纵向再探学前儿童心理理论发展模式

本文作者前不久完成的一项横断设计研究中, 以自编的心理理论量表测查比较了中美两国3~5岁儿童的有关发展。量表包括五项任务: (1) 不同的愿望; (2) 知与不知; (3) 不同的信念; (4) 内容错误信念和 (5) 伪装的情绪。研究发现两种不同文化群体儿童对上述任务的理解均表现出稳定一致的发展次序, 两者的次序大致相同但具有重要差别: 我国儿童的理解次序如从易到难排列如上所列, 这一次序与美国儿童的差别在于我国儿童先理解“知与不知”, 然后是“不同的信念”, 而美国儿童则恰好相反。这一研究结果对了解不同文化儿童心理理论的发展次序是十分有意义的, 但问题是经由横断设计的量表研究所确立的发展次序能否准确地描述个体儿童的纵向进展呢? 为此本研究使用了相同的测量工具对参加过横断研究的北京3岁儿童(时间1)在他们4岁(时间2)和5岁(时间3)时进行了焦点追踪研究。研究结果表明, 随着测查时间的 延伸, 个体儿童的作业成绩不仅逐步提高, 而且这种提高符合量表任务的发展次序。通过应用格特曼(Guttman)和雷氏(Rasch)测量模型对这一结果的分析, 再一次证实我国个体儿童的有关发展次序与欧美文化儿童的发展次序大致相同并且有重要的差别。本研究的结果不仅能为横断研究中个别差异的研究提供有用的工具, 而且深化了人们对心理理论发展机制的认识, 即把心理理论的发展看作是在一定的文化环境影响下不断扩展和深化的概念建构过程。但对这一推论仍有待进一步证实。     

Planning ability across ranges of intellectual ability: An examination of the Luria-Das information-processing model

According to the Luria-Das information-processing theory, impaired planning ability is the source of more generalized cognitive deficits in mentally retarded populations. Also, the model suggests the possibility of relative independence between unit 2 (planning) and unit 3 (coding) abilities for mentally retarded individuals. Consequently, it was predicted that 26 educable mentally retarded (EMR) children would score significantly less well on relatively pure measures of planning ability than 13 younger average-ability children after the children were matched on cognitive processing ability (Mental Age of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children). Moreover, it was predicted that teaching an optimal planning strategy to randomly selected individuals of both groups would improve the EMR group's scores relative to the average-ability group. Neither prediction was supported. The results are not inconsistent with the model, but can be explained parsimoniously by neurodevelopmental stage theories also.     

The Assessment of Limb Apraxia: An Investigation of Task Effects and Their Cause

To test the effects of variations in the structure of tasks used to assess limb apraxia, eight tasks—differing in their modes of elicitation (tactile, verbal, visual, imitation) and/or types of movement elicited (transitive, intransitive, meaningless)—were administered to 25 carefully selected subjects with idiomotor limb apraxia. When standardized scores (based on the performance of 10 nonneurologically impaired control subjects) were used to measure the differences between tasks, no clinically significant task effects were found. Additional investigation was made of two causal hypotheses regarding the processes underlying limb apractic performance. The results of factor analyses and a search for double dissociations among individual subjects were consistent with the (severity) hypothesis that differences in task performances (raw scores) reflect degrees of task difficulty; and they failed to support the (disconnection) hypothesis that posits separate and independent neural/mental processes underlying task performances.     

Cognitive Assessment With Disabled Readers

This paper describes an approach to cognitive assessment that involves a synthesis of traditional psychometric approach and the more recent information-processing approaches. In this combined approach, psychometric tests are supplemented by tasks adapted from information-processing research. The paper focuses on the use of the approach with disabled readers, although the approach may be generalized to many different populations. The Test of Syllable and Phoneme Counting, a measure of awareness of the sound structure of speech, is described, as an example of an information-processing task that would be useful with younger disabled readers. Guidelines for using information-processing measures are also discussed.     

