bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Children's production and comprehension of trait terms
Authors: Yuill Nicola
Published: July 2011

Children aged 5–10 years produced trait labels for eight descriptions of behaviour, and provided definitions of eight trait labels. There was a gradual increase with age in the number of correct trait labels produced, although even the youngest group were correct 25 per cent of the time. Judges correctly categorized the majority of children's trait definitions above chance levels. Comparisons of different types of trait term suggested that there was no overall tendency in young children to overgeneralize trait labels. The results suggest that a monolithic model of trait understanding is misleading, but that a distinction of internal‐state and social‐intention terms may be a useful way of relating trait concepts to other mental state terms.
IT, IQ and age: A comparison of developmental functions
Authors: Wilson Carlene , Nettelbeck Ted , Turnbull Catherine , Young Robyn
Published: July 2011

The relationship between age, IQ test scores and inspection time (IT) was investigated, comparing children from two age groups (6–8 and 10–12 years) and three IQ levels (low, average, above average). The results indicated a reliable estimate of IT could be obtained from all groups, even across two procedures. IT was found to improve with childhood maturation among children with average and above average IQ. Correlational analyses indicated that, within this age range, IT was more related to mental age than to IQ. Results are discussed in terms of a model in which a minimum processing speed is essential for, but not alone in contributing to, IQ.
‘Baby looks very sad’: Implications of conversations about feelings between mother and preschooler
Authors: Denham Susanne A. , Cook Mary , Zoller Daniel
Published: July 2011

Conversations about emotion between preschoolers and their mothers constitute an important form of shared meaning which, as groundwork for the child's developing theory of mind. could be related to aspects of social‐emotional development. A sample of 46 preschoolers and their mothers discussed photographs of infants showing eight emotions; mothers also simulated sadness and anger. Transcribed conversations were coded for frequency and function of emotion language. During both tasks, mothers talked more than their children about emotions; however, the frequencies of emotion utterances which served as unelaborated comments, or to guide the other's behaviour, did not differ for mothers and children. Older children and mothers explained emotions more overall; Cyear‐olds commented on the babies' emotions more than 3‐year‐olds. Mothers' and children's emotion language were related in interpretable ways. Aspects of emotion language emitted by both mothers and children were related to indices of positive social‐emotional development, such as emotion knowledge and positivity of emotional displays observed in the preschool.
Images of European people in a group of 5–10‐year‐old English schoolchildren
Authors: Barrett Martyn , Short Janis
Published: July 2011

This study investigated the conceptions of other European nationals which were held by a group of 5–10‐year‐old English schoolchildren, with particular attention being paid to developmental changes in the cognitive and the affective/evaluative aspects of these conceptions. Two hundred and sixteen children were interviewed about French, German, Spanish and Italian people. Evidence was found to support the proposal that, as more information about groups of foreign nationals is acquired with age, children develop increasingly differentiated nationality concepts composed of clusters of attributes agreed by the children to be characteristic of a particular people. Evidence was also found that affective responses towards foreign peoples can be established prior to the acquisition of factual information about those peoples, and that these affective responses remain relatively stable once they have been acquired. The implications of these findings in regard to the changes which are currently occurring in European human mobility are discussed.
The development of diachronic thinking: 8–12‐year‐old children's understanding of the evolution of forest disease
Authors: Maurice‐Naville Danielle , Montangero Jacques
Published: July 2011

Very little is known about the use children make of temporal concepts in their explanations of reality. The experiment presented here concerns the development of diachronic thinking in children, i.e. their ability to situate an object of knowledge along a temporal dimension and to conceive changes of this object over time. The experimental situation concerns forest disease and explores the child's ability to understand this phenomenon and to reconstruct the stages of its evolution. A total of 52 children aged from 8 to 11 years were asked questions about the past and future states of a diseased tree. The results show that important changes take place between 8 and 11 years in the conception of the evolution involved and reveal the components of a diachronic perspective. This perspective does not only consist of imagining and ordering steps in an evolutive process. It must also include the ability to establish a link between the steps by conceiving internal transformations that produce external changes. The changes constitute a continuous and gradual sequence, going from past to future. This diachronic perspective is not completely mastered before the age of 10–11 years. Before this, children have a punctual representation, imagine a small number of steps, a short time span and do not establish links between past and future.
Toward a Piagetian explanation of the development of prosocial behaviour in children: The force of negational thinking
Authors: Lourenço Orlando M.
Published: July 2011

