Classes,collections, and distinctive features: Alternative strategies for solving inclusion problems

This study analyzed the strategies that children ages 5 through 8 years used on two modified versions of Inhelder and Piaget's (The early growth of logic in the child. New York: Norton, 1964) class inclusion task. In two experiments, children were tested on Wilkinson's (Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 64–85) “percept” inclusion task in which distinctive features marked both supraordinate and subclasses. It was hypothesized that children who fail standard Piagetian inclusion tasks succeed on the “percept” task by counting and comparing mutually exclusive features rather than using features as markers for classes and subclasses. The hypothesis was supported by children's performances on “percept” tasks in which solutions based on feature counting conflicted with solutions based on consideration of class inclusion relations. In two other experiments, children answered part-whole and part-part comparison questions in which both terms were described as classes and/or subclasses, or in which one of the two terms was described as a collection (e.g., a bunch of grapes). These experiments contrasted Markman and Seibert's (Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 561–577) “organization” hypothesis that the greater psychological integrity of collections facilitates reasoning on part-whole comparison problems with the hypothesis that the faciltative effect results from the “large number” connotation of collective nouns. Results on collection problems in which parts were described as collections supported the “large number” hypothesis. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for Piaget's theory.     

Children's use of expectations as a source of information in language comprehension

Six studies of children's comprehension of the passive transformation and of the Minimum Distance Principle are reviewed and their results integrated. Children were in kindergarten through Grade 6, inclusive. Expectations about usual grammatical relations (e.g., agent/action combinations) significantly affected children's comprehension: sentences reflecting expectations were understood more often than sentences contradicting children's expressed expectations. Results are discussed within the framework of referential event strategies in understanding spoken language. Limits of the effect of children's expectation on comprehension are described, including general cognitive developmental status, relevant belief systems, and nature of the psycholinguistic task.     

Assessing inference production in 5 to 7-year-olds: Benefits of using a pictorial task

IntroductionThis study focuses on the methodology used to assess children's inferential skills in a narrative comprehension context with children aged between 5 to 7 years.ObjectiveThe aim of this study is to test the validity of a pictorial task based on children's literature to probe children's ability to make inferences at different times during the listening of fictional stories.MethodThe task involves selecting one of three vignettes which best illustrates what is currently happening in the story (i.e., inferential vs. literal vs. off-topic). The choices expressed here are compared to those made during a preference task performed by the same students, which consists of selecting the vignette they like the most among each series presented in the comprehension task.ResultsFirst, based on the analysis of the data collected in the comprehension task, children most often select inferential vignettes. Second, the choices expressed in the comprehension task differ from those expressed in the preference task.ConclusionThese results confirm the relevance of using children's literature associated with a pictorial task to test children's inferential skills, even with preschoolers.     

The use of English stress assignment rules by children taught either with traditional orthography or with the initial teaching alphabet

This experiment examines children's use of spelling conventions as a guide to pronunciation, and their ability to handle stress assignment rules. The subjects, 7-year-old school children, of whom half had learned to read and write using traditional orthography (t.o.) and half had learned using the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), read out short simple sentences each containing a two-syllable nonsense word. The grammatical category and the spelling of the nonsense words were varied systematically. It was found that, in assigning stress, both groups of children were influenced by phonemic and grammatical features in a manner similar to that predicted by Chomsky and Halle (1968), but they differed in their handling of the silent final e. It was the i.t.a. children whose use of this orthographic device was more in accordance with Chomsky and Halle's theory, despite their relative lack of experience with it. A comparison with Smith and Baker's (1976) adult subjects indicated substantial differences between adults and children, particularly in their treatment of words with a lax final vowel.     

