bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The belief‐bias effect in reasoning: The development and activation of competence
Authors: Markovits Henry , Bouffard‐Bouchard Therese
Published: July 2011

The aim of this study was (1) to examine the development of the influence of personal belief about the truth or falsity of conclusion deduced from syllogistic reasoning and (2) to determine whether a procedure of activation of previously established knowledge could improve reasoning performance. A total of 271 17‐year‐olds and 215 university students were given one of a series of four paper‐and‐pencil tests. The results indicated that the effect of belief on reasoning is greater among adolescents for logical forms having a valid conclusion (valid forms), but that belief‐bias is greater among adults for logical forms with no valid conclusion (invalid forms). The activation procedure significantly improved performance both among adolescents and among adults, although the effects were limited. Finally, a relation was found between subjects' explicit knowledge of the empirical‐logical distinction and their ability to reason with an abstract problem. The results were interpreted as indicating that the effect of belief on reasoning is not linear but involves a complex relation between reasoning Competence and task difficulty.
Developmental changes in the representation of word meaning: Cross‐cultural findings
Authors: Jeyifous Sheila Walker
Published: July 2011

This study examined semantic and conceptual development among three socio‐economic groups in western Nigeria: rural, urban and ilite. The sociocultural and material conditions typifying each group were hypothesized to be associated with different patterns of conceptual change. All three groups demonstrated a developmental shift in the representation of word meaning, from representations based more on characteristic features, to those based more on defining features. However, the patterns of development differed across groups. The rural group had the most marked shift and the urban group the least. The differences in developmental patterns were interpreted as reflecting specific aspects of each group's sociocultural milieu.
Developmental research on adolescence: European perspectives for the 1990s and beyond
Authors: Jackson Sandy , Bosma Harke A.
Published: July 2011

Present‐day approaches to adolescent research are no longer characterized by the notion that adolescence is a period of ‘storm and stress' but emphasize instead the processes of change and adjustment which take place in response to developmental transitions. This article considers these and other perspectives which influence modern work on adolescence before discussing four areas of research—maturation, identity and self‐concept, problems of adolescent development and social development— which are likely to be the focus of continuing research interest in Europe during the 1990s. Possible new research directions are then discussed. It is suggested that political and other changes in Europe are likely to give added significance to issues like migration and cross‐cultural differences in perceptions of family life. Brief consideration is also given to the possible influence of current research in cognition, social cognition and dynamic systems on the study of adolescence. Finally, it is argued that the development of a new theoretical perspective on adolescence is likely to be a feature of research in the coming decade and beyond.
Is word processing involuntary in deaf children?
Authors: Leybaert Jacqueline , Alegria Jésus
Published: July 2011

Processes underlying reading in profoundly congenitally deaf children were investigated in three experiments using the Stroop paradigm, where subjects were required to respond to coloured letter strings displayed on a video‐monitor. Each experiment examined two response measures: A manual one where subjects pressed the button corresponding to the appropriate colour, and a colour‐naming task. Unpronounceable letter strings, pronounceable non‐words, colour related and unrelated words were displayed as well as colour words. In both deaf and hearing children of similar reading skill the pattern was very similar. Colour words generated most interference in the vocal, least in the manual task, suggesting automatic access to word meaning (the manual task) and, additionally, to word pronunciation (the vocal task). In a second experiment, where unique letter strings were presented in different colours, the same general pattern was observed: These results are not limited to repeated associative pairings of colours and their names, suggesting that the deaf, like hearing children, have automatic access to word pronunciations in reading. In a third experiment, non‐words that were homophones of incongruent colour words also produced interference with output forms for pronounceable letter strings. Taken together, these results indicate that access to orthographic, semantic and even phonological information can occur automatically when deaf children are presented with written words.
A developmental and training study of children's ability to find safe routes to cross the road
Authors: Ampofo‐Boateng K. , Thomson J. A. , Grieve R. , Pitcainr T. , Lee D. N. , Demetre J. D.
Published: July 2011

The sites and routes that children of different ages considered to be safe to cross the road were investigated. In Expt 1, children aged 5, 7, 9 and 11 years were instructed to choose ‘the safest’ crossing sites and routes to specified destinations. The results showed a gradual developmental shift with safer, more adult‐like choices appearing with increasing age. Five‐ and 7‐year‐olds exhibited only a rudimentary selection procedure, choosing the most direct route as safest and showing a marked lack of awareness of the dangers posed by nearby roadside obstacles or other visual restrictions. In a further experiment, 5‐year‐olds were individually trained in finding safe places to cross. Training took place either in the real road environment or using a tabletop model of a traffic environment. A series of pre‐ and post‐tests enabled the effectiveness of the training to be assessed. Substantial improvements following training were obtained in both groups. No differences were found between the two training methods. Though performance fell somewhat over the two months following training, trained children still outperformed their untrained peers eight months after the programme ended. The implications for road safety education are discussed.
Attachment to mother and behaviour with adults in preschool
Authors: Turner Patricia J.
Published: July 2011