The central purpose of this study was to provide additional support for interpreting the development of prosocial behaviour in children in accordance with a theoretical perspective which integrates the two micromodels Piaget used in succession to explain the child's transition from preoperational to operational thought: a cost‐gain evaluation (Piaget, 1957), and the equilibration theory (Piaget, 1974). Twenty‐four children at each of three age levels (5‐year‐olds, 7‐year‐olds, and 10‐ year‐olds) were studied. We assessed (a) children's level of negational thinking on a Piagetian task of affirmation/negation; (b) children's cost‐perception/gain‐construction conceptions on a hypothetical prosocial dilemma; and (c) children's prosocial behaviour in a contrived donating situation. Two cohorts involved in this study were also participating in a two‐year longitudinal research programme on cost‐perception/gain‐construction individual change. Consistent with predictions, (a) cross‐sectional data showed that with increasing age children become more likely to consider prosocial acts in terms of gain rather than cost; (b) longitudinal data showed that this children's tendency changes in the direction of ‘higher levels’(i.e. from cost perception to gain construction) and without regression; and (c) correlational data showed that this tendency is positively related to level of negational thinking, on the one hand, and positively associated with level of prosocial behaviour, on the other. These findings strengthen the hypothesis of explaining children's development of prosocial behaviour in accordance with the two Piagetian micromodels mentioned above.
Young children's causal attributions for success and failure: ‘Self‐enhancing’ boys and ‘self‐derogating’ girls
Authors: Burgner David , Hewstone Miles
Published: July 2011

This study examined the types of causal attributions young children make for their own success and failure at performance tasks. The results showed that young children's attributions are different from those subsumed under adult models and that there were significant sex, but not ethnic, differences in the attributional styles employed. Boys exhibited a ‘self‐enhancing’ pattern of attributions, whereas girls' attributions were ‘self‐derogating’.
Boys' rough‐and‐tumble play, social competence and group composition
Authors: Pellegrini A. D.
Published: July 2011

The intent of this study was to examine relations between specific aspects of boys' rough‐and‐tumble play (R&T) and social competence. The prime concern was to test the hypothesis that R&T made contributions to boys' social competence, beyond those made by other forms of reciprocal social interaction. Boys' social competence was measured by their peer nominated popularity and solutions to hypothetical social problems. Forty‐two boys, with a mean age of 11:2 years, were observed on their school playground for 20 weeks. They nominated peers whom they liked most and least, rank‐ordered peers in terms of dominance, and solved hypothetical social problems. Teachers also completed a temperament questionnaire for each child. Results indicated that neither relative frequency of R&T nor the vigour dimension of R&T accounted for significant variance in boys' popularity beyond other forms of reciprocal social interaction. Further, relative frequency of R&T was negatively, but not significantly, related to popularity. The flexibility dimension of R&T did account for significant variance, above other forms of reciprocal social interaction, in social problem solving. The composition of R&T groups, in terms of size and dominance symmetry, did not differ significantly from other forms of reciprocal social interaction. Lastly, both aspects of temperament measured related to the vigour level of R&T. Results are discussed in terms of specific design features of R&T serving differential functions.
Children's abilities to distinguish between playful and aggressive fighting: A developmental perspective
Authors: Boulton Michael J.
Published: July 2011

Children's abilities to distinguish between playful and aggressive fighting, and the cues they use to do so, were examined as a function of age (8 versus 11 years), sex and observed participation in play fighting (high versus low) and aggressive fighting. Most 8‐ and 11‐year‐olds, but significantly more of the latter, agreed with the standard view of 19 episodes recorded on videotape, and boys and girls did so to the same extent. This ability was independent of observed participation in play fighting and aggressive fighting, in three out of four classes; in the fourth class, those children that were observed to engage in most bouts of play fighting and most episodes of aggression tended to make the most errors on this test. In three out of four classes, the correlations between participation in playful and aggressive fighting were non‐significant. The most frequently reported criteria to help separate playful and aggressive fighting were related to the physical actions of the participants, inferences about actions/intentions and whether the participants stayed together or separated. Significant age differences in the use of some criteria were obtained. Developmental changes in these two aspects of social skills were discussed, as were some developmental implications of poor social skills.
Verbal analogical reasoning in severely learning disabled and normally developing children
Authors: Robertson Janet
Published: July 2011

