热执行功能对儿童标准窗口任务测试的影响

主要考察热执行功能对3~4岁儿童标准窗口任务测试的影响。实验采取3×3的被试间设计。设置了3种条件：标准指示、“强化竞争”指示和无对手指示;将随机抽取的270名被试分为3个年龄段,以检测3~4儿童在窗口任务中的认知发展趋势。结果表明：⑴热执行功能也是影响3~4儿童标准窗口任务测试的一个主要因素;⑵3岁后期是3~4岁儿童在标准窗口任务中所体现出来的认知发展差异的分界年龄;⑶3~4岁儿童在窗口任务中还表现出规则推理能力的差异     

Different developmental patterns of simple deductive and probabilistic inferential reasoning

In three studies, we examined simple counterexample-based and probabilistic reasoning in children 6, 7, and 9 years of age. In the first study, participants were asked to make conditional (if-then) inferences under both categorical (certain or uncertain) and probabilistic instructions. Results showed that 6-year-olds respond to both forms of inference in similar ways, but whereas probabilistic conditional inferences showed little development over this period, categorical inferences clearly improved between 6 and 7 years of age. An analysis of the children's justifications indicated that performance under categorical instructions was strongly related to counterexample generation at all ages, whereas this was true only for the younger children for inferences under probabilistic instructions. These findings were replicated in a second study, using problems that referred to concrete stimuli with varying probabilities of inference. A third study tested the hypothesis that children confused probability judgments with judgments of confidence and demonstrated a clear dissociation between these two constructs. Overall, these results show that children are capable of accurate conditional inferences under probabilistic instructions at a very early age and that the differentiation between categorical and probabilistic conditional reasoning is clear by at least 9 years ofage. These results are globally consistent with dual-process theories but suggest some difficulties for the way that the analytic-heuristic distinction underlying these theories has been conceptualized.     

The acquisition of behavioral chains

The present investigation was designed to study some conditions which facilitate the acquisition of behavioral chains by young children. Three experiments were performed. In Expt I subjects were required to respond overtly to the internal components of the chain. In Expt II an aversive contingency was imposed following errors. In Expt III instructions were added at the beginning of training. The results supported the following conclusions: (a) Requiring subjects to mark and name the correct stimuli on each trial increased the accuracy of performance; (b) introducing time-out contingent on incorrect responses depressed the error rate; and (c) adding instructions concerning a pending change in the experimental task resulted in a lower error rate following withdrawal of the instructional stimuli.     

Memory scanning by children: Meaningfulness and mediation

Two experiments were performed for the purpose of isolating factors that influence speed of memory scanning by children. The first experiment revealed an interaction involving age and type of stimulus. Young children required relatively greater time to process ambiguous stimuli. The second experiment, involving a pretraining phase designed to induce mediation, showed that preschool children scan representations more rapidly when given instructions to apply a mediator.     

Input- and output-monitoring in implicit and explicit memory

Previous experiments have shown that the procedure of questioning subjects retrospectively about the input and output status of information (input and output monitoring) is a useful method for assessing the awareness states of subjects during implicit and explicit memory tasks. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the previous findings could be extended to other implicit and explicit memory tasks. We were especially interested in whether differences in input- and output-monitoring performance can be observed when both the implicit and explicit memory tasks are conceptual ones. In a final test phase, the target items from the study phase and new distractor items were presented. In a recognition-like situation, subjects had to decide whether an item had been presented in the study phase (input status), as well as whether they had produced the item in the memory-test phase (output status). In all three experiments judgments about the input status - but only for those items that had been produced in the implicit or in the explicit memory test - were more precise after explicit than after implicit memory testings. This finding was not influenced by the distinction between perceptual and conceptual-memory tasks (Exp. 1), and was obtained under conditions in which the implicit and the explicit memory tasks were both conceptual and differed only in test instructions (Exps. 2 and 3). These results suggest that not only subjects performing a perceptual test of implicit memory, but also subjects in a conceptual implicit test were less aware of using information from a previous study episode than subjects who received memory instructions. It is concluded that requiring judgments about the input status of information is a good method for assessing subjects test awareness and is preferable to the use of a questionnaire (Exp. 3). In contrast, in all three experiments no differences were found with the output-monitoring measure between implicit and explicit test conditions.     