学前儿童抑制控制的发展趋势及其对言语理解和数学认知的预测作用

以长春市某幼儿园的122名3~6岁幼儿为被试,采用2(测试任务:无嵌套规则白天黑夜任务,有嵌套规则的白天黑夜任务)×2(测试时间:间隔9个月的第一次测试和第二次测试)×4(年龄分组:3.00~3.75岁组,3.76~4.50岁组,4.51~5.25岁组,5.26~6.00岁组)的三因素混合设计,来分析不同复杂程度的抑制控制在学前阶段的发展趋势,并在控制幼儿年龄和工作记忆水平后,分析不同复杂程度抑制控制对言语理解和数学认知的独立预测作用。结果发现:(1)对3~6岁儿童来说,有嵌套规则的白天黑夜任务的难度水平要显著高于无嵌套规则的白天黑夜任务;(2)较简单的抑制控制(无嵌套规则的白天黑夜任务)在学前阶段的发展速度先快后慢,但较复杂的抑制控制(有嵌套规则的白天黑夜任务)在3~6岁期间持续快速发展;(3)独立于年龄和工作记忆,较复杂的抑制控制能够显著预测幼儿的数学认知和言语理解,但较简单的抑制控制对言语理解和数学认知的预测作用不显著。根据上述结果,在描述学前儿童抑制控制发展趋势时要注意任务难度的设定,而且难度适当的抑制控制任务成绩更能预测幼儿的言语理解和数学认知。     

The Lexical Stroop Sort (LSS) picture-word task: a computerized task for assessing the relationship between language and executive functioning in school-aged children

The relationship between language development and executive function (EF) in children is not well understood. The Lexical Stroop Sort (LSS) task is a computerized EF task created for the purpose of examining the relationship between school-aged children’s oral language development and EF. To validate this new measure, a diverse sample of school-aged children completed standardized oral language assessments, the LSS task, and the widely used Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS; Zelazo, 2006) task. Both EF tasks require children to sort stimuli into categories based on predetermined rules. While the DCCS largely relies on visual stimuli, the LSS employs children’s phonological loop to access their semantic knowledge base. Accuracy and reaction times were recorded for both tasks. Children’s scores on the LSS task were correlated with their scores on the DCCS task, and a similar pattern of relationships emerged between children’s vocabulary and the two EF tasks, thus providing convergent validity for the LSS. However, children’s phonological awareness was associated with their scores on the LSS, but not with those on the DCCS. In addition, a mediation model was used to elucidate the predictive relationship between phonological awareness and children’s performance on the LSS task, with children’s vocabulary fully mediating this relationship. The use of this newly created and validated LSS task with different populations, such as preschoolers and bilinguals, is also discussed.     

Visual perspective taking in children: further ramifications of an information-processing model

Forty children between ages 6 and 8 were administered a set of spatial perspective tasks. On half of the items, children responded by rotating a duplicate of the target display; on the remainder, children reconstructed the displays to correspond to a perspective view. The displays differed as to whether they contained marked or unmarked objects. On the basis of an information-processing analysis of these tasks, we predicted that the response-type variables and stimulus variables would interact in known ways. Analysis of variance results revealed a good fit with the hypothesized outcomes. Main effects were detected for age, which favored older children, and for display, which favored unmarked objects; the rotation task proved easier. Significant interactions revealed that task demands increasing task difficulty were more problematic in the construction task than in the rotation task, as predicted.     

Visual Perspective Taking in Children: Further Ramifications of an Information-Processing Model

Forty children between ages 6 and 8 were administered a set of spatial perspective tasks. On half of the items, children responded by rotating a duplicate of the target display; on the remainder, children reconstructed the displays to correspond to a perspective view. The displays differed as to whether they contained marked or unmarked objects. On the basis of an information-processing analysis of these tasks, we predicted that the response-type variables and stimulus variables would interact in known ways. Analysis of variance results revealed a good fit with the hypothesized outcomes. Main effects were detected for age, which favored older children, and for display, which favored unmarked objects; the rotation task proved easier. Significant interactions revealed that task demands increasing task difficulty were more problematic in the construction task than in the rotation task, as predicted.     

