability to inhibit interfering action tendencies. The common ability consists of the understanding of mental states as representations with causal efficacy (Perner, 1991). One false belief task, the knee‐jerk reflex task and two executive function tasks (Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test and hand game) were given to 69 children aged 3, 4 and 5 years old. The results showed that the relationship between false belief and executive control tasks also extends to children's understanding of reflex movements.
Crying during adolescence: The role of gender, menarche, and empathy
Authors: Van Tilburg Miranda A. L. , Unterberg Marielle L. , Vingerhoets Ad J. J. M.
Published: February 2003

It is a well‐established fact that adult women cry more frequently than adult men. However, in babies and young children no gender differences in crying frequency are found. Frey (1985) has postulated that boys and girls start to diverge in crying with the onset of menses in girls. The aim of the present study was to examine gender differences in crying during adolescence and the role of menarche and empathy. Participants were 216 boys and 265 girls, age 11 to 16, who completed questionnaires on crying frequency, crying proneness, empathy, and (for girls only) menarche. It appeared that girls cried more frequently and were more prone to cry than boys in all age groups. Gender differences increased with age mainly because of a decrease in crying among boys. Onset of menstruation did not have an effect on the crying measures. Empathy, on the other hand, was strongly associated with crying. Older girls were more empathic than younger girls, whereas for boys the relationship between empathy and age was weaker. It can be concluded that gender differences in crying develop before age 11 and that menarche does not play a significant role in crying in girls.
Why do birds of a feather flock together? Developmental change in the use of multiple explanations: Intention, teleology and essentialism
Authors: Poling Devereaux A. , Evans E. Margaret
Published: February 2003

In two studies, 6‐12‐year‐old children (Study 1: N = 58; Study 2: N = 38) and adults (Study 2: N = 22) rank ordered intentional, teleological and essentialist explanations for different behaviours of living‐kind groups representing a range of biological kinds from plants to humans. Overall, humans elicited more intentional explanations, insects and plants elicited more essentialist explanations, and intermediate taxa, such as ungulates, elicited more teleological explanations. Children made fewer fine‐grained taxonomic distinctions than adults, and the youngest children tended to reject essentialism. The 6‐7‐year‐old children preferred to reason about living‐kind behaviours from an intentional and teleological perspective; only towards the end of the elementary school years did children seem to incorporate a biological essentialism. Neither adults nor children were exclusively bound to a particular mode of explanation, but exercised ‘causal flexibility’ across different behavioural contexts.
What is ‘on’ and ‘under’ for 15‐, 18‐ and 24‐ month‐olds? Typicality effects in early comprehension of spatial prepositions
Authors: Meints Kerstin , Plunkett Kim , Harris Paul L. , Dimmock Debbie
Published: February 2003

Which spatial prepositions are the first to be comprehended by 15, 18 and 24‐montholds and how are they understood? To address these questions, early comprehension of prepositions was assessed using parental questionnaires and the preferential looking task. Children were shown stimuli depicting objects or animals either on or under a table in a typical (i.e. on or under the centre of the table) or atypical position (on or under the edge of the table). Existing research and parental assessments led to the prediction that children comprehend the prepositions ‘on’ and ‘under’ very early. It was also predicted that children's looking behaviour would show typicality effects. The results corroborate that ‘on’ and ‘under’ are among those spatial prepositions that are understood early and that children differentiate between typical and atypical ‘on’ and ‘under’ situations in their earliest comprehension of these prepositions. As with object words, at 15 months they associate spatial prepositions initially with typical situations. By 18 months they broaden the scope of the spatial prepositions to include atypical situations.
Emotional states in self and others as motives for helping in 10‐year‐old children
Authors: Terwogt Mark Meerum
Published: February 2003

The participants were 140 children aged 10 years who were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist in a helping scenario. The first part of the scenario describes an event which is designed to create a happy, angry or emotionally neutral mood state in the protagonist. In the second part the protagonist meets a sad or fearful friend in need. It was found that girls were inclined to help their friends more often than boys were. Boys expressed an intention to help fearful friends less often than sad friends and, in both sexes, the tendency to help diminished after a preceding angry episode. In justifying their answers the participants referred to their friend's emotional state in about 50% of the cases and to their own emotional state in about 25% of cases. References to the protagonist's angry mood state increased the probability that help was denied. Mentioning a friend's sad state almost exclusively was given as a reason for helping. In contrast, a friend's fearful behaviour was not only mentioned as a reason for providing help but was also given as a reason for withholding help, especially among boys. Gender and emotion‐related discrepancies are discussed in terms of normative ideas about emotion management.
Preschoolers' cognitive representations of their homeland
Authors: Wilberg Sylwia
Published: February 2003