Four‐year‐old children (22 girls and 18 boys) participated in a study investigating concurrent relations between attachment, gender and behaviour in preschool. Security of attachment was assessed in the laboratory. Focal child observations were carried out during indoor free‐play in preschool. Individual differences in behaviour with adults were related to security of attachment. Insecure children sought more help than secure children, but adults were less responsive to their dependent requests. Further, there was a significant interaction between attachment and gender on several measures. Secure girls and secure boys did not differ significantly in the behaviour they showed. Insecurely attached girls received the most help. Insecure boys received little guidance, instruction or help. They elicited the most discipline and were least compliant to adults' controls. These boys showed more negative behaviour and received fewer positive responses from adults than did other children.
Early conversations about causality: Content, pragmatics and developmental change
Authors: Dunn Judy , Brown Jane R.
Published: July 2011

Developments in children's participation in causal discourse with their mothers and older siblings were studied in the naturally occurring conversations of 50 second‐born children observed at home at 33 and 40 months. There were marked increases in discourse about causality, and changes in content and in the social context in which children discussed cause, with an increase in causal talk about inner states and social practices. At 33 months children talked about cause chiefly in attempts to get their own needs met, at 40 months chiefly in reflective discussion. Patterns over time in the discourse measures, and correlations between these measures at 33 months and the children's success on an assessment of understanding of the causes of emotions at 40 months highlighted the continuity in child differences, and the importance of particular pragmatic contexts, including disputes, within which discourse about causality takes place.
Development of memory span for spoken words: The role of rehearsal and item identification processes
Authors: Hitch G. J. , Halliday M. S. , Littler J. E.
Published: July 2011

Developmental increases in verbal memory span are correlated with improvements culation rate (AR) and item identification time (IT). In different theoretical accounts, AR reflects the efficiency of an articulatory rehearsal loop, while IT reflects the availability of a central workspace. In the present study, IT and AR were compared as predictors of memory span for spoken words of one, two and three syllables in children aged 5, 8 and 11. The results showed that a linear function described the variation of span with both age and word‐length but there was no equivalent relationship between span and IT. The sensitivity of span to word‐length was much reduced when rehearsal was prevented by articulatory suppression. These findings suggest that variation of span with age and word‐length is attributable to rehearsal rather than the availability of a central workspace. However, suppression did not reduce age differences in span, showing that developmental processes other than rehearsal are also important.
Inter‐ethnic bias in teachers' ratings of childhood hyperactivity
Authors: Sonuga‐Barke Edmund J. S. , Minocha Kuldeep , Taylor Eric A. , Sandberg Seija
Published: July 2011

Concern has often been expressed over the possibility of ethnic or racial bias in teachers' assessment of children's behaviour problems. In this paper we present two studies that address this issue directly by looking at the relationship between teachers' subjective ratings of hyperactivity and more objective measures of activity and inattention in groups of ‘Asian’ and ‘English’ primary schoolchildren. In Study 1, teachers' questionnaire and interview ratings of hyperactivity were compared with mechanical and observational measures of activity and inattention taken during a testing session for groups of ‘Asian’ persistently hyperactive boys and non‐hyperactive controls and their ‘English’ classmates. Although ‘Asian’ hyperactives were rated by teachers as being as deviant as ‘English’ hyperactives, in actuality they were no more active and inattentive than the ‘English’ control children on the majority of objective measures. In Study 2, groups of ‘Asian’ and ‘English’ boys, matched on a number of variables, including ratings of hyperactivity, were observed in a classroom situation. A standard observational measure of classroom hyperactivity was used. As in Study 1, ‘Asian’ and ‘English’ children who were rated equally hyperactive differed in terms of actual hyperactive behaviour. ‘Asian’ children displayed fewer hyperactive behaviours than their ‘English’ classmates. A number of possible explanations for these results are suggested and their implications for the use of rating scales in a multicultural context are discussed.
Same‐sex preferential looking during infancy as a function of abstract representation
Authors: Kujawski Jacqueline H. , Bower T. G. R.
Published: July 2011