Temporal performance in 4-8 year old children. The effect of chronometric information in task execution

The present study explores temporal performance in children between 4 and 11 years of age. In order to optimise the children's performance, verbal instructions and demonstrations were used to specify the temporal requirement of the task. Moreover, specific feedback was given, which indicated the success of a response, or, in case of a mistake, indicated the type of error made. The task was presented in two phases: training and experimental. In the first phase, the child practised until a learning criterion was reached. In the experimental phase, four conditions were defined according to the information provided to the children. In general, the results of the training phase showed an improvement in performance with advancing age. Significant differences were found in children between 7 and 8 years of age, which points to an important transition period. Results of the experimental phase showed a pronounced impact of instructions on the performance of the task and on the strategies used to control timing behaviour. Specifically, the instructions that contained chronometric information caused an impairment in task performance and a change in the strategy used.     

Sex differences in competition—cooperation behavior of children at two age levels

Competitive or cooperative behaviors of children were observed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 7- to 9-year-old boys and girls played a board game with same- or opposite-sex partners under instructions which stressed either group or individual performance. Girls' behavior varied as a function of both instructions and partner sex. Girls playing the game with boys showed more highly competitive behavior than did girls who played the game with girls. Boys were highly competitive under all conditions. In Experiment 2, preschool children were observed in a similar game. For both sexes, children who played the game with opposite-sex partners were more competitive and obtained fewer rewards than those who interacted with same-sex partners. Thus, with development, boys show a change from selective competitiveness to a very general tendency to compete, while girls show a consistent tendency to vary their game behavior according to situational cues such as those provided by instructions or the sex of a game partner.A report of the first experiment was made at the Third Biennial Southeastern Conference of the Society for Research in Child Development, Chapel Hill, March 1974. The authors would like to thank the personnel of St. Francis Cabrini School and the Children's House Montessori School of New Orleans, Louisiana, for their cooperation in providing research participants.     

证据顺序和证词自信度对学前末期儿童因果推理的影响

开展两个实验探究证据顺序和证词自信水平对5岁儿童因果推理的影响机制。132名和127名5岁儿童分别参与实验1和实验2。实验1发现证据顺序对儿童因果推理的影响表现为近因效应,但证词的自信水平差异不影响儿童的因果推理;实验2发现如果儿童注意到证词的自信水平信息,他们更倾向于在自信证词条件依据证词推断因果关系,证据顺序的影响力被削弱。研究结果说明证据顺序变化导致易受影响的近因效应。     

Artifact and Barber's model of hypnosis: A logical-empirical analysis

Two studies examined the relevance of artifact to Barber's model of hypnosis. Study I analyzed subjects' perceptions of instructions employed by the paradigm and demonstrated strong social pressure in the model's task motivational set not present in its standard set of hypnotic induction instructions. Study II coped with the artifact by applying the standard methodology of the model but employing a set of modified hypnotic instructions equivalent in constraint to the task motivational set. Results for 88 subjects indicated a possible behavioral consequence of the artifact variable involving an interaction between type of instruction and ease of hypnotic test item; individual differences in suggestibility also appeared to discriminate conditions with respect to the artifact in question. Collectively, results indicate that the major inference drawn from the paradigm regarding the expendability of the concept of trance should be accepted with caution.     

Effects of differential reinforcement and task difficulty on preschoolers' compliance with teacher instructions

Preschool children in day schools were given instructions to complete certain tasks. Four tasks were given of two types and two levels of difficulty. In each condition compliance with at most one instruction (one task) was reinforced. In two similar experiments, with six children, general results were: compliance with easy tasks was maintained without reinforcement when any task compliance was reinforced; compliance for hard tasks remained high only when that specific task was reinforced. Thus, generalization of compliance with instructions varied with task difficulty. The setting and procedure for both studies were designed to reduce possible coercive features of laboratory studies of generalized performance. Results show generalized performance can occur under naturalistic conditions. The effect of effort, as a response characteristic affecting generalized performance, is discussed.     