Despite the presumed relationship between analogical reasoning and intelligence, few studies have addressed this relationship empirically. Notably, no comparative studies have been conducted to compare the performance of severely learning disabled (SLD) and normal children, partly due to an implicit assumption that SLD children are incapable of analogical reasoning. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that SLD children would be capable of analogical reasoning to a level commensurate with normal children matched for developmental age, if tested with familiar concepts and an appropriate task. Eighty children in three groups (SLD, 3–4‐ and 5–6‐year‐olds) were presented with 16 verbal analogies in the context of a multiple choice card game called ‘Pairs’. Analogies were varied for familiarity of concepts used and inclusion of a high associate response alternative. Results showed that the SLD group could engage in analogical reasoning but their performance was significantly below that of 5–6‐year‐olds. It was concluded that this difference was due firstly to the use of an inappropriate measure of familiarity and secondly to differences in the way groups approached the task.
The haptic processing of texture and shape by 7‐ to 9‐month‐old infants
Authors: Catherwood Di
Published: July 2011

This study was designed to assess whether infants can encode both the texture and shape of the same haptic stimulus or alternatively are confined to encoding only one feature or the other. A sample of 24 infants (mean age 31.8 weeks) was familiarized to one stimulus and then presented with this familiar stimulus and two other stimuli, one being novel either in texture or shape and the other novel in both these features. Only haptic contact with the stimuli was permitted. The pattern of responses to the three stimuli confirmed that the infants encoded both texture and shape.
Development of the start‐rotation principle in circle production
Authors: Meulenbroek Ruud G. J. , Vinter Annie , Mounoud Pierre
Published: July 2011

Even in a simple task such as drawing a circle, a graphic production rule governs the syntactical aspects of the movement sequence. The lawful relationship between starting position and rotational direction in circle production has been described as the start‐rotation principle. The principle states that when subjects start drawing a circle at the top, it is most likely that they will use a counterclockwise rotational movement. When subjects start drawing a circle at the bottom, however, they will almost certainly use a clockwise rotational movement. The origin of the principle has been attributed to biomechanical differences between extension and flexion movements, planning activities prior to the initiation of the movements to set the upper limit of circles in space, and cultural factors such as the predominance of the counterclockwise rotational direction in cursive script. The latter, rather global, explanation of the start‐rotation principle has been rejected on the ground that the principle holds for both children and adults, showing that it is not susceptible to development or training. We presently report observations of children's circle productions which do not support the latter argument. Our findings show that, although the start‐rotation principle indeed governs circular movements of young children to some extent, the principle clearly becomes stronger with increasing age. We raise an alternative explanation of the start‐rotation principle which is concerned with end‐point accuracy and the role of visually monitoring trajectory formation. We tested our views in a control experiment with adult subjects.
Parents' and teachers' perceptions of personality traits of young children: Sex differences1, cross‐cultural comparisons and relations with observed behaviour
Authors: Gervai J. , Turner P. J. , Hinde R. A.
Published: July 2011

This paper is concerned with the relations between observational and Q‐sort data on the behaviour of 4‐year‐olds in two societies. The subjects were 161 (82 girls and 79 boys) preschool children. Children's perceived traits were assessed independently by mother, father and teacher by a modified Block Q‐sort. Six composite variables were derived from combined scores: cooperation, friendly, aggression, self‐control, unfocused and inhibition. Focal child observations were carried out during free play in preschool (120 observation periods over eight separate 30‐minute sessions). Behavioural variables which differentiated between girls and boys were summed to give four sex‐typical interaction measures.

The Q‐sort data fitted with the behavioural data in yielding two groups of variables, one female‐typical and one male‐typical. Teachers' Q‐sorts reflected behaviour in preschool more accurately than those of parents. Budapest parents appeared to be more stereotypical in their perceptions of sex differences than Cambridge parents.

More specifically: (a) parents perceived their children as more friendly and less inhibited than teachers perceived them; (b) parents in Budapest viewed their children as more cooperative and less unfocused than parents in Cambridge viewed theirs, but there were no such differences between teachers. Girls were more cooperative than boys, while boys were more unfocused; (c) boys were rated as more aggressive than girls, but Cambridge girls were rated as more aggressive by parents than by teachers; (d) girls were perceived as more self‐controlled than boys, and in Cambridge more so by teachers than by parents.