This study is a follow‐up of studies indicating that infants by the end of the first year of life will fixate photographs and films of other infants of the same sex for a longer duration than those of the opposite sex (Aitken, 1977). While Lewis & Brooks‐Gunn (1975, 1979) argue that this result is a function of the infant's ability to identify like‐self from featural cues, an alternative informational basis is considered here, similar to that of Aitken. On presentation of a boy and girl infant as patch‐light displays on film to a group of 10–14‐month‐olds, it was found that the first‐fixation measure yielded a significant preference for same sex. It is argued that this constitutes evidence of an infant capacity to represent self and others at a higher‐order level than that associated with featural representation.
Social isolation in 4‐year‐olds
Authors: Hinde Robert A. , Tamplin Alison , Barrett Jane
Published: July 2011

This paper is concerned with the heterogeneity and home correlates of social isolation in school. Three data sets, each involving 40–42 4‐year‐olds, were studied at home and preschool. Three observational measures of social isolation were used—time alone, time unoccupied and frequency of interaction. These social isolation variables showed few linear relations to measures of temperamental characteristics, other child characteristics or measures of mother‐child interaction. However, categorizing the children into four groups on their status of alone and unoccupied, or into eight groups on all three social isolation variables, yielded categories showing meaningful patterns of interactions in school and meaningful relations to home variables. The dangers of considering any categorization system as absolute are emphasized.
Perceptions of past, present and future selves among children and adolescents
Authors: Hart Daniel , Fegley Suzanne , Brengelman Doris
Published: July 2011

Children's and adolescents' projections of the self into the future and memories of the self in the past were compared with their current self‐conceptions. In Study 1, 82 children and adolescents between the ages of 4 and 15 were asked to describe themselves and to describe themselves as they thought they would be in five years. The results indicated that, at all ages, subjects were more likely to think of their current selves than their future selves in terms of typical activities, personality characteristics and preferences. The future self was more likely to be described in terms of social relationships than the current self. In Study 2, perceptions of change and continuity in the self were examined by asking 88 children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 18 to describe themselves as they were two and four years in the past, as they are now, and as they will be two and four years in the future. Subjects also estimated the similarity between their present selves and their past and future selves. Similarity between the present self and future selves was perceived to be higher than between past and present selves. Children and adolescents assert that with time they become more capable and physically attractive, develop better personalities and mature intellectually and emotionally, while simultaneously shedding undesirable personality, cognitive and emotional characteristics. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for personal narratives and social cognitive approaches to personality.
Gender‐typing1 in young children: Preferences, behaviour and cultural differences
Authors: Turner P. J. , Gervai J. , Hinde R. A.
Published: July 2011

One hundred and sixty‐one 4‐4 1/2‐year‐old children (82 girls and 79 boys) from Cambridge (UK) and Budapest (Hungary) participated in a cross‐cultural study of the processes of gender differentiation. Children were individually interviewed to assess toy preference, awareness of stereotypes and sex‐role preference. Focal child observations were carried out during free play in preschool (120 observation periods over eight separate 30‐minute sessions per child). Behavioural categories included activities, use of specified toys, sex of playmates, and social interactions with peers and teachers. Variables which differentiated girls and boys were summed within each category to give sex‐typical measures.

Girls and boys scored in the expected direction on the several measures, but girls in both locations were less stereotyped than boys in their toy and sex‐role preference. Intercorrelations among the gender‐typing measures were stronger for ‘masculine’ variables than for ‘feminine’ ones. Further, play activities and toys were more clearly differentiated than social interactions. Consistent with previous studies, relations between measures of gender‐typing were at most moderate, supporting a multidimensional approach. In contrast to previous reports, we found short‐term individual stability of same‐sex preference and contrary to expectations, sex‐ segregation was not related to sex‐differentiated behavioural styles. Comparing the samples, there were no differences in toy, sex‐role, or playmate preference, but Budapest children were significantly more ‘masculine’ and less ‘feminine’ on the behavioural measures.
Handedness and educational success: The hypothesis of a genetic balanced polymorphism with heterozygote advantage for laterality and ability
Authors: Annett Marian
Published: July 2011

A sample of children assessed for hand preference and hand skill at 14–15 years could be classified on two independent measures of educational success. One was whether they had been selected or not selected for grammar school two years earlier; the other was the performance of unselected children in the examinations of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) some 18 months later. There were no differences for hand preference, but the successful children were significantly more often in the centre of the distribution of differences between the hands in skill than at the extremes, in both comparisons. The findings support the hypothesis prompted by the right shift theory of handedness (Annett, 1972, 1985) that there is natural variation for laterality and ability as expected for a genetic balanced polymorphism with heterozygote advantage. The findings cannot be attributed to slowness of the non‐preferred hand at the extremes of the distribution, as might be predicted by an explanation in terms of developmental pathology.
Encouraging children to count
Authors: Cowan Richard , Foster Caroline M. , Al‐Zubaidi Abdulgawi S.
Published: July 2011