Preschool children's cognitive representations of their homeland were investigated via interviews with two different samples of preschoolers. Generally, the children had rather rudimentary representations of their own country. However, about 20% of them gave adequate responses even to the most difficult interview questions. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine reliable predictors of correct responses in preschoolers. Familiarity with foreign people seemed to enhance the probability of correct responses only in the first study. More reliable predictors were two different tests of concrete‐operational thinking. In partial agreement with an early study by Piaget, the class inclusion concept was significantly related to a large subset of interview questions. The present and previous evidence converge on the conclusion that cognitive representation of the homeland is dependent on a preschool child's intellectual capacity.
Perceiving heaviness by dynamic touch: An investigation of the size‐weight illusion in preschoolers
Authors: Kloos Heidi , Amazeen Eric L.
Published: February 2003

This study investigates preschoolers' ability to perceive the heaviness of objects by dynamic touch, a perceptual system that relies on the use of the muscle as a sensory organ. In total, 18 preschoolers were asked to hold objects by a handle without being able to see them. The 9 objects differed in mass and volume, allowing us to test the size‐weight illusion by dynamic touch. Children were asked in the context of a game to make judgments about the heaviness of the objects. Even the youngest children were sensitive to the rotational inertia of objects, a property that is commonly used by adults to determine the heaviness of an object. Rotational inertia is a function of both volume and mass. This suggests that the size‐weight illusion in children is due not to a process of intermodal integration but to children's sensitivity to invariant properties of the input.
Categorical similarity may affect colour pop‐out in infants after all
Authors: Davies Ian , Franklin Anna
Published: February 2003

Gerhardstein, Renner, and Rovee‐Collier (1999) reported an investigation of pop‐out in infant visual search with targets differing in colour from the distractors. They varied the perceptual distance between target and distractors and their categorical relationship. Targets were either in the same category as distractors or in a different category. They reported that at 3 months, infants showed increased pop‐out as perceptual distance increased, but there was no categorical effect. Here, we argue that their stimuli were not adequate to address these issues. Use of incandescent light rather than the normal illuminant C differentially affected the perceptual differences among their stimuli, and there may have been an unintended category boundary present in an intended within category pair. We argue that these faults in the stimuli can account for their pattern of results. They were aware of the possible consequences of using incandescent light and ran a preliminary study on adults comparing category membership and perceived similarity among their stimuli under incandescent light and illuminant C. They report that the illuminant had no effect. We replicated and extended their adult study and found that there were effects of the illuminant as well as evidence consistent with the unintended boundary. Reasons for the discrepant results are discussed, and the requirements for a valid investigation outlined.
Mindreading and moral awareness in popular and rejected preschoolers
Authors: Peterson Candida C. , Siegal Michael
Published: February 2003

This study sought to examine links among young children's peer relations, their moral understanding in terms of the ability to distinguish lies from mistakes, and their theory‐of‐mind development. Based on sociometric measures, 109 children with a mean age of 4.8 years were divided into groups of popular and rejected preschoolers. Rejected children who had a stable mutual friend scored higher on measures of moral understanding and theory of mind than did rejected children without such friendships. Similarly, popular children who had a stable mutual friendship outperformed other popular children on mindreading, although their moral understanding was no better than that of the popular group who lacked mutual friends. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that peer popularity was a significant independent predictor of children's moral understanding after any effects of verbal maturity, age and theory‐of‐mind were statistically controlled. Moreover, having a reciprocal stable friendship made a significant independent contribution to the explanation of individual differences in mindreading, over and above age and verbal maturity, which also contributed significantly. These results are discussed in terms of conversational, cognitive, and emotional processes in the development of social cognition.
Gaze following at 12 and 14 months: Do the eyes matter?
Authors: Caron Albert J. , Butler Samantha , Brooks Rechele
Published: February 2003

