Goals and targets: a developmental puzzle about sensitivity to others’ actions

Sensitivity to others’ actions is essential for social animals like humans and a fundamental requirement for any kind of social cognition. Unsurprisingly, it is present in humans from early in the first year of life. But what processes underpin infants’ sensitivity to others’ actions? Any attempt to answer this question must solve twin puzzles about the development of goal tracking. Why does some, but not all, of infants’ goal tracking appear to be limited by their abilities to represent the observed action motorically at the time it occurs? And why does their sensitivity to action sometimes manifest itself differently in dishabituation, pupil dilation and anticipatory looking? Solving these twin puzzles is critical for understanding humans’ earliest sensitivity to others’ actions. After introducing the puzzles, this paper argues that solving them may require identifying multiple, distinct processes for tracking the targets and goals of actions.

     

When do we simulate non-human agents? Dissociating communicative and non-communicative actions

There is strong evidence that we automatically simulate observed behavior in our motor system. Previous research suggests that this simulation process depends on whether we observe a human or a non-human agent. Measuring a motor priming effect, this study investigated the question of whether agent-sensitivity of motor simulation depends on the specific action observed. Participants saw pictures depicting end positions of different actions on a screen. All postures featured either a human or non-human agent. Participants had to produce the matching action with their left or right hand depending on the hand presented on the screen. Three different actions were displayed: a communicative action (emblem), a transitive (goal-directed) action and an intransitive action. We found motor priming effects of similar size for human and non-human agents for transitive and intransitive actions. However, the motor priming effect for communicative actions was present for the human agent, but absent for the non-human agent. These findings suggest that biological tuning of motor simulation is highly action-selective and depends on whether the observed behavior appears to be driven by a reasonable goal.     

Lebanese adolescents’ expectations about social inclusion of peers in intergroup contexts

This study examined the role of group norms, group identity, age, contact, and stereotypes on youths’ decisions to include a peer in an intergroup context portraying Lebanese and American adolescents. Lebanese participants (N = 275), ages 12 and 16 years, were surveyed about expectations for inclusion of an out-group target with similar interests or an in-group target with different interests into their own Lebanese group or another American group. Findings indicated participants focused on shared interests, rather than national identity, when making inclusion decisions for either group and group norms mattered. Older participants expected American peers to be less inclusive towards an out-group peer. Direct contact predicted inclusivity of out-group American peers into one’s own Lebanese group, and indirect media-based contact predicted expectations for inclusivity into an American out-group. Findings have implications for interventions aimed at improving cross-national friendships which, in turn, have the potential to reduce prejudicial attitudes.     

Young infants’ expectations about hidden objects: a reply to three challenges

In this article, I address three broad challenges that have been directed at claims that even young infants are able to represent and to reason about hidden objects. The first challenge is that such claims are static and non-developmental and as such represent an unproductive approach to the study of infant cognition. The second challenge is that claims that even young infants represent hidden objects typically go hand in hand with assertions that infants are born with a belief that objects exist continuously in time and move continuously through space, and there is no evidence to date to support such assertions. Finally, the third challenge is that reports that young infants represent hidden objects can all be explained more parsimoniously in terms of low level perceptual biases in infants’ encoding and processing of events, or in terms of transient expectations formed during habituation trials and later extended to test trials.     

Learners’ choices and beliefs about self-testing

Students have to make scores of practical decisions when they study. We investigated the effectiveness of, and beliefs underlying, one such practical decision: the decision to test oneself while studying. Using a flashcards-like procedure, participants studied lists of word pairs. On the second of two study trials, participants either saw the entire pair again (pair mode) or saw the cue and attempted to generate the target (test mode). Participants were asked either to rate the effectiveness of each study mode (Experiment 1) or to choose between the two modes (Experiment 2). The results demonstrated a mismatch between metacognitive beliefs and study choices: Participants (incorrectly) judged that the pair mode resulted in the most learning, but chose the test mode most frequently. A post-experimental questionnaire suggested that self-testing was motivated by a desire to diagnose learning rather than a desire to improve learning.     

Is young children’s recognition of pretense metarepresentational or merely behavioral? Evidence from 2- and 3-year-olds’ understanding of pretend sounds and speech

When young children observe pretend-play, do they interpret it simply as a type of behavior, or do they infer the underlying mental state that gives the behavior meaning? This is a long-standing question with deep implications for how “theory on mind” develops. The two leading accounts of shared pretense give opposing answers. The behavioral theory proposes that children represent pretense as a form of behavior (behaving in a way that would be appropriate if P); the metarepresentational theory argues that children instead represent pretense via the early concept PRETEND. A test between these accounts is provided by children’s understanding of pretend sounds and speech. We report the first experiments directly investigating this understanding. In three experiments, 2- and 3-year-olds’ listened to requests that were either spoken normally, or with the pretense that a teddy bear was uttering them. To correctly fulfill the requests, children had to represent the normal utterance as the experimenter’s, and the pretend utterances as the bear’s. Children succeeded at both ages, suggesting that they can represent pretend speech (the requests) as coming from counterfactual sources (the bear rather than the experimenter). We argue that this is readily explained by the metarepresentational theory, but harder to explain if children are behaviorists about pretense.     