Dissociating automatic and intentional processes in children's eyewitness memory

Two experiments investigated the contribution of automatic and intentional memory processes to 5- and 8-year-old children's acceptance of misinformation. Children were presented with a picture story followed by misleading postevent details that either were read to participants or were self-generated in response to semantic and perceptual hints. Children were then given a recognition test under 2 instructional conditions. In the inclusion condition children reported whether they remembered items from either of the previous phases. In the exclusion condition children were instructed to exclude postevent suggestions. Children were more likely to accept misled-generate items compared to misled-read items in the inclusion condition, but the opposite was the case under exclusion instructions. Both automaticity and recollection (cf. L. L. Jacoby, 1991) influenced misinformation acceptance, but the role of automatic processes declined with age.     

Differences in the search rate of children and adults in short-term memory

When people recognize a test item as belonging or not belonging to a previously presented set, recognition latency increases with the number of items in the set. Although some evidence suggests otherwise, it is currently held that the rate of this increase is the same for children and adults. In contrast, the present experiments indicated a much slower search rate for second graders (mean age = 7.33 years) than for seventh (mean age = 12.50 years) and twelfth graders (mean age = 17.25 years). Moreover, search rate for second graders was invariant under instructions which did or did not emphasize speed and with presentation of the memory set in either the auditory or visual modality. Experiment II showed that the slow search rate for children was not due to differences in encoding between children and adults.     

Systematic desensitization in an experimental setting: A follow-up study

A follow-up study was done of female college student volunteers who had been treated for marked fear of snakes using systematic desensitization under four experimental conditions. In the original study four groups were differentiated on the basis of: (1) therapeutic instructions and praise; (2) therapeutic instructions alone; (3) praise alone; and (4) neither therapeutic instructions nor praise. At follow-up Ss were reassessed on a behavioral test of their ability to approach and handle a snake, and were interviewed to determine whether they had discerned the conditions of the original experiment.

Twenty-five of the original thirty-two Ss (78 per cent) were assessed a mean of 9.5 months after their experimental post-test. All four groups maintained their original gains and the inter-relationships of the groups remained stable: only instructions had a statistically significant added effect over systematic desensitization; the reinforcement and interaction factors did not attain statistical significance. From the interview data it could not be demonstrated that Ss were aware of either the instructional or reinforcement conditions of their respective groups.     

An examination of the effects of adult age on explicit and implicit learning of figural sequences

Memory for previously learned figural sequences and item-to-item covariations within figural sequences was examined under explicit and implicit instructional conditions in three age groups: young adults (17-23 years); middle-aged adults (35-45 years); and older adults (55-65 years). In Phase 1 of the experiment, the acquisition phase, half the subjects in each age group learned sequences of three to eight items in which the item-to-item changes conformed to an artificial grammar, and the other half of the subjects in each age group learned strings in which the item-to-item changes were nongrammatical. In Phase 2, the implicit/explicit test phase, subjects made forced-choice judgments about parts of the strings that they learned in Phase 1, under either explicit or implicit instructions. Analyses of Phase 2 data revealed that subjects in both instructional conditions used item-to-item covariations in making decisions about grammatical strings. However, use of previously learned covariations as well as the number of correct judgments about previously learned strings was greater in the explicit condition than in the implicit condition. An age-related deficit was found for explicit recognition of grammar-following sequences.     

Interleaving reading and acting while following procedural instructions

Memory for an interactive procedure acquired from written instructions is improved if the procedure can be carried out while the instructions are being read. The size of the read-act cycle was manipulated in Experiments 1 and 2 by comparing chunked instruction-following, in which 3 or 4 steps are read then performed with single-step conditions. In both experiments, enforced chunking improved subsequent unaided performance of the procedure. In Experiment 3, participants were allowed to manage the interleaving of reading and acting. The imposition of a small behavioral cost (a single mouse point-and-click operation) on the switch between instructions and device encouraged more chunking and better subsequent test performance. The authors concluded that the interleaving of reading and acting is an important practical concern in the design of interactive procedures and that more effective chunk-based strategies can quite readily be encouraged.     