Preschool and infant‐school children are often claimed to learn about number from their experiences of counting but several studies show they neither count to answer questions about number nor rely on information from counting if it conflicts with other strategies. Explanations of children's failure to count are reviewed and two studies comparing methods of encouraging children to count are reported. Yemeni children aged between 5 and 8 years and English children aged between 3 and 5 years were all encouraged to count by methods which emphasized that counting yielded the right relative number judgement and that it yielded the same judgement as matching. The older children also showed a very marked improvement in their judgements. These results suggest that children do not count either because they do not know how much better counting is than other strategies for comparing number or because they are not confident that they can use counting to derive accurate judgements.
Recognition memory for words and faces in schoolchildren: A female advantage for words
Authors: Temple C. M. , Cornish K. M.
Published: July 2011

Normal schoolchildren aged 9 to 11 years were tested on Warrington's Recognition Memory Test for words and faces (Warrington, 1984) which was originally designed for use with neurological patients. Amongst the schoolchildren, there was an overall task advantage for words over faces, which was of greater magnitude than that previously recorded for adults. Whilst boys and girls performed at comparable levels for recognition memory for faces, there is a significant female advantage on recognition memory for words. The material‐specific task effects suggest that distinct processing mechanisms are involved in analysing these two sets of visually complex objects and support modularity in the development of cognitive functions.
Physical reasoning in young infants: Seeking explanations for impossible events
Authors: Baillargeon Renée
Published: July 2011

There is now considerable evidence that infants are surprised when shown impossible events that violate their beliefs about objects, as indexed by reliably greater looking times at these events than at possible events that are consistent with their beliefs. Do infants also attempt, as older children and adults do, to generate explanations for these impossible events? Data from our laboratory provide intriguing hints that infants, like older children and adults, strive to reconcile what they observe with what they believe. This evidence comes from experiments in which infants were presented with an impossible and a possible event and were found not to show the typical preference for the impossible event. Five examples are presented, involving infants aged 3 to 10 months, and ranging over several facets of infants' physical reasoning. It is argued in each case that infants' failure to look preferentially at the impossible event stems from their having arrived at some explanation for the event. In some instances, infants' explanations appear to be entirely self‐produced, as when infants spontaneously posit hidden objects to make sense of otherwise impossible events. In other examples, infants' explanations appear to depend on additional clues provided, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the experimental situation. Despite these superficial differences, however, the examples are all related in suggesting that infants, like older children and adults, actively seek explanations for inconsistencies in their world.
Young children's practical reasoning about imagination
Authors: Woolley Jacqueline D. , Phelps Katrina E.
Published: July 2011

In two studies we investigate children's reasoning about the relation between imagination and physical reality. Specifically, we probe young children's understanding that physical objects are not created by the process of imagining. Children aged 3 to 5 years were instructed to imagine objects inside boxes. Children first made verbal judgements about the existence of the imagined objects, and then participated in a behavioural measure. The behavioural measure involved a request from another person for an object of the same type as the one the child had imagined, and children responded by handing this person any of the boxes they believed to contain the requested object. Children's verbal responses indicated some degree of belief in the reality of imagined contents. However, in response to a request for the object, most children did not give the person the box in which they had imagined the object. The presence or absence of a real counterpart to the imagined object seemed to affect this tendency. Results are interpreted in terms of how children's perception of a situation can affect their judgements about imagination.
Working memory in children: A developmental approach to the phonological coding of pictorial material
Authors: Ford Sheila , Silber Kevin P.
Published: July 2011

This study investigated the effects of age, speech, articulatory suppression and phonemic similarity on the phonological coding of pictorial material. A serial recall task was employed to assess the effects of phonemic similarity in children aged between 3 and 11. Half of the subjects in each age group overtly named the pictures at presentation and the others remained silent. For suppression subjects who named the pictures these two tasks were performed concurrently. It was hypothesized that the effects of phonemic similarity would be affected by age and speech. This was supported, with older children showing a greater effect of phonemic similarity and subjects scoring more when allowed to overtly name the items. It was also hypothesized that the youngest children would benefit most from the overt naming of items. Analysis of the results indicated that the overt naming of items facilitated phonological recoding amongst the younger children, thereby supporting this hypothesis. The possibility that these results are due to the maturation of a phonemic store prior to the development of subvocal rehearsal processes is discussed.
The effect of task on preschool children's ability to represent meaning through graphic skills
Authors: Sorsby Angela , Martlew Margaret
Published: July 2011

