Defining the locus of developmental differences in children's causal reasoning

Five experiments were performed in the area of children's causal reasoning to validate a previously reported developmental difference, to examine the role of a possible mediating mechanism, and to test a number of competing theoretical interpretations. As previously, the regularity of a cause-effect pairing influenced the causal attributions of 8- and 9-year-olds but not of 5- and 6-year olds; the results were found not to be artifacts of either a response induced commitment to choosing a particular object or the brevity of the exposure period. The developmental difference also was not explained by discrepant encoding of the term “cause,” by memorial deficiencies, or by differences in criteria for drawing causal inferences. Instead, it appeared that greater perceptual distractibility prevented the younger children from searching for and finding the temporally invariant relationship hypothesized to be crucial to inferring causality in the experimental situation.     

The sources of developmental differences in children's incidental processing during discrimination trials

Crane and Ross reported that second graders learned more than sixth graders about attributes made relevant after solution of a discrimination task. Here two experiments are reported that enlighten the sources of this developmental difference. Both make use of an experimental technique whereby children verbalize their hypotheses during solution of a discrimination problem. The results indicate that ten-year-olds do not learn about incidental attributes that they tested while irrelevant in the pre-solution period, but that five-year-olds and seven-year-olds do. Children of all three ages process incidental information about attributes that they did not sample pre-solution. With some qualification, the incidentally processed information is retained throughout a five-minute delay interval. The results bear on developmental trends in the distribution of attention and on theoretical accounts of incidental learning in discrimination tasks.     

Age differences in the temporal locus of memory organization in children's recall

Age differences in when (i.e., at input or output) children organize information for recall were investigated in terms of a model specifying that information organized at input is more resistant to forgetting over time than information not organized at input. In Experiment 1, recall of items from categorically related and unrelated lists was assessed either immediately or after a 4-min delay. For 9-year-olds, the effect of delay was comparable for the related and unrelated lists, indicative of spontaneous organization at time of output. In contrast, 13-year-olds showed a significantly smaller delay effect with related than with unrelated lists, indicative of spontaneous organization at time of input. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that, for 9-year-olds, high levels of clustering in and of themselves do not eliminate effects of delayed testing characteristic of output organization, and that when 9-year-olds are biased to organize information at input, delay effects are reduced only when measures are taken to ensure that all the category labels are retrieved.     

Physical self-efficacy and actualization

In his theorizing about self-actualization, Maslow speculated that physical ability and physical self-confidence were two aspects of cooperative dominance which were associated positively with actualization. These aspects of dominance bear close resemblance to the Perceived Physical Ability (PPA) and the Physical Self-Presentation Confidence (PSPC) dimensions of the Physical Self-Efficacy (PSE) Inventory. Accordingly, the PPA and PSPC scores of undergraduate men and women were correlated with their scores on the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), a popular measure of actualization, to test Maslow's hypotheses. The results showed that, contrary to Maslow's claims, PPA is not a positive correlate of self-actualization. However, strong support was found for Maslow's contention that high-PSPC individuals are more likely to be actualizing than low-PSPC people. Also, Maslow's hypothesis that actualizers are high in global sensation seeking (SS) was tested. The data indicated that only male actualizers were high in various aspects of SS, but female actualizers were not. Multiple regression analyses revealed further that both SS and PSPC are primary contributors to POI for men, but only PSPC contributes significantly to POI for women. Discussion focused on the reasons why research findings showing that increases in physical fitness lead to increases in self-esteem cannot be used to support the view that physical fitness and actualization are linked positively.     

The effects of retention interval on preschool children's short-term memory of verbal items

The short-term recall of word-triads was tested, comparing retention over three types of intervals within 24 preschoolers. Retention was significantly lower in the 16 sec unfilled interval condition than in the immediate test condition. This result, predicted from preschoolers' rehearsal deficiency, differs from those obtained in previous adult and child studies. A filled interval condition, requiring irrelevant verbal activity during the 16 sec period, significantly reduced recall from that of the unfilled interval condition. Recognition of the word items on a subsequent recognition test was greater than chance and was not affected by interval condition. This suggests that the condition effects in short-term recall did not disrupt the long-term storage of the items.     

The effects of sensation seeking and misattribution of arousal on attraction toward similar or dissimilar strangers

While previous research has indicated that certain situational variables can mediate the typical positive relationship between attitudinal similarity and attraction, investigations focusing on the impact of individual difference variables on this relationship have typically yielded unimpressive results. The present experiment was conducted to test the prediction that individual differences in sensation seeking do moderate this relationship. The major results showed that, as predicted, high sensation seekers were more attracted than low sensation seekers to dissimilar others, whereas low sensation seekers were more attracted than high sensation seekers to people with similar attitudes. The data also indicated that a misattribution of arousal manipulation serves to increase attraction under certain conditions. Specifically, misattribution of aversive arousal increased low sensation seekers' attraction to a dissimilar stranger and increased high sensation seekers' attraction to a similar stranger.     