Speaker bias in children's evaluation of the external consistency of statements

The hypothesis of this study is that an assumption of speaker credibility affects children's judgments of the external consistency of statements. In two experiments, first and third grade children (6 and 8 years of age, respectively) and college adults were read short paragraphs containing contradictory information from a contextual source and a speaker. The contextual source was described as either authoritative or nonauthoritative and discredited. The speaker was either an adult or child. Thus the contextual source was either more or less reliable than the speaker. Subjects were asked to affirm or contradict the speaker's statement, and to choose either the source or the speaker as most believable. The results showed that adult responses varied with the contextual source alone, while the responses of the first graders varied primarily with the speaker's age. The responses of the third graders varied with both factors. The results suggest young children can assess the external consistency of statements but frequently do not because of their assumptions about speakers and other performance factors.     

A new processing model for predicting performance on Pascual-Leone's test of M-space

A new model is proposed for explaining children's performance on Pascual-Leone's test of M-space. The model differs from Pascual-Leone's in three regards. (1) It assumes that children do not stop sampling a compound stimulus until every simple stimulus in their field of attention has already been noticed and responded to. (2) It assumes that the probability of sampling different combinations of simple stimuli conforms to the laws of Maxwell-Boltzman statistics rather than Bose-Einstein statistics. (3) It assumes that children's ability to detect all the simple stimuli in a compound stimulus is highly dependent both on the relative saliencies of the simple stimuli and on the length of time for which the compound stimulus is exposed. Using the developmental values of M hypothesized by Pascual-Leone, and standard techniques of computer simulation, the new model is used to generate theoretical performance curves for children at four different age levels and seven different levels of stimulus complexity. It is shown that the predicted performance curves for an exposure time of 5 sec provide a reasonable fit to the data originally reported by Pascual-Leone (1970), and that the predicted performance curves for an exposure time of 10 sec provide a reasonable fit to data obtained more recently by Parkinson (1976). Finally, it is shown that the order of children's responses as well as the number of their responses can be predicted. Two conclusions are drawn. (1) The new processing model offers a viable alternative to the model originally proposed by Pascual-Leone. (2) Regardless of which processing model is employed, the M-values originally postulated by Pascual-Leone are valid.     

Relations of socioeconomic status and sex variables to the complexity of worker functions in the occupational choices of elementary school children

The relationships of sex and socioeconomic status to complexity of worker functions in the occupational choices of elementary school children were studied. Complexity of worker functions was defined in terms of the most complex level of interaction required of a worker, when interacting with data, people, and things. The children included in the study were third- and fifth-grade students, divided on the basis of grade, sex, and socioeconomic status. The children's occupational choices were scored for complexity with the code numbers of the worker function hierarchies of the U.S. Employment Service's Dictionary of Occupational Titles (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1977, 4th ed.). Findings based on the obtained data indicated the following: (a) a positive relationship between socioeconomic status and complexity of data manipulation in occupational choices; and (b) greater complexity of interaction with things in the occupational choices of boys, than girls. The positive relationship between socioeconomic status and complexity of data manipulation was accounted for by the children's exposure to their parents' orientation toward data manipulation. Apparent differences in the play activities of boys and girls was used to explain differences between the sexes in the levels of complexity of interactions with inanimate objects and animals.     

Developmental inter-relationships among concrete operational tasks: An investigation of Piaget's stage concept

One hundred and one primary school children were tested on eight concrete operational tasks. Each child's performance on each task was classified as either preoperational, transitional, or fully operational. Cross-classification tables were constructed showing the joint classification of children's performance on all possible pairs of the eight tasks. Two models of intertask relations, Wohlwill's (The study of behavioral development. New York: Academic Press, 1973) divergent-decalage and reciprocal-interaction patterns, were evaluated for their fit to the cross-classification data using χ² goodness-of-fit procedures. Instances of both these patterns were identified in the data. The findings give some support to Flavell and Wohlwill's modification of Piaget's stage concept, in which individual groupings (e.g., seriation) are the structural basis of the interrelationships among concrete operational tasks. Tasks based on the same rule showed a degree of developmental interdependence (reciprocal-interaction patterns), while tasks based on different rules appeared to develop independently (divergent-decalage patterns). However, only one-half of the cross-classification tables were adequately described by either the divergent-decalage or the reciprocal-interaction patterns.     