Knowledge of letter shapes comes from teaching but an understanding of the representational and communicative functions of graphic expression may be based in established knowledge and procedures. Associations need to be built up between these systems for an understanding of graphic symbolic communication. Two groups of 34‐year‐old children took part. In the experimental group, the children's functional use of graphic representation in socially meaningful tasks using visible stimuli was compared with their performance on more decontextualized tasks. The children gave significantly more representational responses on the more meaningful, socially motivated tasks and sustained these when re‐examined on the decontextualized task. A control group had the same tasks but they were only asked to record items; the communicative function was not emphasized. None of these children moved from the non‐representational to the representational category and there were significant differences between their performance and those of the children in the experimental group. The findings suggest that learning letters should not be divorced from meaningful contexts that emphasize the communicative functions of writing. They also show that young, preliterate children have the ability to assess and select from their repertoire of skills those which will be most serviceable if they are given tasks that will encourage these insights.
The word recognition skills of profoundly, prelingually deaf children
Authors: Merrills Jill D. , Underwood Geoffrey , Wood David J.
Published: July 2011

How do the word recognition skills of deaf children compare with those of their hearing counterparts? Four groups of 20 subjects (deaf readers, hearing good readers, poor readers and young readers) matched on sex, intelligence and chronological or reading age participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 examined orthographic regularity effects and non‐word pronounceability effects and revealed that deaf readers, like good hearing readers, access the meanings of words through visual mechanisms but that those mechanisms are slower and less accurate than those of their hearing counterparts. Further, the results suggested that, unlike young readers, deaf readers do not appear to use the facility of the phonological route to the lexicon for reading low frequency exception words. Nevertheless, the deaf were observed to activate phonological information for decoding pronounceable non‐words, but more slowly than their matched good readers. Experiment 2 varied the reliance upon visual features of words by examining regularity effects for words presented in upper‐case and lower‐case letters. Results indicated that deaf readers spontaneously used visual mechanisms for the recognition of low frequency exception words to provide fast but inaccurate responses. In contrast the good readers, poor readers and young readers accessed the meanings of those words through phonological processes.
The ‘seeing‐leads‐to‐knowing’ deficit in autism: The Pratt and Bryant probe
Authors: Baron‐Cohen Simon , Goodhart Frances
Published: July 2011

This study retests the findings by Leslie & Frith (1988) and Perner, Frith, Leslie & Leekam (1989) that children with autism have a specific difficulty in understanding the principle that ‘seeing leads to knowing’. It extends the earlier work by including a control group of subjects with mental handicap, and by using a simpler method, derived from Pratt & Bryant (1990). Despite these modifications, a very similar result was found: while 75 per cent of the subjects with mental handicap passed this test, only 33 per cent of the subjects with autism did so. This more stringent retest suggests this result is robust.
Normal and autistic children's understanding of their own and others' false belief: A study from Japan
Authors: Naito Mika , Komatsu Shin‐ichi , Fuke Toshiya
Published: July 2011

Autistic children and normal Japanese 3‐, 4‐, and 5‐year‐olds were tested on their understanding of changes in their own belief and that of others' false belief using three kinds of deceptive appearance tasks. In each task, an object was shown to children in its deceptive appearance form, and then they found the true nature of the object by either seeing, lifting, or tasting it. Children were asked to remember their own misled expectation about the object and to predict another person's false belief. Regardless of the difference in task materials, normal children showed substantial improvement in the understanding of their own and others' false belief between ages 3 and 5. In contrast, most autistic children failed to predict another person's false belief, while they succeeded in remembering their own previous false belief. These results suggest that autistic children have specific difficulty in understanding other people's false belief. The implications of the findings for developmental processes involved in belief understanding are also discussed from a cross‐cultural perspective.
Assessing referential communication skills in the primary school years: A comparative study
Authors: Lloyd Peter , Camaioni Luigia , Ercolani Paola
Published: July 2011