Let's pretend: The role of motoric imagery in memory for sentences and words

A number of theories suggest that for young children, concepts should have an important motoric (or sensory-motor) component. A levels-of-processing theory is proposed which predicts that processing on motoric imagery should facilitate memory for both isolated words and for sentences. Experiment 1 examined the effects of motoric enactment (viz., pretend play) of sentences on memory for the sentences. Motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (5 to 7 years of age) and adults, though, contrary to expectations, the effects were weaker for the children than for the adults. Further, it was found that motoric imagery affected the initial acquisition, but was not important as a retreival cue. Experiment 2 examined the effects of motoric imagery on free recall of lists of unrelated words. Under these conditions, motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (7 to 9 years of age) and adults equally; in contrast, visual imagery instructions had no effect on memory. These results indicate that motoric imagery may facilitate memory under conditions in which visual imagery has no effect. Theoretical implications are explored for previous experiments on pretend play which suggest that training for pretent enactment can facilitate cognitive development.     

儿童行为与心理水平的特质推理的发展

选取4岁组、5岁组、7岁组、10岁组、12岁组儿童和成人共192名(各年龄组32名, 男女各半)为被试, 采用个别测查法考察学前和小学儿童行为与心理水平的特质推理发展。结果表明: (1)4岁时儿童已能进行行为水平的特质推理, 5岁时才能进行心理水平的特质推理, 即使用特质引发规则进行特质推理, 10岁时两者均达到成人水平。(2)4岁、5岁时儿童心理水平的特质推理显著落后于行为水平的特质推理, 至少7岁时两者处于同一水平上。(3)儿童使用概念相似规则而不是情境匹配规则进行行为预测。(4)4岁儿童不使用简单效价规则进行行为预测, 5岁及以上儿童使用简单效价规则, 但他们是在区分同一特质范畴和不同特质范畴的基础上、在较低的确定程度上使用该规则。     

Characteristics of implicit chaining in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)

In human cognition there has been considerable interest in observing the conditions under which subjects learn material without explicit instructions to learn. In the present experiments, we adapted this issue to nonhumans by asking what subjects learn in the absence of explicit reinforcement for correct responses. Two experiments examined the acquisition of sequence information by cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) when such learning was not demanded by the experimental contingencies. An implicit chaining procedure was used in which visual stimuli were presented serially on a touchscreen. Subjects were required to touch one stimulus to advance to the next stimulus. Stimulus presentations followed a pattern, but learning the pattern was not necessary for reinforcement. In Experiment 1 the chain consisted of five different visual stimuli that were presented in the same order on each trial. Each stimulus could occur at any one of six touchscreen positions. In Experiment 2 the same visual element was presented serially in the same five locations on each trial, thereby allowing a behavioral pattern to be correlated with the visual pattern. In this experiment two new tests, a Wild-Card test and a Running-Start test, were used to assess what was learned in this procedure. Results from both experiments indicated that tamarins acquired more information from an implicit chain than was required by the contingencies of reinforcement. These results contribute to the developing literature on nonhuman analogs of implicit learning.     

Recognition and recall by children and adults as a function of variations in memory encoding instructions

In four experiments Ss were instructed to learn a set of 40 words by producing implicit associative responses to each item (association instructions), by repeating items over and over (repetition instruction), or by using their own devices (neutral instructions). Experiment I showed that recognition memory (RM) accuracy was greatest under association instructions for adults and children and least under repetition instructions for children. The implications of these results for a frequency theory analysis for RM were discussed. Experiments II, III, and IV examined free recall (FR) as a function of encoding instructions at short (1 min) and long (either 90 min or 24 h) retention intervals. FR was worst under repetition instructions, with little overall difference between the association and neutral conditions. However, in Experiments III and IV, using school children, the neutral condition exceeded the others in FR after 90 min but not after 1 min.     

Children's memory for the premises in a transitive measurement task assessed by elicited and spontaneous justifications

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that children who fail to make the transitive inference do so because they do not recall the premises. In the first, 32% of the children who made an incorrect inference in a transitive measurement task justified their inference by the correct premises. In the second, where spontaneous justification was encouraged by testing dyads on the same task, the percentage was 15%. In neither experiment were there children who justified an incorrect inference by incorrect premises or a solo premise. The results are interpreted as showing that not only can incorrect inferers store the correct premises, but that they can also retrieve them adequately. The pattern and outcome of interactions between nontransitive and transitive inferers in the dyad sessions parallelled similar studies with conserver-nonconserver dyads. Both sets of data were taken as reinforcing the commonality between transitivity and the other concrete operations.