Repetition of cues in children's oddity learning and transfer

The hypothesis that repetition of specific cues interferes with oddity learning was directly tested by comparing two groups of preschool (3 to 5 years of age) children, one with repeated cues and the other with new cues on every trial. Repetition of cues retarded oddity learning confirming previous speculation based on error analyses. Performance on postsolution transfer trials with repeated cues was not affected by conditions of acquisition. Significant age effects were found in oddity acquisition, while there was only weak evidence for agerelated performance differences on transfer trials. Transfer performance on trials with repetition of cues was not related to whether or not the children were informed of such repetition. The results were related to theories of oddity acquisition and transfer.     

Categorical and spatial modes of representation in young children's recall

Preschool children aged 4 and 6 were asked to recall a set of line drawings under two conditions: pictures blocked in category groups, and pictures blocked in noncategory groups. For 4-year-olds, the blocking condition made no difference in the structure of their recall; but for the 6-year-olds, the category blocking served as a support for category clustering of their recall lists. No purely spatial clustering appeared at either age. It was concluded that 6-year-olds' use of classes is closely linked to concrete spatial arrangement of objects.     

Young children's storage behavior in a memory-for-location task

Two experiments concerned with children's intentional preparation for future retrieval in a memory-for-location task are presented. In the first experiment, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds were instructed to store and subsequently retrieve an object on a large spatial display. All age groups, except the 3-year-olds, tended to store the object at distinctive locations and their retrieval performance was facilitated accordingly. The four age groups did not differ in the types of selections made in a nonmemory control task. The second experiment dealt with the effects of feedback and informational factors on strategy acquisition. Preschoolers were given experience at retrieving the object from distinctive and nondistinctive positions on the stimulus display. Later, when instructed to store the object by themselves, older preschoolers produced the distinctive-position storage strategy following a feedback procedure in which they directly observed the consequences of their retrieval selections. The strategy was adopted by younger preschoolers, but only when additional strategy and task information accompanied visual feedback. The use of external memory tasks with young children and factors affecting strategy acquisition and utilization are discussed.     

Negative transfer in children's recall of categorized materials

A negative transfer paradigm was used to assess kindergarten, third-, and sixth-grade (approximately 5, 9, and 12 years old) children's use of category relations in lists presented for recall. Negative transfer effects increased with age, with kindergarten children showing no evidence of interference relative to a control group.     

Extent,multiplying, and proportionality rules in children's judgments of area

The study examined children's use of multiplying and proportionality rules in judgments of area. In two experiments children judged the area of rectangles. Seven-year-olds used linear extent as an index of area. Eight- and nine-year-olds replaced the extent rule with the height × width rule. In a third experiment 8-through 11-year-olds were presented with a rectangle and a horizontal line representing the width of a second rectangle. Children were asked to indicate the height that would make the second rectangle equal in area to the first. The correct response was proportional to the product of the ratio of the widths of the two rectangles and the height of the first rectangle. Graphical and statistical analyses indicated that children applied the ratio rule to these judgments. The implications for Piaget's theory of cognitive development were discussed.     

Image tracing: An analysis of its effectiveness in children's pictorial discrimination learning

Previous research has shown that requiring children to trace from memory the correct member of a pictorial discrimination pair markedly facilitates performance. The experiment reported here offers support for a presumed component of this learning strategy, namely, “memory imagery.” In particular, subjects who traced directly on top of the correct picture did not perform as well as those who traced it from memory. Various theoretical explanations of the image-tracing phenomenon are considered, including depth of processing, dual coding, and frequency.     

The fantasy-reality distinction in televised violence: Modifying influences on children's aggression

Fifth-grade and kindergarten boys and girls were exposed to a violent televised episode that was introduced as a fictional portrayal (fantasy condition) or as a news broadcast (reality condition). Additional groups were given no information (no-instructional-set condition) about the violent stimulus or were not exposed to the violent episode (no-TV condition). Aggressive responses and helping responses were recorded immediately following exposure. Boys were most aggressive in the reality and no-TV conditions. They were less aggressive in the noinstructional-set condition and least aggressive in the fantasy condition. In almost direct contrast, girls were most aggressive in the fantasy and no-instructional-set conditions and least aggressive in the reality and no-TV conditions. A posteriori analyses of this interaction effect revealed that girls were less aggressive than boys in the no-TV condition and in the reality condition, but not in the fantasy condition nor the no-instructional-set condition. These effects held for both older and younger children.     

Deep and surface structure in children's sentence learning

Fifth-graders were asked to learn 32 syntactically varied, semantically unrelated sentences containing combinations of agentive, objective and instrumental case relations. Five learning trials, each followed by a noun-prompted recall test, were provided. Recall patterns indicated that variations in surface structure complexity (i.e., verb voice and sentential position of noun prompts) exerted less influence on Ss' memory for sentences than deep structures. Several trials were required for Ss to reproduce syntactic details accurately and many transformational errors were observed. Even then, children were unable to learn one syntactic form. Although patterns of recall were more consistent with deep structure predictions, results were not completely supportive of Fillmore's analysis of deep structure in terms of case relations, and the possibility that other non-linguistic means were used to store sentences loomed as an alternative to the deep structure view.     

