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.     

Sex-role aspects in the development of children's vocational knowledge

Recent research suggests important age and sex differences in the sex-typing of children's vocational interests. The present study adds to this area by examining several dimensions of job choices in children of four age groups (early and late preschool, second and fourth grade). The 120 children interviewed were asked three fixed-choice questions regarding nine jobs, along with open-ended job choice items. Analysis of age effects on several predetermined dimensions showed that older children were more selective in personal job choice, especially in regard to jobs attributed to the opposite sex. Avoidance of choices associated with the other sex was stronger in boys, but other sex differences were dependent on mode of inquiry rather than on sex. Girls were less limited than boys in job interests when asked about specific jobs but expressed more restricted choices on open-ended items. Implications of these findings both for further research and educational practices are considered.     

Mediators between frustration and aggression in a field experiment

To assess some of the mediators between a frustrating incident and subsequent aggressive behavior in a field situation, 320 male and female subjects were assigned to one of 32 experimental conditions in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. Either a male or female experimenter, saying “Excuse me” or not, dressed in high or low status clothing, cut in line in front of the subject, who was standing near the front or back of the line. Verbal and nonverbal aggressiveness were coded and summed to measure total aggression. Subjects near the front of the line or interacting with a low status experimenter were more aggressive than those at the back of the line or seeing a high status experimenter. Less aggression was directed against the female experimenter or one who said “Excuse me,” and there was a strong tendency for subjects to be more aggressive to a same-sex experimenter. It was suggested that further research on instigators to aggression be carried out in such field situations.     

Picture superiority in free recall: The effects of organization and elaboration

A conception of semantic memory structure is presented in which elaboration is considered to vary both between and within items. Pictures and their verbal labels are suggested to activate common abstract memory representations, but these activations will differ in their degree of within-item elaboration. However, pictures and words should show comparable between-item elaboration properties, such as might be revealed by the category-recall relationship and clustering in free recall. Children were presented pictures and words in either a category-recall situation, where between-item elaboration was emphasized, or in a control situation where between-item elaboration was minimized. No differences between pictures and words in either recall or clustering were found in the category-recall task. However, when the same items were presented in the control situation the typical picture superiority effect in free recall was found. The results are interpreted as consistent with a two-factor theory of semantic elaboration, and indicate that these basic properties of memory encoding hold even for young children.     

A theoretical analysis of the PAN ambiguous-cue problem

The PAN ambiguous-cue problem consists of three stimuli: P, the positive (consistently rewarded) cue; N, the negative (consistently nonrewarded) cue; and A, the ambiguous cue which is negative (nonrewarded) when paired with P, but positive (rewarded) when paired with N. This paper demonstrates how the finding of superior performance on the NA trials as compared to the PA trials (with stereometric objects) can be rigorously derived from a recent extension of Hull-Spence discrimination learning theory, the Stimulus Interaction Hypothesis. It is also shown how this theory can account for the converse outcome of better performance on PA than on NA trials when planometric plaques are used as stimuli. Finally, alternative explanations of the findings are described and evaluated.     

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.     

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.     

The effect of cuing after backward conditioning trials

Rats were given backward pairings of a tone (CS) and shock (US) and were then tested for response to the CS in a lick suppression test. Animals given a cuing or reminder treatment prior to the test exhibited enhanced suppression in the presence of the tone relative to a variety of control conditions. The cue-induced suppression enhancement did not appear to result from sensitization or short-term motivational changes nor did it seem to depend on second-order conditioning of the test context. The effect appeared more robust as the number of backward conditioning trials preceding the cue increased. The results were discussed in terms of current explanations of backward conditioning effects.     

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.     

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 effects of perceptual pretraining on concept identification and preference

The effects of perceptual pretraining on preferences and concept identification performance in five- and eight-year-old Ss were investigated. The results indicated that perceptual pretraining facilitated performance on a concept identification task with a non-preferred relevant cue for the five-year-olds, but not for the eight-year-olds. However, perceptual pretraining did not affect preference in either age group and Ss were as consistent in their preference responding before and after perceptual pretraining as was a control group that had not received perceptual pretraining. Preferences were highly consistent in both age groups over a one week period. Perceptual pretraining was interpreted to increase the usability of the less preferred dimensions for the younger Ss, and to leave the affective preference response unaltered in both groups.     

Restle's choice model: A reconceptualization for a special case

A reconceptualization of the choice model developed by Restle is proposed which involves a reformulation of the choice situation, consideration of absolute constraints, and a distinction between positively and negatively valued aspects of alternatives. Incorporation of these features results in four different models which are found to combine some characteristics of other choice models as well. It is felt that these models might be particularly appropriate for both general and specialized vocational choices.     

The effects of instructional variables on young children's organization and free recall

The relationship between verbal instruction and children's free recall was examined. Sixty first-grade children (mean age 84 months) were trained to categorize pictures of common objects. Half were given organizational instructions emphasizing categorization, and half were given instructions emphasizing the individual objects. Similarly, half were given detailed verbal instructions and encouraged to listen, and half were taught using a question type format that encouraged participation. Immediately and after a 2- to 3-week delay, children who were shown an organizational strategy categorized the materials during study and attained higher recall scores than children who were shown a specific strategy. After the 2- to 3-week delay, children in the explanation groups out-performed children in the question-asking groups. The child's competence as measured by intelligence and performance in school did not contribute to amount recalled when subjects were given instructions emphasizing the general strategy. However, children of high competence benefited more from specific training by recalling more items than did children of low competence. These findings point to the importance of instructional variables in studying changes in children's processing capabilities.     

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.     

The relationship between father absence and children's social problem solving competencies

Predictions of deficits in children's social problem-solving competencies due to early and continuing father absence were investigated. To test these predictions, equal numbers of father-present and father-absent third graders matched on a number of variables were assessed on measures of social problem-solving performance. In Phase 2 of the study, half of the children from the father-absent category received a 15 week intervention programme which was conducted by adult male trainers to provide structured practice in social problem solving. Results demonstrated that father-absent treatment subjects, compared to father-absent control subjects, improved their social problem-solving skills significantly. Despite improvement due to intervention, social problem-solving scores for father-absent treatment subjects were still below those for father-present control subjects. Educational and developmental implications of the findings were discussed.     

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.     

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.     

The effect of partially valid cues on children's discrimination learning

Second grade children were administered a two-choice discrimination learning task in which irrelevant dimensions were correlated .50, .75, or 1.00 with the 100 percent rewarded cue. The results indicated that when a cue was partially correlated with reward .75, learning was retarded. When all cues were relevant and redundant (r = 1.00), learning was most rapid. These results supported an implication of Hypothesis Testing Theory that partially correlated or partially valid cues would not be eliminated rapidly, thus retarding acquisition of the correct response.     

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.