Despite more than 25 years of research there is still dispute about the growth curve of referential communication. It is usually maintained that this capacity is in place by 7 years of age but a few studies have uncovered deficits in the later stages of primary school. The issue is important given the role played by verbal information processing in education. This study examined referential communication in Italian and English children at 6 and 9 years, tested individually. Sex and socio‐economic status (SES) were also main variables. A sensitive scoring system allowed the effects of feedback to be examined. The group data showed that 9‐year‐olds were significantly better speakers than 6‐year‐olds and that Italian children produced considerably more redundancy in their descriptions. As listeners, all children handled adequate messages well but with ambiguous messages age, sex and SES were significant main effects. Subject‐by‐subject analysis showed that less than 10 per cent of 6‐year‐olds and only 20 per cent of 9‐year‐olds were consistently able to detect ambiguity in messages, unaided. Cultural differences in the ability to profit from feedback were also revealed. The implications of the results for theoretical positions in referential communication and for the processing of verbal information in the classroom are discussed. It is concluded that there is a strong case for developing a standardized test of speaker and listener skills.
‘Once upon a ribbit’: Stories narrated by autistic children
Authors: Tager‐Flusberg Helen
Published: July 2011

Ten autistic, 10 mentally retarded and 10 normal children, matched on verbal mental age, were asked to narrate a story from a wordless picture book. The narratives were coded on a range of measures tapping the following characteristics: story length and complexity, story structure, referential devices, and affective and social‐cognitive narrative enrichment devices. The main findings were that, compared to both control groups, the autistic children produced significantly shorter stories and were less likely to include any causal statements to explain the relationship between events in the stories. For the autistic children, the use of a story schema, referential devices that took account of their listener's needs, and the frequency of enrichment devices were all significantly correlated, suggesting that they reflect the same underlying knowledge. These findings are discussed in relation to the theory of mind hypothesis of autism.
Spatiotemporal continuity, smoothness of motion and object identity in infancy
Authors: Spelke Elizabeth S. , Kestenbaum Roberta , Simons Daniel J. , Wein Debra
Published: July 2011

A preferential looking method served to investigate 4‐month‐old infants' apprehension of the identity of objects over successive encounters. In Expts 1 and 2, infants were familiarized with events in which objects moved either continuously or discontinuously behind two narrow screens. Subsequent looking times to one‐ vs. two‐object displays provided evidence that infants apprehend object identity in accord with the principle that objects move continuously. In Expts 3 and 4, infants were familiarized with events in which objects moved behind one wide screen with an occlusion time either appropriate or inappropriate to their visible speed. Subsequent looking times to one‐ vs. two‐object displays provided no evidence that infants apprehend object identity in accord with the principle that objects move smoothly. The findings are contrasted with those of studies of infants' search for objects. Continuity may be an early‐developing, core principle by which humans individuate objects, but this principle may not guide all early‐developing actions on objects.
Development of dimensional vs. global processing in haptics: The perceptual and decisional determinants of classification skills
Authors: Berger Carole , Hatwell Yvette
Published: July 2011

Development of dimensional vs. global modes of processing in haptics was examined in children (aged 5 and 9) and adults with stimuli varying along their texture density and hardness dimensions. In Expt 1 subjects were presented with a free classification task. Task 1 compared overall similarity classification (in which the grouped stimuli were similar on both dimensions) to part‐identity classification (in which the grouped stimuli were identical on one dimension and very different on the other). Prominent part‐identity responses were observed at age 9 but not at age 5 and in adults. Task 2 compared overall similarity to part‐similarity classification (in which the grouped stimuli were similar on one dimension and very different on the other). Prominent overall similarity responses were observed in all age groups, demonstrating that subjects processed the stimuli across both dimensions. Experiment 2 (adapted from Garner, 1974) was based on a constrained speeded sorting task using control (unidimensional), correlated and orthogonal bidimensional conditions. It showed that, at age 5, selective attention to the isolated dimensions of the objects was difficult since response times (RT) were lower in the control than in the orthogonal conditions. These results were discussed in relation to the characteristics of haptic exploration and to the perceptual vs. decisional components involved in these classification tasks.
Joint visual attention and pointing in infancy: A longitudinal study of comprehension
Authors: Morissette Paul , Ricard Marcelle , Décarie Thérèse Gouin
Published: July 2011

The aim of this study was to examine three questions about the infant capabilities of establishing joint visual attention (***JVA) and of understanding pointing: when are infants able to look in the general direction indicated by their mother (Ability 1)? When are they able to look precisely at the indicated target (Ability 2)? Is there a fixed sequence in the acquisition of these abilities between JVA and pointing? Twenty‐four babies were seen longitudinally every three months between the age of 6 and 18 months. They were submitted to two conditions in which their mother either only gazed (JVA condition) or gazed and pointed (pointing condition) at four identical targets, some being close to the mother and some at a greater distance. The results for JVA showed that Ability 1 was present at 12 months and Ability 2 at 15 months when the targets were close and at 18 months when they were away. The results for pointing showed that both abilities were present at 15 months (only the distant targets being considered). Within‐subjects analyses did not reveal a clear order of acquisition between JVA and pointing, but there was a correlation in Ability 2 between the two tasks. Implications for the existence of a single cognitive system underlying the comprehension of the two referential messages are discussed.
Infants' discrimination of bimodal events on the basis of rhythm and tempo
Authors: Pickens Jeffrey , Bahrick Lorraine E.
Published: July 2011