It is suggested that the Q‐sort data depend not only on differences in behaviour but also on differences in values and how children are perceived in each culture and in each context (e.g. school vs. home) within that culture.
Evidence for deductive reasoning: Implicit versus explicit recognition of syllogistic structure
Authors: English Lyn
Published: July 2011

This study investigated children's and adults' ability to solve logical and illogical syllogisms, the latter involving unconnected premises. In Expt 1, 58 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds were individually presented with logical syllogisms set within a fantasy context involving toy play and child play, the latter in the absence of toys. Results showed that a high percentage of children were able to reason solely on the basis of the information given, making reference to the appropriate premise information in drawing their conclusions. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated Markovits, Schleifer & Fortier's (1989) claim that this ability is not sufficient evidence for deductive reasoning. Experiment 2 (168 primary school children) addressed both logical and illogical syllogisms, while Expt 3 (85 secondary students and 81 university students) examined illogical syllogisms only. The results of Expt 2 showed that children responded differently to the two syllogistic forms, with their responses to the illogical syllogisms indicating an implicit awareness of the unconnectedness of the premises. It is argued that this implicit understanding is sufficient evidence for deductive reasoning with illogical syllogisms and that an explicit recognition of indeterminacy, the criterion demanded by Markovits et al., is a more sophisticated application of this reasoning. While the students in Expt 3 demonstrated a more explicit awareness, they nevertheless gave a large number of responses of the implicit type indicating the presence of some non‐age‐related differences in adults' ability explicitly to recognize situations of undecidability.
Surprising, magical and miraculous turns of events: Children's reactions to violations of their early theories of mind and matter
Authors: Chandler Michael J. , Lalonde Chris E.
Published: July 2011

Two studies were conducted in an effort to better understand the role of magic in the mental lives of young persons. In both studies, subjects watched what appeared to be a direct violation of some law of physics to which they subscribe. By documenting subjects' reactions to these events we set out to determine whether young persons would undertake to discredit such trumped‐up evidence as ‘magical’. In Study 1, 30 preschoolers, aged 3–5 years, witnessed what appeared to be one solid object passing unhindered through a space already occupied by another solid object. While more than half of the subjects initially labelled the event ‘magical’, over the course of three trials almost all came to judge what they had seen to be ‘a trick’. In Study 2, older children, aged 9–13 years, were exposed to a series of demonstrations in which their understanding of the laws of conservation was challenged. This ‘false feedback’ was administered either by a magician, a psychologist or a ‘priest’. When tested seven to 10 days later, it was primarily the subjects in the magician condition who had begun to recuperate their earlier commitment to the laws of conservation. The results of these two studies suggest that young persons can make effective use of the concept of magic, but perhaps only ‘parlour magic’, as a way of mentally quarantining evidence that appears to contradict their emerging theories of mind and matter.
The link between phonological memory and vocabulary acquisition
Authors: Michas Irene C. , Henry Lucy A.
Published: July 2011

The present study investigated two issues: (1) whether two measures of phonological memory, non‐word repetition and non‐word memory span, were related to acquired vocabulary at the age of 5 years; and (2) whether these measures of phonological memory could predict the ability of children to learn new words. Children's phonological memory, spatial memory and receptive vocabulary were assessed in one session. Next, a new colour word was introduced incidentally, followed by the explicit instruction of three new words and their definitions. The children were tested on word production and word comprehension for all of the words, and additionally for recall of definitions for the three taught words. They were retested one week later. The findings confirmed that phonological memory was significantly related to acquired vocabulary at age 5. Phonological memory was also a significant predictor of the ability to learn new words as tested by production and delayed comprehension measures for explicitly taught words. It did not predict word learning for the incidentally introduced word.
The inferential structure of class‐inclusion tasks
Authors: Richard J. F. , Leynet M. E.
Published: July 2011

The present study investigates which inferences concerning the relations between class/subclasses are responsible for the responses obtained in inclusion tasks. An inclusion task involving the computationof a quantity, instead of the comparison of two quantities, has been used to identify which inferences are produced. Subjects were given both the numerical inclusion task and the classical inclusion tasks, so‐called empirical and logical tasks. The analysis of responses and verbalizations revealed that three major inferences were produced in a hierarchical manner: inference (i) which defines the subclasses as included in the class, inference (ii) which defines the class as the union of the subclasses, and inference (iii) which defines a subclass as the complement of the other subclasses. Inference (i) is not a sufficient condition for an inclusion response in the Piagetian task: when only this inference is produced, either an inclusion response or a no‐inclusion response can be observed. On the other hand, production of inference (ii) is sufficient for an inclusion response in every inclusion task, whether empirical or logical. Inference (iii) is necessary in order to answer every question correctly in the quantification task.
Preschoolers' and adults' scale translation and reconstruction of spatial information acquired from maps
Authors: Uttal David H.
Published: July 2011