Category similarity effects in children's semantic memory retrieval

Fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students were required to indicate whether or not a stimulus word belonged in either of two semantic categories that were held in memory. Each category pair was either semantically similar or semantically dissimilar. The results indicated that even for the youngest children, similar categories required less search time than dissimilar categories. It was suggested that while dissimilar categories had to be accessed successively prior to search, subjects were able to consolidate similar categories into a superordinate group which eliminated the time to shift from one category to another during search. The results were contrasted with clustering studies which have demonstrated a minimal amount of memory facilitation in children for conceptually related items over unrelated items.     

Attraction to a dissimilar stranger as a function of level of effectance arousal

An experiment was carried out to demonstrate that the relationship between attitudes of a stranger and attraction to that stranger can be mediated by effectance arousal and the consequent information search to reduce the arousal. The argument posited was that individuals under high effectance arousal produced by a confusing and ambiguous film would be attracted to dissimilar others as a source of information and uncertainty reduction. Results indicated that high levels of arousal produced greater attraction to a dissimilar stranger than to a similar stranger. This finding was reversed when an explanation was provided along with the confusing film, lending support to the uncertainty reduction position.     

Short-term memory and information processing in pigeons

Six pigeons were trained to asymptotic performance on a variable-delay matching-to-sample task in which the samples were sometimes line or color elements and sometimes line-color compounds. On compound-sample trials, the comparison stimuli were sometimes color elements and sometimes line-tilts. Sample type and delay (0, 1.5, and 4.5 sec) were varied within sessions, and sample duration (.4, 1.0, and 3.0 sec) was varied between sessions. Forgetting curves were steeper for line-tilt than for color. As sample duration increased, matching performance improved more for colors than for line-tilts, especially at delays greater than zero. Performance was better with element samples than with compound samples only on the line-tilt dimension at zero delay. Some predictions of a unitary trace growth and decay theory of pigeon short-term memory were not confirmed. A dual-code hypothesis was proposed to account for the data.     

Young children's use of temporal and spatial order information in short-term memory

Encoding and retrieval of temporal and spatial order information was investigated in the free recall and probed recognition performance of 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. In both tasks, three line drawings of familiar objects were presented successively in different spatial locations, so that temporal order was not confounded with spatial order. Subjects of all ages revealed an organization for the stimulus display based on the temporal sequence of presentation. With increasing age, subjects began recall more often with the first item so as to take advantage of this sequential organization. In the probed recognition task, subjects were asked questions requiring the use of temporal or spatial order information. Performance by the older subjects indicated that information about temporal and spatial order could be simultaneously encoded. The results are discussed in terms of a context theory derived from Estes's hierarchical association model.     

Decision processes in children's recognition memory

Kindergarteners and third graders were given a continuous recognition memory task involving two-digit numbers. In addition, a rating scale consisting of photographs of various facial expressions was used to obtain confidence judgments from the Ss. Conventional analyses as well as signal detection analyses of the data revealed the following results: (a) the overall performance of the third graders was superior to that of the kindergarteners; (b) memory strength decreased as the number of intervening items increased; (c) there was no difference in the forgetting rates of the two grade levels; (d) the third graders exhibited a more liberal response bias than the kindergarteners; (e) both the hit rate (probability of correctly labeling an old stimulus as old) and the false-alarm rate (probability of incorrectly labeling a new stimulus as old) increased across blocks of items; (f) the increases in the hit rate and the false-alarm rate over blocks were due to a change in criterion from a relatively conservative level to a more lenient one; (g) the lower the S's level of confidence in judging an item as old, the lower was the probability of that item actually being old; (h) the third graders were better than the kindergarteners at gauging the accuracy of their recognition responses. It was concluded that with respect to recognition memory, chidren as young as $\text{5}\text{1}\text{2}$ years old are capable, to some extent, of monitoring their own memory states.     

The effect of instruction with relational and item-specific elaborative strategies on young children's organization and free recall

One hundred and sixty second-grade children were assigned on the basis of a free recall pretest to four instruction conditions and were given a series of lists of pictures for free recall. For three groups, the instructions were directed at encoding either (a) list organizational information, (b) item-specific semantic information, or (c) organizational and individual item information, while the fourth group constituted a “No-training” control with standard free recall instructions. The subjects received either related or unrelated lists during the training phase and related or unrelated lists during two post-tests, immediately following and 1 week after training. For both types of lists, instructions emphasizing list organization were more effective than those emphasizing item-specific elaboration. Subjects given individual item elaborative instructions showed levels of recall which were comparable to those of the control subjects. While the combined effect of organizational and individual item processing did not exceed the performance produced by organizational instructions alone, the degree of generalization was greater for subjects processing both kinds of information, especially when subjects received related lists during training.