Children's component selection with varying degrees of training

With the component selection measure developed by Hale and Morgan (1973), children's use of selective attention was assessed at six levels of learning, ranging from undertraining to overtraining, and this function was examined at each of ages 4, 8, and 12. It was found that, as the children learned the task, they maintained a relatively wide focus of attention, acquiring information about both features of the stimuli, color and shape. Thus, contrary to the model under investigation, the children did not exercise a high degree of selectivity as they approached mastery of the task; nor did overtraining produce the expected “broadening” of attention, as the children acquired little stimulus information beyond the point at which criterion had been reached. The data were interpreted to be more consistent with a model that assumes the bulk of stimulus learning to occur prior to task mastery.     

Children's recall of contextually integrable and nonintegrable episodic events

The hypothesis of this study is that children's deficiency in encoding input information may be attributed partially to a failure to fully integrate target and contextual information. Second and fourth grade children and college adults were shown sentences varying in internal integrability in a cued recall task for target nouns in the sentences. The sentences were internally semantically Congruous, Incongruous, or Anomalous. In acquisition, the subjects were told either to read the sentences (Read Encoding) or to rate the likelihood of the occurrence of the sentential event (Integration Encoding). The results showed large developmental differences in both levels of recall and the Congruity effect (superior recall for the Congruous relative to the Anomalous sentences) in the Read condition. These differences were minimized in the Integration condition. These patterns suggest young children are deficient in the contextual integration of episodic events, and, as a result, make inefficient use of semantic information in the encoding of input information.     

Representing logical and semantic structure of knowledge acquired from discourse

A network model of logical and semantic structures from which speakers or writers generate linguistic messages at the discourse level is presented. While linguistic structures were considered in developing the model, the semantic and logical networks are defined without reference to linguistic structures and thus may be used to represent knowledge structures acquired from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources. A second problem addressed is that of determining what logical and semantic information is acquired when a text is understood. To assess acquired knowledge, a procedure is presented for coding a subject's verbal reconstruction of knowledge acquired from a presented text (or other input) against the logical and semantic structure from which the text (or other input) was derived. The procedures are illustrated using data obtained from children who were asked to “retell” simple narrative stories.     

Intelligence and teachers' ratings as predictors of abstract and concrete learning

This study concerned the prediction of children's learning with an individual measure of intelligence and teachers' evaluations. Eight abstract and eight concrete nouns were paired with nonsense geometric figures and presented to 60 elementary school children in a three-trial paired-associate (PA) learning task. Subjects' IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised and teachers' ratings of learning proficiency were used to predict children's performance on the PA task. Multiple correlations favored abstract learning with verbal scale intelligence, accounting for the majority of the variability. Teachers' ratings provided a surprising degree of predictive efficiency for abstract recall which was redundant with verbal intelligence.     

Children's understanding of conversational principles

Sixteen preschool, first-, and third-grade children were presented with short stories ending with a verbal statement by a story character. Two alternative ending statements were provided. One alternative violated a postulate (H. P. Grice, 1975, in P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics (Vol. 3), New York: Academic Press) or a reasonable request condition (D. Gordon & G. Lakoff, 1971, Conversational postulates, papers from the seventh regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Department of Linguistics), while the other alternative did not. The child's task was to choose the “funny or silly“ ending, i.e., the violation. Data analysis showed that 100% of the third-graders, 83% of the first-graders, and 19% of the preschoolers performed with significant (P < .02) accuracy. These results suggest that children's understanding of conversational principles improves considerably between preschool and first grade. There were no significant differences among four types of conversational principles examined.     