Two questions were addressed: (1) Is the gaze following of infants under 18 months sensitive to eye status? (2) Do they construe looking as referential behaviour? Corkum and Moore (1995) concluded that, prior to 18 months, gaze following is responsive to the head turn alone (H), because infants followed such turns as frequently as conjoint head and eye turns (H/E). Since their results may have been compromised by an absence of targets and a relatively lengthy response time, we retested a 12‐ and 14‐ month group with H/E, H and eyes closed (H/Ecl) cues in the presence of targets and with reduced response time. To examine comprehension of referentiality, two more H/E cues were shown—(1) saying ‘oh wow’ while turning and (2) actively scanning the targets—each intended to increase gaze following if infants regard looking as seeing something. Fourteen‐month‐olds, but not 12‐month‐olds, responded significantly more to the standard H/E cue than to the H and H/Ecl cues, indicating the importance of eyes for gaze following at this age. Neither age group, however, responded more to the two ‘enhanced’ H/E cues than to the standard. In a second experiment, a new 14‐month group was tested without targets, and again, responding was significantly greater to H/E than to H and H/Ecl. It was concluded that by 14 months, the eyes are co‐equal with the head in controlling gaze following, but whether such head/eye turns are understood as object‐directed is problematic.
Listening to Mozart does not improve children's spatial ability: Final curtains for the Mozart effect
Authors: McKelvie Pippa , Low Jason
Published: February 2003

We investigated the Mozart effect, as documented by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993), with school‐aged children. Experiment 1 contrasted the spatial IQ scores of children who had listened to a Mozart sonata (K.448) with the scores of children who had listened to a piece of popular dance music in a pretest‐post‐test design. There was no significant main effect of music and no significant difference between the pretest and post‐test scores for both groups. Owing to the non‐significant findings, a second experiment was carried out. We used a methodology that had previously replicated the Mozart effect. Again, Expt. 2 did not support the claim that Mozart's music can enhance spatial performance. Groups performed similarly on the control test and the experimental test, irrespective of whether they listened to Mozart or to popular dance music. Since the two different designs produced similar findings, the data suggest that the Mozart effect is so ephemeral that it is questionable as to whether any practical application will come from it. In the discussion, we suggest more fruitful avenues for future research on the relationship between music and spatial performance: arousal and transfer of learning.
A longitudinal study of bullying, dominance, and victimization during the transition from primary school through secondary school
Authors: Pellegrini A. D. , Long Jeffrey D.
Published: February 2003

Bullying and victimization were studied from a longitudinal, multi‐method, multi‐agent perspective as youngsters made the transition from primary through middle school. Generally, bullying and aggression increased with the transition to middle school and then declined. Bullying mediated youngsters' dominance status during the transition. Bullying may be one way in which young adolescents manage peer and dominance relationships as they make the transition into new social groups. Victimization declined from primary to secondary school. Correspondingly, youngsters' peer affiliations decreased, initially with the transition, and then recovered. Victimization, however, was buffered by peer affiliation, especially like most nominations relative to friendship nominations, during this time. Additionally, and consistent with the idea that bullying is used for dominance displays, cross‐sex comparisons of aggressive bouts indicated that boys targeted other boys and did not target girls. Results are discussed in terms of the changing functions of aggression during adolescence.
A comparison of two approaches to the study of negative peer treatment: General victimization and bully/victim problems among German schoolchildren
Authors: Schäfer Mechthild , Werner Nicole E. , Crick Nicki R.
Published: February 2003

Studies of children who are the frequent targets of peers' aggressive acts have been guided by two differing research traditions, namely the ‘bully/victim’ and the ‘general victimization’ traditions. Although the terms ‘bullying’ and ‘victimization’ are often used interchangeably, these constructs represent approaches that differ in terms of conceptual definitions of negative peer treatment, research methodologies, and relative interest in group‐versus individual‐level phenomena. The present study was designed as a first step towards the integration of these diverse literatures. Our specific goals were: to validate the relational victimization construct with a German sample of early adolescents (N = 217) through replication of previously published findings, and to examine systematically the relations among constructs derived from the two approaches. Our results showed that relational victimization, physical victimization, and bully/victim experiences were moderately correlated. The non‐overlapping properties of the constructs, however, are best understood in the context of gender differences.
On the relationship between partial occlusion drawing, M capacity and field independence
Authors: Morra Sergio
Published: February 2003

Five pairs of objects with different degrees of similarity, one partly occluded by the other, were presented to 119 children (5–8 years old) as models for drawing. Participants were also tested for M capacity and field independence. The results showed a pattern of relationships between M capacity and partial occlusion drawing, exactly consistent with the predictions derived from Morra, Angi, and Tomat's (1996) model. As predicted, field independence was also related to partial occlusion drawing. A detailed analysis of field independence scores revealed that, out of three measures (rod‐and‐frame, children's embedded figures test, and block design), only embedded figures showed a relationship with drawings that was still significant when M capacity and the other two field independence measures were partialled out. Following PascualLeone's (1989) neo‐Piagetian model of field independence, this divergence among tests was interpreted as an indication of a figurative misleading field effect in the partial occlusion drawing task.
Understanding constraints on inheritance: Evidence for biological thinking in early childhood
Authors: Giménez Marta , Harris Paul L.
Published: February 2003