This research investigated the ability of preschoolers (ages 4 and 5) and adults to memorize the configuration of objects depicted on simple maps and to reconstruct the configurations from memory, in a room. Successful performance required that subjects both mentally represent the spatial relations on the maps and coordinate the scale relation between the maps and the room. The task therefore provided information about children's representational skills and undertstanding and use of scale relations. The reconstructions of most subjects were systematically related to the specific configurations that were depicited on the maps; subjects demonstrated knowledge of the angular relations among objects in the configurations. However, children were significantly more likely than adults to commit scale errors, which involved systematically reconstructing a configuration at a size that was larger or smaller than the target configuration. Taken together, the results suggest that preschoolers' reconstructions can preserve important elements of the original configuration, but that knowledge and use of scale relations may develop later than the ability to represent the relations among a set of objects in a configuration.
Bully/victim problems in middle‐school children: Stability, self‐perceived competence, peer perceptions and peer acceptance
Authors: Boulton Michael J. , Smith Peter K.
Published: July 2011

On the basis of peer nominations, around 13 per cent of our sample of 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children (N=158) could be defined as bullies, and 17 per cent as victims. Boys were more likely to be nominated as bullies, but not as victims, than girls. Bully/ victim status was, in the main, stable over three assessment periods in a school year and at the start of the next school year. On Harter's Self‐Perception Profile for Children, victims scored significantly lower than non‐victims on the athletic competence, social acceptance and global self‐worth dimensions. Bullies, victims and not‐involved children were perceived differently by peers on several behavioural descriptions (starts fights, seeks help, leader, cooperates, disrupts). Sociometrically rejected children received more bully, and more victim, nominations than other sociometric status groups, and both bullies and victims were less likely to belong to the popular group, and more likely to belong to the rejected group, than non‐bullies and non‐victims. Some implications of these results for the development of bully/victim problems are discussed.
The development of word‐coding skills in the born deaf: An experimental study of deaf school‐leavers
Authors: Burden Vivian , Campbell Ruth
Published: July 2011

Single word spelling for picture names and lexical decision were examined systematically in a group of born‐deaf English school‐leavers with a reading age of between 9 and 10 years. The deaf were better at these word‐coding skills than their reading‐age matched peers. Like them they showed systematic effects of word regularity (phonological and orthographic) in their single word spellings. In lexical decision the deaf were as fast and as accurate as chronological controls and showed similar patterns of sensitivity to spelling regularity.

While both the younger and older hearing control groups showed a consistent pattern of performance across the spelling and reading tasks, with regularity effects marked in the younger and less marked in the older group, the deaf by comparison showed somewhat disjoint patterns of reading and spelling processes. This is discussed in the context of variable patterns of word reading and spelling development in hearing children.

Word reading and writing is better in these deaf students than is predicted by their standardized text comprehension scores. It is suggested that in the born‐deaf, word‐coding skills are isolated with respect to other language skills; they have not become contextualized. Moreover, the pattern of performance on these single word tasks suggests that the development of such lower level literacy skills is still incomplete.
Children's ability to distinguish fantasy events from real‐life events
Authors: Samuels Adrienne , Taylor Marjorie
Published: July 2011

Children's ability to discriminate events that could happen in real life from fantasy events was examined by asking 62 preschool children if events depicted in illustrations from storybooks could happen in real life. For half the children, the pictures showed emotionally neutral events and for the other half, the pictures showed emotionally charged events. The older children (mean age = 5:0), but not the younger children (mean age = 3: 10), were able to distinguish fantasy events from real events. Children in the emotion condition tended to report that the events (both fantasy and real) could not happen in real life. The younger children were as likely to report that a fantasy event could happen in real life as to report that it could happen in a dream.
Understanding of verbal representation in children with autism: The case of referential opacity
Authors: Mitchell Peter , Isaacs Josephine E.
Published: July 2011

In two investigations, children with autism were assessed on their ability to grasp the concept of opacity; they were compared with clinically normal children aged 3–5 years. In the first investigation, children performed on a message‐desire discrepant task, in which it is necessary to take into consideration a speaker's false belief in order to interpret her message correctly. Like normal 3‐year‐olds, but unlike older children, children with autism failed at this and instead inappropriately interpreted the message literally. In the second investigation, children with autism performed on a deceptive box task, in which they judged what they had said was in the box first of all. Contrary to previous findings, they frequently committed realist errors like normal 3‐year‐olds, but unlike 4‐year‐olds. However, they were able to acknowledge their initial verbal misrepresentation when prompted, implying a fledgling grasp of opacity. Three‐year‐olds' correct judgements were similarly facilitated. It was concluded that children with autism have a broad difficulty with opacity, though some underlying competence can be accessed with prompting.
The role of rhyme awareness in learning to read a regular orthography
Authors: Wimmer Heinz , Landerl Karin , Schneider Wolfgang
Published: July 2011