What does syntax say about space? 2-year-olds use sentence structure to learn new prepositions

Children as young as two use sentence structure to learn the meanings of verbs. We probed the generality of sensitivity to sentence structure by moving to a different semantic and syntactic domain, spatial prepositions. Twenty-six-month-olds used sentence structure to determine whether a new word was an object-category name (This is a corp!) or a spatial-relational term (This is acorp my box!). We argue that children rely on the intimate relationship between nouns in sentences and semantic arguments of predicate terms: Noting that a new word takes noun arguments identifies the new word as a predicate term, and directs the child's attention to relations among its arguments.     

The development of norm-based coding and race-specific face prototypes: An examination of 5- and 8-year-olds’ face space

The current research investigated the organization of children’s face space by examining whether 5- and 8-year-olds show race-contingent aftereffects. Participants read a storybook in which Caucasian and Chinese children’s faces were distorted in opposite directions. Before and after adaptation, participants judged the normality/attractiveness of expanded, compressed, and undistorted Caucasian and Chinese faces. The method was validated with adults and then refined to test 8- and 5-year-olds. The 5-year-olds were also tested in a simple aftereffects paradigm. The current research provides the first evidence for simple attractiveness aftereffects in 5-year-olds and for race-contingent aftereffects in both 5- and 8-year-olds. Evidence that adults and 5-year-olds may possess only a weak prototype for Chinese children’s faces suggests that Caucasian adults’ prototype for Chinese adult faces does not generalize to child faces and that children’s face space undergoes a period of increasing differentiation between 5 and 8 years of age.     

Cultural and communicative memories: contrasting Argentina’s 1976 coup d’état and the 2001 economic-political-social crisis

Studies on collective memory have recently addressed the distinction between cultural and communicative memory as a way to understand how the source of a memory affects its structure or form. When a groups’ memory is mediated by memorials, documentaries or any other cultural artifacts, collective memory is shaped by cultural memory. When it is based mostly in communication with other people, its source is communicative memory. We address this distinction by studying two recent events in Argentinean history: the 2001 economic-political-social crisis (communicative memory) and the 1976 coup (cultural memory). We also examine the political ideology and the type of memory involved in collective memory. The memory of the studied events may occur during the lifetime of the rememberer (Lived Memory) or refer to distant events (Distant Memory). 100 participants responded to a Free Recall task about the events of 2001 in Argentina. Narrative analysis allowed comparing these recalls with our 1976 study. Results show: 1) Cultural memories are more contextualised, more impersonal and less affective. 2) Communicative memories are more personal and affective. Study shows how collective memory form changes when it has a different prevalent source.     

Do familiarity and expectations change perception? Drivers’ glances and response to changes

The present study shows that repeated exposure to a road environment changes eye movement behaviour. In addition, repeated exposure may result in inadequate responses to unexpected changes in the road environment. Participants drove a low-cost simulator while their eye movements were recorded. With repeated exposure participants’ glances at traffic signs along the route were shorter while having a better recollection of the traffic signs along the route. At the last drive, the priority situation at an intersection was changed (a priority road was changed into a yield situation). Even though drivers glanced at the sign that indicated the new priority situation, they did not sufficiently process the information to show an adequate response. Only two out of 12 drivers showed any response, being a response only after crossing the priority road markings. The current finding that unexpected but relevant information may be missed by drivers is relevant for other monitoring tasks.     

Enactment effects and integration processes in younger and older adults’ memory for actions

The present study investigates the mental processes that are applied to previously attended items of working memory. In an object-switching task, participants counted the number of sequentially presented objects. In Experiment 1 the processing time increased when the object category switched from the prior trial compared to a repetition. More importantly, the further in the past the last instance of a current category was presented, the more processing time was necessary—an observation suggesting passive decay rather than inhibition of previously attended items. However, results differed when only two object categories were employed. Experiment 2 suggests that the lack of a clear indication of decay with small numbers of categories was due to participants’ expectancy of category switches rather than repetitions. Taken together, the results suggest that working memory items become less accessible the longer they have not been attended to, when strategic processes are controlled.     

Ockham’s razor and reasoning about information flow

What is the minimal algebraic structure to reason about information flow? Do we really need the full power of Boolean algebras with co-closure and de Morgan dual operators? How much can we weaken and still be able to reason about multi-agent scenarios in a tidy compositional way? This paper provides some answers.     