Performance on Stroop‐like assessments of inhibitory control by 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children

The rapid development of an aspect of executive functioning (EF), inhibitory control (IC), between the ages of 3‐ and 5‐years, leads to an increase in a child's capacity to suppress inappropriate responding and therefore activate the necessary resources to carry‐out goal‐directed activity (Psychological Bulletin, 1997, 121 , 65–94). To measure EF in children, tasks administered clinically to adults are adapted. The Day–Night Stroop (DNS) is a pictorial modification of the Stroop Test (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1935, 18 , 642–662), developed for pre‐literate children. Although suitable as a measure of IC in 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children, ceiling effects have been reported on the DNS in slightly older preschoolers. The present study attempted to overcome this limitation by examining the suitability of two modified versions of the DNS in 4‐ to 5‐year‐old preschoolers. To investigate the executive demands made by both Stroop‐like tasks, their associations with another measure of IC (stop‐signal task) and a measure of working memory were examined. Counter to expectations, no significant association was found in performance between the two Stroop‐like tasks; however, the modified DNS developed in this study showed significant relationships with the other executive tasks. The results are discussed in relation to the different methodologies used by these Stroop measures. Implications of this study suggest that researchers should consider more test‐specific factors when assessing EF in young children. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Search asymmetry, sustained attention, and response inhibition

In the present experiment, we used search asymmetry to test whether the sustained attention to response task is a better measure of response inhibition or sustained attention. Participants performed feature present and feature absent target detection tasks using either a sustained attention to response task (SART; high Go low No-Go) or a traditionally formatted task (TFT; high No-Go low Go) response format. In addition to performance, we employed functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure lateral cerebral oxygenation levels and self-reports of Tense Arousal, Energetic Arousal, task related and unrelated thoughts occurring during the tasks. Detections were lower and reaction times longer in the feature absent search than the feature present search regardless of response format. Detections were lower, but reaction times shorter in the SART than the TFT regardless of feature search. Greater right than left frontal hemisphere activation occurred in the SART than the TFT. In addition, the SART was more fatiguing based on self-reports than the TFT, but there were no differences in Task-Unrelated Thoughts across task conditions. Overall, the results suggest the SART places high response inhibition, not necessarily sustained attention, demands on participants.     

The role of verbal ability in the processing of complex verbal information

Summary This study investigated the relation between psychometric mental-ability test scores and several reaction-time measures; a simple-reaction task, a choice-reaction task, the Posner and Mitchell (1967) letter-identification task, and a variation of the sentence-verification task. Scores on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices and the Verbal Subtest of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATV) were obtained. The less complex information-processing tasks replicate earlier studies in which general intelligence was only marginally related to reaction-time measures. The sentence-verification task systematically varied task complexity. Several direct and derived measures from the task were significantly correlated with psychometric mentalability measures. However, even though a number of precautions were taken to ensure that the sentence-verification task assessed purely verbal-processing efficiency, there was little evidence for an important task-specific relation between verification measures and verbal ability. Moreover, despite its relative verbal complexity, sentence verification did not reflect a greater relationship to verbal ability than other tasks did. Overall, the information-processing efficiency measures used in this study suggested a fairly general, rather than a task-specific, relationship to intellectual ability.The research presented in this paper was conducted while the first author was affiliated with the University of Georgia, U. S. A.     

Interference suppression vs. response inhibition: An explanation for the absence of a bilingual advantage in preschoolers’ Stroop task performance

The well-documented advantage that bilingual speakers demonstrate across the lifespan on measures of controlled attention is not observed in preschoolers’ performance on Stroop task variations. We examined the role of task demands in explaining this discrepancy. Whereas the Color/Word Stroop used with adult participants requires interference suppression, the Stroop task typically used with preschoolers requires only response inhibition. We developed an age-appropriate conflict task that measures interference suppression. Fifty-one preschool children (26 bilinguals) completed this new Bivalent Shape Task and the Day/Night task used in previous research. Bilingual in comparison to monolingual children performed better on incongruent trials of the Bivalent Shape Task, but did not differ on other measures. The results indicate that the discrepancy between preschoolers and older individuals in performance on Stroop task adaptations results from characteristics of the task rather than developmental differences. Further, the findings provide additional support for the importance of interference suppression as a mechanism underlying the bilingual advantage.     

Predicting individual differences in complex skill acquisition: dynamics of ability determinants.