The present research examined whether children's awareness of phonological similarities between words with respect to rhyme and consonantal word onset is of the same importance for learning to read German as it was found to be for learning to read English. In two longitudinal studies differences in phonological sensitivity among children before learning to read (at age 6 to 7) were tested with versions of Bradley & Bryant's (1985) oddity detection task. Children's reading and spelling achievements were tested about one year later at the end of grade one, and again at around the age of 10. The main finding was a developmental change in the predictive relationship of rhyme and word‐onset awareness. Rhyme awareness was only minimally predictive for reading and spelling achievement at the end of grade one, but gained substantially in predictive importance for reading and spelling achievement in grades three and four. No such predictive improvement was observed for word‐onset awareness. It is proposed that rhyme awareness is initially of little importance, because in the first phase of learning to read German children rely heavily on indirect word recognition via grapheme‐phoneme translation and blending. The gain in the predictive importance of rhyme awareness is explained by its helpful effect on the establishment of mental representations of written words. Such mental representations allow fast, direct word recognition and orthographically correct spellings. Awareness of larger phonological units is helpful for the efficient establishment of such representations, by allowing connections of recurring grapheme clusters in written words with phonology.
Reactions of young children with Down's syndrome to an impossible task
Authors: Pitcairn T. K. , Wishart Jennifer G.
Published: July 2011

The response to a shape‐sorting task that included both ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ shapes was investigated in three groups of 3–5‐year‐old children: children with Down's syndrome (DS), normally developing children matched with the DS subjects for chronological age (CA), and normally developing children of matched mental ages (MA). DS subjects proved as capable as their MA and CA peers at matching the ‘possible’ shapes to their appropriate holes but behaved differently to both age‐ and stage‐matched children in response to the two ‘impossible’ shapes: they persisted significantly longer, showed little evidence of learning when represented with either shape, and failed to recognize that the perceptual information used in successfully matching the ‘possible’ shapes could also help in determining that the ‘impossible’ tasks were indeed impossible. When faced with failure on the ‘impossible’ tasks, DS subjects frequently adopted ‘switching out’ strategies, misusing their social skills or producing ‘party tricks' in order to divert attention to some less cognitively demanding activity. This appealing but task‐inappropriate behaviour may explain the stereotypical view of DS children as very sociable and affectionate children but very poor learners.
Communication between blind and severely visually impaired children and their parents
Authors: Moore Vanessa , McConachie Helen
Published: July 2011

This study examines communications directed to young visually impaired children by their parents. Eight totally blind children and eight children whose vision was severely impaired were visited at home at around 18 months of age and video‐recordings were made of each child interacting with a familiar caretaker. It was found that the parents of blind children were more likely to initiate interactions themselves and tended to use verbal comments unaccompanied by actions more frequently. They were less likely to talk about objects which were at the child's current focus of attention and were more likely to describe the properties of objects to the child using general terms such as pronouns or general nouns. In addition, they tended to request verbal information from their children in contrast to the parents of severely visually impaired children, who were more likely to describe objects for them. Children in both groups received more requests for action than any other utterance type and all parents made infrequent mention of the attributes of objects. The differences between the groups are discussed in terms of the difficulties faced particularly by parents of blind children in initiating and sustaining interactions.
The child's understanding of functional relations in the domain of liquid quantity
Authors: Schonfeld Irvin Sam
Published: July 2011

Four liquid comparison tasks were designed to assess children's knowledge of functional relations, one‐directional compositions of functional relations (greater + greater yield greater) and countervailing compositions (greater + lesser yield ?) in 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds. On one task, in which height indexed quantity, children of every age group performed well. Success on the other comparison tasks was related to operative level, as indexed by conservation performance, and age. More advanced pre‐operational children evidenced a degree of success on the one‐directional composition task. Consistent with Schonfeld (1990), the results suggested that at more advanced operative levels: (1) the understanding of increasingly complex functional relations emerges and (2) thinking becomes increasingly exact. Correlational results revealed consistency across measures and factor‐analytical findings suggested that a unitary developmental factor underlies performance differences. An attentional explanation of the findings was ruled out. The findings highlighted the multifaceted nature of children's progress toward integrating information from different dimensions of the comparison tasks.
The effect of humour on children's developing theory of mind
Authors: Mayes Linda C. , Klin Ami , Cohen Donald J.
Published: July 2011