The interrelatedness between infants’ communicative gestures and lexicon size: A longitudinal study

Research has shown a close relationship between gestures and language development. In this study, we investigate the cross-lagged relationships between different types of gestures and two lexicon dimensions: number of words produced and comprehended. Information about gestures and lexical development was collected from 48 typically developing infants when these were aged 0;9, 1;0 and 1;3. The European Portuguese version of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (PT CDI:WG) was used. The results indicated that the total number of actions and gestures and the number of early gestures produced at 0;9 and at 1;0 year predicted the number of words comprehended three months later. Actions and gestures’ predictive power of the number of words produced was limited to the 0;9–1;0 year interval. The opposite relationship was not found: word comprehension and production did not predict action and gestures three months later. These results highlight the importance of non-verbal communicative behavior in language development.     

Parental expectations and school relationships as contributors to adolescents’ positive outcomes

Researchers examined associations of parental expectations and parental school relationships with school outcomes among U.S. middle and high school students. Nationally representative data involving families from the National Household Education Surveys were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Measures included interview responses about parent expectations for their children’s long term educational attainment (ranging from dropping out of high school to obtaining a JD/PhD/MD) and how much parents feel welcomed at school, trust and have positive interactions with educators. The latter three variables formed a latent variable called parent school relationship. Analyses controlled for SES (parents’ educational attainment and household income), family structure, gender, and ethnicity. The school outcomes variable was derived from parental report of students’ grades, retention in any grade and behavior problems at school. Parental expectations were positively related (standardized path coefficient = .44, $p<.01$ ) to positive school outcomes and had a stronger effect than SES (standardized path coefficient = .24). Parent school relationships were also positively related to school outcomes. These findings suggest that psychologists and educators should be aware of the potential for parents to play a significant role (e.g., via expectations and developing supportive relationships with educators) in children’s education, even in middle and high school.     

What elicits third-party anger? The effects of moral violation and others’ outcome on anger and compassion

People often get angry when they perceive an injustice that affects others but not themselves. In two studies, we investigated the elicitation of third-party anger by varying moral violation and others’ outcome presented in newspaper articles. We found that anger was highly contingent on the moral violation. Others’ outcome, although relevant for compassion, were not significantly relevant for anger (Study 1 and Study 2a) or less relevant for anger than for compassion (Study 2b). This indicates that people can be morally outraged: anger can be elicited by a perceived violation of moral values alone, independent of the harm done. A severe negative consequence for others is not necessary to elicit anger.     

Teachers’ academic and behavioral expectations and girls’ pubertal development: Does the classroom learning environment matter?

Experiencing puberty earlier than one’s peers has been linked with behavioral and academic problems in school, particularly among girls. Previously, we reported that practicing elementary school teachers expect girls who develop early to have more academic and social problems in the future, with girls’ race exacerbating these effects (Carter et al. 2017). The present study extends this previous research by examining whether characteristics within classroom learning environments (i.e., Competition, Order and Organization, Innovation, and Rule Clarity) affect the extent to which teachers use girls’ race and pubertal timing as a basis for their expectations. Practicing elementary school teachers (N?=?220; M_age?=?43 years; 91% female; 84% White) were randomly shown behavioral vignettes in two conditions (academic, externalizing) with drawings of fourth-grade Black and White pubertal-age girls, and were asked to report their academic and social expectations of the girls shown in the vignettes. Findings highlight the nuanced ways that classroom environments, girls’ race, and pubertal timing influence educators’ expectations. For example, in the academic condition, teachers who were highly innovative and orderly in the classroom expected Black relative to White early-developing girls to have more problems acquiring and using information (i.e., academic problems); however, White late-developing girls were expected to have more problems acquiring and using information. Conversely, in the externalizing condition, teachers who were highly innovative and orderly in the classroom expected Black late-developing girls to have more problems interacting and relating to others (i.e., social problems). These results highlight the importance of a multifaceted approach to studying race, biological sex, and puberty-related effects in schools.     

An investigation of the relationship between teachers’ expectations and teachers’ perceptions of student attributes

Little is known about factors other than students’ abilities and background variables that shape teachers’ achievement expectations. This study was aimed at investigating the role of teachers’ perceptions of students attributes (working habits, popularity, self-confidence, student–teacher relationships, and classroom behavior) in shaping teachers’ expectations. The sample analyzed consisted of 5316 students and 469 classes in grade 6 in Dutch primary education. Teachers had higher expectations for students who they perceived as self-confident and having positive work habits. Differences in expectations between boys and girls could partly be explained by the teachers’ perceptions of students’ work habits. Teachers differed in the extent to which they let their perceptions of student attributes shape their expectations.