A habituation procedure was used to examine 7‐month‐old infants' discrimination of changes in the rhythm (Expt 1) or the tempo (Expt 2) of an auditory‐visual event. Events consisted of videos of a hammer striking a surface displaying a characteristic rhythm and tempo along with the synchronized impact sounds. In Expt 1, 32 infants were habituated to one rhythm presented at a constant tempo followed by test trials of a novel rhythm presented at the familiar tempo. Across subjects, four different stimulus rhythms were presented at each of four different constant tempos. Infants demonstrated significant visual recovery to a novel rhythm at all stimulus tempos. In Expt 2, 32 infants were habituated to events displaying one rhythm and tempo followed by test trials presenting a novel tempo and the familiar rhythm. Infants showed a significant visual recovery to a novel tempo, which was apparent across four different underlying rhythm contexts. More robust discrimination was observed for more extreme tempo contrasts. These data suggest that 7‐month‐old infants are sensitive to the invariant rhythm and tempo of bimodal events.
The role of perceived intention to deceive in children's and adults' concepts of lying
Authors: Peterson Candida C.
Published: July 2011

In three experiments, a total of 89 children aged 5 through 8 years and 87 adults were asked to judge the communicative intentions of protagonists in videotaped or pictorial cartoon stories who made factually true or false utterances under a variety of mental states. The results of Expt 1 highlighted the importance of consulting subjects' own perceptions of speakers' intentions when seeking their ‘lie’ judgements, since adults' attributions of deceptive intent were not always consistent with researchers' a priori' assumptions. When subjective intent perceptions were matched with definitions of lying in Expts 2 and 3, even 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds were found to base concepts of lying significantly upon their own attribution to speakers of deceptive intent. On the other hand, a substantial minority of adults in Expt 3 defined a truthfully intended lapse of memory as a lie, suggesting that intention to deceive is not the sole criterion for lying, even in adulthood. These results were seen to contradict several aspects of Piaget's (1932/1965) two‐stage theory of the conceptualization of lying. In addition, the results showed that children's attributions of communicative intent were generally similar to adults', especially when the speaker's mental state was unambiguous. So were their concepts of truth telling. Implications of these results for legal applications of Piaget's theory were considered.
Do computers have brains? What children believe about intelligent artifacts
Authors: Scaife Michael , van Duuren Mike
Published: July 2011

Children's understanding of intelligent artifacts such as computers and robots poses an interesting problem. Such objects display ‘cognitive’ features in that they have a memory and could be said to reason, as well as behavioural features such as speech and movement (robots). We report the attributional judgements of 5‐ to 11‐year‐old children to a person, robot, computer, doll and book—objects with differential anthropomorphic similarity. Specific questions were: (1) would subjects be prepared to attribute a brain to intelligent artifacts? (2) what kinds of cues were relevant? (3) where was the brain located? (4) what was the brain made of? Subjects of all ages gave accurate attributions for the presence of brain to the person, to the book and, after 5, to the doll. Five‐year‐olds were unwilling to attribute a brain to both intelligent artifacts but older children typically did so. Location and composition data show a gradual development of accuracy. The results indicate that, by 7, children have some understanding of the intelligent nature of the artifacts.
The development of subitizing in young children
Authors: Starkey Prentice , Cooper Robert G.
Published: July 2011

Across three experiments, 2‐ to 5‐year‐old children were found to enumerate accurately and reliably small arrays of objects irrespective of spatial arrangement and at a duration (200 ms) that precluded verbal counting. These findings indicate the presence in young children of a subitizing ability that is distinct from verbal counting. Subitizing appears to develop before verbal counting. The subitizing range increased with age during early childhood from 1–3 (the accurate enumeration range of infants) to 1–5 (the subitizing range of adults). Implications of these findings for theories of the development of numerical cognition are discussed.
Deferred imitation in 9‐ and 14‐month‐old infants: A longitudinal study of a Swedish sample
Authors: Heimann Mikael , Meltzoff Andrew N.
Published: July 2011