The understanding of false belief in 3–5‐year‐old children was investigated using a false‐belief situation involving humour and characters playfully interacting with one another. The situation also allowed the child to see that one character did not have sufficient information to allow him or her to act correctly and to see the completed action based on that false belief. Children's understanding of belief in humourous false‐belief task was compared to their understanding ascertained by a standard false‐belief task. When compared to their performance on a standard false‐belief task, older children did more often identify the false belief in the humourous situation but younger children had more difficulty with the humourous false‐belief tasks. These findings are discussed in terms of the relation between social context as seen in the humourous situation and the emerging understanding of mental states such as beliefs.
Making a dyad: Cohesion and distancing in children's pictorial representation of friendship
Authors: Bombi Anna Silvia , Pinto Giuliana
Published: July 2011

Cohesion and distancing are both relevant characteristics of interpersonal relationships; the first pertains to the constitution and strengthening of the relationship, the second to the assertion of individual autonomy. This study explores the use of indices of cohesion and distancing in drawings made by boys and girls 6‐ to 11‐year‐ old showing themselves with a friend. The main hypothesis is that children at each age level would introduce in their drawings pictorial indices of cohesion, as these are necessary and sufficient to show that a relationship exists; distancing indices would be added as options. Drawings were scored on two scales, each composed of six subscales, measuring either cohesive elements or distancing elements. Separate variance analyses for cohesion and distancing (ages x sex x scores in the subscales) yielded main effects of the different subscales and of sex (boys obtained higher distancing scores than girls). Two factors, pertaining to spatial organization and figure interaction, emerge both for cohesion and distancing in two separate factor analyses. Another variance analysis (age x sex x total cohesion and distancing scores) confirmed the hypothesized prevalence of cohesion over distancing. Finally, cross‐tabulation of cohesion and distancing scores allowed detection of various combinations of cohesive and distancing elements in the pictorial representation of friendship. As expected, no age‐linked effect emerged in the above‐mentioned analyses.
Understanding of the banking business in Japan: Is economic prosperity accompanied by economic literacy?
Authors: Takahashi Keiko , Hatano Giyoo
Published: July 2011

Understanding of the banking business among Japanese subjects in Tokyo was compared with previous data. Twenty 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds, 36 11‐ to 16‐year‐olds, and 24 college students were individually interviewed for 30–40 minutes each. It was found that (1) compared with Euopean 11‐ to 16‐year‐olds, significantly fewer in this age range in Tokyo were classified as possessing either ‘full understanding’ or ‘no understanding’; rather, a higher proportion fell into the ‘transitional’ stage in terms of grasping the bank's profit‐making mechanism; (2) these Tokyo youngsters showed a ‘lag’ behind 12‐ to 13‐year‐olds in Hong Kong; (3) even among the college students only about a half had reached the stage of ‘full understanding’; (4) 45 per cent of the 8‐ to 16‐year‐olds and a quarter of the college students revealed three kinds of ‘alternative conceptions’ about banking: ‘deposited money is safely stored in the bank’, ‘the bank is a non‐profit organization’, and ‘the bank does business itself’.
Conditional reasoning with false premises: Fantasy and information retrieval
Authors: Markovits Henry
Published: July 2011

Previous studies (Dias & Harris, 1988, 1990; Markovits & Vachon, 1989) have established that young children can correctly respond to certain conditional reasoning problems with empirically false premises, when these are presented in a fantasy context. Such results have been interpreted as indicating that young children possess logical reasoning competence which must be protected from interference with their empirical knowledge. However, Markovits (1993) has proposed a model of reasoning in which context effects are considered in the light of both developmental and information retrieval processes. This predicts that presenting empirically false premises in a fantasy context should improve performance on the valid logical form modus ponens among young adolescents. It also predicts that presenting empirically true premises in a fantasy context should decrease performance on the invalid logical form affirmation of the consequent. A total of 89 12‐years‐old and 117 14‐year‐olds were given two reasoning problems involving either true or false premises. These problems were embedded in either a fantasy or a realistic context. Results were consistent with the predictions made by the model.
Accelerated metalinguistic (phonological) awareness in bilingual children
Authors: Campbell Ruth , Sais Efisia
Published: July 2011

Pre‐school children (mean age 4.8 years) in matched monoglot English and bilingual Italian‐English kindergarten classes were given tests of (lexical and sublexical) metalinguistic awareness in English. Bilingual schoolchildren were superior to monolingual children at a task of spoken morpheme deletion (RAINBOW → BOW). They were also superior at detecting the odd‐one‐out from sets of pictured words when detection was meaning‐based and when it was initial‐phoneme based. The advantage to the bilingual group persisted for morpheme‐deletion and phonological sorting after partialling out performance on the meaning‐based task.