Children ranging from 3 to 6 years old were given three tasks to assess their understanding of race as an invariant trait that is biologically transmitted from parents to offspring. Children were asked to: (1) pair offspring with their biological parents on the basis of the physical characteristics associated with race in the face of a distracting cue, namely clothes colour; (2) pair offspring with their biological parents in the context of a trans‐racial adoption; and (3) assess the possibility of changes to their own racial identity. Analysis of pairing responses and justifications showed that 3‐ and 4‐ year‐old children have a limited knowledge of the inheritance and invariance of such racial characteristics, whereas 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children display more consolidated knowledge and coherent responding across the different tasks.
The role of parenting, attachment, and temperamental fearfulness in the prediction of compliance in toddler girls
Authors: Van der Mark Ingrid L. , Bakermans‐Kranenburg Marian J. , Van Ijzendoorn Marinus H.
Published: February 2003

The development, antecedents, and concomitants of committed compliance in the second year of life were investigated, with a special emphasis on the influences of parental discipline and sensitivity, attachment security, and temperamental fearfulness. At 16 and at 22 months, 125 first‐born girls from middle‐class families were observed in their homes and in the laboratory. Committed compliance was assessed in a clean‐up task ('do' task), and in a task in which the children were asked to refrain from touching attractive toys ('don't' task). Temperamental fearfulness was observed when the children were confronted with seven somewhat scary items, such as a stethoscope and a rubber bird of prey. Attachment security was assessed with the Strange Situation procedure, and parental discipline and sensitivity measures were derived from home and lab observations in problem‐solving and limit‐setting situations. Maternal sensitivity during a puzzle task was related to more compliance of the child to her prohibitions, and maternal intrusiveness was associated with less compliance to maternal requests. Committed compliance was associated with concurrent parenting, attachment, and temperament. Controlling for concurrent parenting, attachment, and temperament, we did not find any significant associations between antecedent parenting and later compliance. Our data failed to support Kochanska's (1995, 1997) model of the impact of antecedent socialization and temperament on emergent morality.
A new false belief test for 36‐month‐olds
Authors: Carpenter Malinda , Call Josep , Tomasello Michael
Published: February 2003

We report two studies that suggest that some 36‐month‐old (and younger) children understand others' false beliefs. In the false belief conditions, children and two adults (E1 and E2) watched as an object was put into a container. E1 left the room, and E2 switched that object with another. E1 returned, expressed her desire for the object, and struggled to open the container (without succeeding). She spied both objects across the room and said to the child. ‘Oh, there it is. Can you get it for me?’ In other conditions, the object was not switched or E1 witnessed the switch. Other variations included using a novel word for the object and removing the ‘pull of the real’. Measures of children's latency and uncertainty were taken to determine whether those who were correct on the false belief tasks were guessing (luckily) or truly understanding. Results showed that between one‐third and almost two‐thirds of children took account of the adult's false belief when deciding which object the adult was requesting. We compare this task with other implicit and explicit tasks. We also conclude that certain task demands (e.g. the pull of the real) in traditional theory of mind assessments are unnecessary.
Children's body knowledge: Understanding ‘life’ as a biological goal
Authors: Jaakkola Raquel O. , Slaughter Virginia
Published: February 2003

Two studies assessed the development of children's understanding of life as a biological goal of body functioning. In Study 1, 4‐to‐10‐year‐old children were given an interview consisting of a series of structured questions about the location and function of various body organs. Their responses were coded both for factual correctness and for appeals to the goal of maintaining life. The results showed a gradual increase in children's factual knowledge across this age range but an abrupt increase in appeals to life between the ages of 4 and 6. Analyses of the 4‐year‐olds' responses suggested that appeals to life were associated with increased knowledge of organ function, but not of organ location. Study 2 was designed to replicate the pattern found in Study 1. A continuous sample of 4‐to 5‐year‐old children was administered an abbreviated version of the interview from Study 1. Children's understanding of life as a biological goal was again found to be predictive of their knowledge of organ function, but not of organ location. These results indicate a reorganization in children's understanding of the body between the ages of 4 and 6, which coincides with children's discovery of ‘life’ as a biological goal for bodily function.