This study investigated deferred imitation using a longitudinal design. A total of 62 Swedish children (32 girls) were tested at both 9 and 14 months of age. The memory delay interval was 10 minutes at 9 months and five minutes at 14 months of age. At both ages children in the imitation group displayed significantly more target actions after modelling than the children in the control group, thus replicating earlier reports of imitation from memory. It was found that individual children with a tendency to perform low deferred imitation at 9 months of age tended to remain low on the test at 14 months, thus raising the possibility of stable individual differences in imitation. This study provides a first investigation of deferred imitation longitudinally among young children, and supports recent theoretical claims that deferred imitation arises earlier in ontogeny than was hypothesized by classical theory. It was observed that there are cultural differences in the way that Swedish versus American adult‐infant pairs act in the test situation and ideas are offered regarding the roots of such differences.
Tester‐rated temperament at 14, 20 and 24 months: Environmental change and genetic continuity
Authors: Saudino Kimberly J. , Plomin Robert , DeFries John C.
Published: July 2011

The present paper examines genetic and environmental sources of continuity and change in temperament in a sample of 301 twin pairs participating in the MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study. At 14, 20 and 24 months of age, temperament was assessed independently for each twin using tester ratings on the Infant Behavior Record (IBR; Bayley, 1969). Cross‐age correlations for the three IBR factors (Activity, Task Orientation and Affect‐Extraversion) were moderately low, suggesting that temperament in the second year of life is marked by change rather than continuity. At each age there was significant genetic influence on each temperament dimension. Moreover, the magnitude of heritability was similar across age, suggesting that heritability does not change dramatically from 14 to 24 months of age. The results of model‐fitting analyses of continuity and change were similar for each IBR factor: no new genetic effects emerged at 20 or 24 months; shared environmental influences were non‐significant at all ages; and there were substantial non‐shared environmental influences unique to each age. Thus, change, which predominates over continuity in tester‐rated temperament during the second year of life, can be attributed to environmental factors. Continuity appears to be due to genetic factors.
Exclusion in triads: Can it serve ‘meta‐communicative’ knowledge in 11‐ and 23‐month‐old children?
Authors: Tremblay‐Leveau Hélène , Nadel Jacqueline
Published: July 2011

This study examines two requisites of communication, conversational turn taking and understanding of social positions, in 11‐ and 23‐month‐olds. The toddlers were observed in a triadic context so as to eliminate biases due to the alternation inherent in dyads that may lead to overestimation of turn‐taking capacities. To control for variables such as birth order and familial status, the triads were not family members but included two same‐age familiar toddlers and an adult experimenter. The exclusion of one of the toddlers from an ongoing dyadic interaction with the adult and the other child revealed an early mastery of turn taking and role shifting as well as an early understanding of social positions which lead to different communicative behaviour according to the position in the triad. Exclusion in triads is proposed as a paradigm for studying communicative skills and meta‐communicative precursors in very young children.
Sequential developments in children's human figure drawing
Authors: Barrett Martyn , Eames Kate
Published: July 2011

This paper reports a series of three experiments which were conducted with 3‐ to 9‐year‐old children as well as with children with Down's syndrome of equivalent mental ages. These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the development of children's ability to draw the human figure is characterized by a cumulative developmental progression through the abilities to draw closed geometric forms, open geometric forms, segmented human figures and outline human figures, in that particular order. All three experiments produced convergent evidence for this same developmental sequence, which was exhibited both by the children without learning difficulties and by the children with Down's syndrome. The children's developmental position along this sequence was unaffected by the manipulation of verbal instructions and by the manipulation of the contents of the models being drawn. There was also a systematic relationship between children's developmental position and their free drawings of a human figure. It is argued that the findings of these experiments provide evidence for the existence of a sequential cumulative progression in the development of children's drawing.
Social scaling in children's drawings of classroom life: A cultural comparative analysis of social scaling in Africa and Sweden
Authors: Aronsson Karin , Andersson Sven
Published: July 2011

This paper reports on a cultural comparative study of children's representations of themselves and their teachers in drawings of classroom life. Three settings, two in Africa and one in Sweden, have been chosen to represent cultural variation in pedagogic practices and child rearing ideologies. A total of 329 children in a traditional school setting in Tanzania, an ANC refugee settlement and a Swedish small‐town setting drew pictures illustrating “When I'm working in my classroom”. The Swedish children produced more self‐centred (child‐centred) representations of classroom life (larger‐scale pupils, more detailed, central pupils, and less distance between teacher and pupil figures) than either of the African groups. The children in the traditional teacher‐centred culture (the Tanzanian group) drew the most socio‐centric and least child‐centred representations, whereas children in the ANC settlement produced drawings that were intermediate. Differences in social scaling (size, detailing, centrality and distance scaling) were thus related to cultural differences in pedagogic practices and child‐rearing ideologies. The results are discussed in terms of cultural variation in representations of social space.