Exposure to the second language (Italian) at a pre‐literate stage may improve metalinguistic skills. In particular, speech‐sound awareness, which is implicated in reading mastery, benefits from this support.
How children tell a lie from a joke: The role of second‐order mental state attributions
Authors: Sullivan Kate , Winner Ellen , Hopfield Natalie
Published: July 2011

The relationship between the ability to attribute second‐order mental states and the ability to tell a joke from a lie was examined. Forty‐eight children (mean age 6.8) were tested for their ability to make both second‐order ignorance and belief attributions, and to discriminate lies from jokes. Children typically were able to distinguish a lie from a joke only after they could attribute second‐order ignorance (Person 1 does not know what Person 2 knows). In contrast, children could distinguish a lie from a joke before they could attribute second‐order false belief (Person 1 wrongly thinks that Person 2 thinks x). The presence of intonation distinguishing the joke from the lie had no effect on children's ability to determine that the joke was not intended as a lie. These results provide evidence for a relation between a selective aspect of the child's theory of mind (the ability to conceptualize second‐order ignorance) and the child's ability to interpret and distinguish two kinds of intentionally false utterances.
Children's understanding of biased interpretation: Generality and limitations
Authors: Pillow Bradford H. , Weed Stephen T.
Published: July 2011

Three experiments investigated children's understanding that an observer's opinion of another person may bias the observer's interpretation of that person's actions. In Expt 1, preschool, kindergarten, and second‐grade children were asked to infer a biased observer's belief about another person's behaviour. Children were asked either to judge what action the observer would believe the other person was committing or to judge whether the observer would believe the other person's action was intended or accidental. In both conditions, kindergarten and second‐grade children used information about the observer's like or dislike of the actor and the observer's knowledge about the event to infer the observer's perspective, but preschool children performed at chance. In Expts 2 and 3, kindergarten and second‐grade children were told stories in which an observer held both a positive and a negative bias concerning an actor, but only one of the biases was relevant to interpreting the actor's action. Children in both age groups used the relevant bias to infer the observer's interpretation of the action, but made errors when the observer in the story did not have access to information about the event that was provided to children hearing the story.
Are children with autism blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes?
Authors: Baron‐Cohen Simon , Campbell Ruth , Karmiloff‐Smith Annette , Grant Julia , Walker Jane
Published: July 2011

Previous work shows that children with autism manifest abnormalities in the use of gaze. They also have difficulties in the comprehension of mental states. The present paper explores whether these two abnormalities might be related. We report four experiments that test whether normal children ‘read’ the eyes, particularly eye‐direction, as conveying information about a person's mental states, and whether subjects with autism are specifically ‘blind’ to such information. The mental states assessed were desire, goal, refer, and think.

The results confirm that normal children do use eye‐direction as a cue for reading these mental states, as do subjects with mental handicap (including those with William's Syndrome). In contrast, subjects with autism failed to use eye‐direction to infer the mental states. In addition, whilst normal children and children with mental handicap showed a preference for eye‐direction over an unnatural cue when inferring these mental states, children with autism did not. These findings suggest that part of the explanation for the gaze abnormalities in autism may be a failure to comprehend that the eyes convey information about a person's mental states.
Theories of mind in infancy
Authors: Moore Chris
Published: July 2011

This paper reviews and evaluates various theories of the origins of theory of mind in infancy. In what a theory of mind consists is first considered. It is argued that any theory of mind has two important features. Firstly, a theory of mind recognizes, at least, the existence of psychological relations between agents and objects, including some relations which involve “action at a distance”. Secondly, in a theory of mind, self and other are equivalent in that both can act equally as agents of psychological relations. Any theory of the development of theory of mind must explicate how it is possible to acquire an understanding of these two features. With this requirement in mind, four main types of recent theories are considered — modularity theories, Piagetian theories, matching theories, and intersubjectivity theories. While no decision is made amongst these theories, suggestions for further improvement in theorizing on this topic are presented.
Tactile stimulation: Short‐ and long‐term benefits for pre‐term infants
Authors: de Rόiste A. , Bushnell I. W. R.
Published: July 2011

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a programme of supplemental tactile stimulation, Touching and Caressing, Tender in Caring (TAC‐TIC), on a group of pre‐term infants in both the short and long term. A matched subjects design was used with experimental and control infants matched on sex, birth weight, gestation and Apgar scores.

In the short term, the experimental groups are found to bottle feed and be discharged home significantly earlier than the control group. At 15 months the experimental group showed accelerated cognitive development in comparison to the control group. No significant difference was found between the groups in their motor development. The long‐term result on the cognitive measure should be considered with caution given the limitations of the study and the role of possible mediating mechanisms, such as heightened parental expectation and altered parent‐infant interaction, which have yet to be examined.