Decrements in children's responses to big and tall: A reconsideration of the potential Cognitive and Semantic causes

The potential causes of decrements in children's understanding of big and tall (Maratsos, 1973, Maratsos, 1974, 10, 367–375) are reconsidered. On the basis of data from English-speaking children, two of these hypotheses, the Strong Cognitive Hypothesis and the Strong Semantic Hypothesis, offer equally plausible explanations for those decrements. However, data from Arabic-speaking children between 2;9 and 6;3, who do not show a similar decrement in their understanding of kabiir, support the Strong Semantic Hypothesis that decrements in English-speaking children's understanding of big and tall are due to their positing semantic features such as [+ Vertical] for one word and overgeneralizing them to related words. This, in turn, supports Carey's (M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978. Pp. 264–293) theory that features are abstracted out for words after children are able to use those words correctly on the basis of stored haphazard examples. Further, the results support the view that children at least sometimes posit features for a word on the basis of its individual privileges of occurrence, rather than on the basis of what that word contrasts with.     

Constraints on retrieval search for episodic information in children and adults

The hypothesis that a lack of structural constraint limits children's ability to use context and category cues to search associative memory for episodic information is examined in this study. Second and fifth graders and college adults were shown word triplets at acquisition and asked to recall the final target member of each triplet in a cued recall task. The manipulations concerned sources of associative structure that could constrain retrieval search. The degree to which the members of the triplets were associated was varied, as well as the kind of association, and the kind and amount of retrieval support provided in the cue, and encoding was constrained by orienting questions or was unconstrained. The results showed that children's effective use of retrieval cues was more dependent on episodic associative structure, retrieval support, and the constrained encoding of associative information than was adults'. Differences in the associative structure of information in permanent memory seemed to contribute to the results.     

Excuse inference modification in children and adults

The ability of first- and third-grade children and college adults to make excuse inferences about a speaker's use of an utterance and to modify those inferences appropriately upon receiving later information was examined in four experiments. Short stories containing an utterance by a speaker were read aloud. Utterances in the story were preceded by contextual information that suggested either that the speaker was truthful or making an excuse. Utterances were followed by information that confirmed or disconfirmed the excuse interpretation. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that even first and third graders can make excuse inferences, but these children rarely modify these interpretations upon receiving disconfirming information. In Experiments 2–4 possible reasons for the children's interpretive inflexibility were examined by varying the difficulty of relating the excuse interpretation and succeeding information. Results suggested processing difficulty, as well as an interpretive “set,” contributed to the children's inflexibility.     

Interpreting inclusion: A contribution to the study of the child's cognitive and linguistic development

Six experiments are reported which examine the young child's ability to compare included and nonincluded sets. Results indicate that with certain forms of task presentation most 3- to 5-year-old children can compare part with whole. Further, errors which occur in inclusion tasks are similar to errors which occur in tasks involving comparison of nonincluded sets. Thus young children can solve inclusion problems, and their customary failure to do so does not arise because the problem requires comparison of a whole with an included part. Employing a distinction between intended tasks (those which the adult wishes the child to complete) and received tasks (those which the child, in fact, completes) the studies indicate how linguistic and perceptual aspects of the presented information may interact with the child's assumptions about the nature of the task to be completed.     

Internal spatial relationships in young children's drawings

Attempts to represent the occlusion of a farther object by a nearer one are infrequent in the drawings of 5- and 6-year-olds. Instead they typically draw the objects side by side or one above the other. This does not appear to reflect a limitation of skill (P. Light & E. MacIntosh, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1980, 30, 79–87) and it is hypothesized that it reflects the children's concern with the array of objects per se, as opposed to their own particular view of it. In the present study relatively complex objects were used in order to test the hypothesis that young children's drawings do in fact systematically reflect spatial relationships within the array. Ninety-seven children between 5 and 8 years of age drew two arrays, each being drawn four times in different orientations vis à vis the child. As predicted, the younger children's drawings contained much array-specific information but often no indication an all of the child's viewing position. In contrast, the older children's drawings were predominantly view specific, often containing little information about the arrays.