Substantial controversy exists about ability determinants of individual differences in performance during and subsequent to skill acquisition. This investigation addresses the controversy. An information-processing examination of ability-performance relations during complex task acquisition is described. Included are ability testing (including general, reasoning, spatial, perceptual speed, and perceptual/psychomotor abilities) and skill acquisition over practice on the terminal radar approach controller simulation. Results validate and extend Ackerman's (1988) theory of cognitive ability determinants of individual differences in skill acquisition. Benefits of ability component and task component analyses over global analyses of ability-skill relations are demonstrated. Implications are discussed for selection instruments to predict air traffic controller success and for other tasks with inconsistent information-processing demands.     

The Pictorial Fire Stroop: A Measure of Processing Bias for Fire-Related Stimuli

Fire interest is a risk factor for firesetting. This study tested whether a fire-specific emotional Stroop task can effectively measure an information-processing bias for fire-related stimuli. Clinic-referred and nonreferred adolescents (aged 13–16 years) completed a pictorial “Fire Stroop,” as well as a self-report fire interest questionnaire and several control tasks. Results showed (a) comparatively greater fire-specific attentional bias among referred adolescent firesetters, (b) a negative relationship between Fire Stroop attentional bias and self-reported fire interest, and (c) positive correspondence between Fire Stroop attentional bias and self-reported firesetting frequency. These findings suggest that instruments that measure an automatic bias for fire-specific stimuli may usefully supplement self-report measures in the assessment and understanding of firesetting behavior.     

Looking and search measures of object knowledge in preschool children

The same preschoolers were tested on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. In the observation task, children watched an object roll behind a screen from which protruded the top of a solid wall. Analyses revealed significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes in all children. In search, the child was allowed to retrieve the rolled object. Most 3-year-olds but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds completed the search successfully. An unexpected sex difference was found, with boys outperforming girls. Search performance was not associated with observation measures. The findings indicate that children visually discriminate violations of solidity but that this sensitivity is not associated with successful search performance.     

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.     

Choosing between two objects reduces 3-year-olds' errors on a reverse-contingency test of executive function

In the present experiment, we used a reversed-contingency paradigm (the windows task: [Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The windows task as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 331-349]) to explore the effect of alterations in the task array on 3-year-old children's strategic reasoning. Children were offered a choice between either a desirable object and an undesirable object, or between a desirable object and an empty location. There was significantly better performance on the two-object version of the task. This difference was evident even on subsequent trials when the second object was removed and the empty location reintroduced. This suggests that presenting children with a choice between two objects helps them to formulate a strategy, rather than to execute a previously determined response.     

7～9岁儿童失言理解与执行功能的关系

为了说明学龄儿童心理理论与执行功能的关系,研究采用失言理解、威斯康星卡片分类和汉诺塔任务分别考察了90名7—9岁儿童的心理理论和执行功能。结果表明,失言理解与抑制-转换能力相关显著（r=0．34,P〈0．01）,但是与计划能力相关不显著（r=0．06,P〉0．05）。在控制年龄后,失言理解与抑制-转换能力的相关仍然显著（r=0．29,P〈0．05）。研究结果说明,学龄儿童心理理论与执行功能的相关模式与学龄前儿童完全一致,提示心理理论与执行功能的相关关系从学龄前延续到了学龄阶段。     

Task-hemispheric integrity in dual task performance

A condition of task hemispheric integrity is predicted to result in a dual task situation when the central processing and response components of each task are associated exclusively with a given cerebral hemisphere. The prediction that this condition will generate more efficient time-sharing is tested in a series of four experiments. In experiment 1 the prediction is confirmed when a spatial (tracking) and verbal (letter memory search) task are time-shared, and the hand assignment to task responses is manipulated. In experiment 2 a spatial variant of the memory search is used instead of the verbal letter search, and hand assignment effects are not obtained, since when two spatial tasks are time-shared an integrity assignment is impossible. Experiment 3 validates the hemispheric lateralization of the two single task variants of the memory search task, while experiment 4 establishes the separate “spatial’ and “verbal” resource demands of the two variants by observing their differential interference with concurrent spatial and verbal tasks.