Development in children's representations of transformations and movements

This study tested the hypothesis that fourth-grade children tend more than first-grade children to represent transformations as ordered series of beginning, middle, and end states. On 15 different tasks, children were presented an object state constructed by the experimenter (e.g., a ball of clay or a pipe cleaner bent in the shape of an arc) and told to construct one or two other object states that “go best with” the experimenter's state(s). These instructions allowed children to choose the basis upon which to relate their states to the experimenters'. Fourth-graders predominantly constructed states that were components of continuous movements or transformations, whereas first-graders predominantly constructed states that related to the experimenters' on the basis of figural features. In a second phase of the procedure, we re-presented the states made by children and asked them to reconstruct the associated experimenter-constructed states from memory. As predicted, memory was better for children who spontaneously integrated states in transformations or movements than for children who related states on the basis of perceptual features. The results were discussed in relation to similar findings in other cognitive domains.     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: the explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord.     

Vocational maturity: The effects of school,grade, curriculum and sex

The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness of the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) as a measure of vocational maturity. Using longitudinal data collected over three points in time from three large school systems, answers were sought to each part of the following question: Does the mean VDI score differ (a) among three school systems, (b) among four curricula, (c) among three grades, (d) and between males and females? The statistical methodology used was analysis of variance. The findings indicate that scores on the CMI incrementally increase by grade level. However, the rate and level of this increase is influenced by sex, school, and curriculum effects.     

Explaining age and sex differences in children's handwriting: A neurobiological approach

The present study aimed to assess the effect of age and sex on children's writing performance, as well as to investigate possible age and sex differences between proficient, intermediate and poor writers. Two hundred and ten children aged 7 to 12 years were examined during spontaneous writing, copying and writing to dictation, using the writing scale of the Luria – Nebraska neuropsychological battery. Results showed a significant effect of age in writing performance. The trend towards writing proficiency in childhood was found to be sex related, while boys were overrepresented among the poor writers. The findings are interpreted on the basis of the neurobiological theories of brain development as well as on the different rates of cerebral maturation between the sexes.     

The effects of single and dual representations on children's gesture production

Investigations that focus on children's hand gestures often conclude that gesture production arises as a result of having multiple representations. To date, the predictive validity of this notion has not been tested. In this study, we compared the gestures of 82 five-year-old children holding either a single or a dual representation. The children retold a story narrated to them, with pictures, by the experimenter. In one condition the children heard a false belief story and hence, when retelling, held two beliefs—or representations—concurrently. In the other conditions, the children retold a version of the story without the false belief component and therefore held single representations. Children were four times more likely to gesture in the false belief condition than in two comparable true belief conditions, supporting the notion that gestures may function to externalise some of the child's cognitive process, particularly when they hold multiple representations.     

Fetal habituation performance: Gestational age and sex effects

Habituation is the decrement in response to repeated stimulation. Fetal habituation performance may reflect the functioning of the central nervous system (CNS) prenatally. However, basic characteristics of the prenatal habituation phenomena remain unclear, such as the relationship with gestational age (GA) and fetal sex. The current study investigated the relationship between habituation performance and both fetal sex and advancing gestational age, by comparing habituation performance at 31 and 35 weeks GA within a sample of 74 singleton pregnancies, all with normal neonatal outcomes. A vibroacoustic stimulus was used to habituate the fetus and motor responses were monitored via ultrasound. The criterion for habituation was defined as no response to five consecutive stimulus presentations. Prenatal habituation performance was found to demonstrate a developmental trend, with an increased proportion of fetuses habituating with advancing gestational age and requiring fewer stimulus presentations to satisfy the habituation criterion. Fetal sex also appears to have a moderating influence on gestational changes in habituation performance. Hence, the ongoing maturation of the fetal CNS does appear to be reflected in fetal habituation performance, indicating the need to consider the composition of fetal samples in terms of both gestational age and sex. Variability in interfetal performance was found to be high and clinical applications remain speculative.     

Word-processing training and retraining: effects of adult age, experience, and interface

Novice (Experiment 1) and experienced (Experiment 2) young, middle-aged, and older adults learned a new word-processing application in keystrokes, menus, or menus-plus-icons interface conditions. Novices showed strong age differences in the time to complete the 3-day tutorial and in declarative and procedural tests of word-processing knowledge. Menus and menus-plus-icons were superior to keystrokes condition. though interface did not interact with age. Experienced users showed age-related slowing in learning rate but minimal age differences in test performance when retrained on a new word-processing program. Age and computer experience accounted for much of the variance in both learning time and word-processing performance; interface type, speed of processing, and spatial generation ability made additional contributions. Experience interacted with age to predict performance. Implications for training and retraining older workers are discussed.     

Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery

Spatial aspects of words are associated with their canonical locations in the real world. Yet little research has tested whether spatial associations denoted in language comprehension generalize to their corresponding images. We directly tested the spatial aspects of mental imagery in picture and word processing (Experiment 1). We also tested whether spatial representations of motion words produce similar perceptual-interference effects as demonstrated by object words (Experiment 2). Findings revealed that words denoting an upward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting a downward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the bottom of the display. Perceptual-interference effects did not obtain for pictures or for words lacking a spatial relation. These findings provide greater empirical support for the perceptual-symbols system theory ( Barsalou, 1999, 2008 ).     

Stability over age and sex of children's responses to embedded figures test

240 children in Grades K to 4 were administered the entire Children's Embedded Figures Test to determine whether similar factor structures are obtained from samples of different sex and age as well as when the population is randomly split. Data were analyzed by principal axis factor analysis and relevant factor structures were compared using Veldman's 1967 program "Relate". There was one stable factor which was consistent across sex and accounted for about 19% of the variance. Results were inconsistent across grades and indicated a possible lack of agreement of factor structures.     

Stability of young children's attachment representations: Influence of children's and caregiver's characteristics

This research explores the stability of attachment representations, assessed by the Attachment Story Completion Task, within early childhood. Hypotheses were also formed about the influence of parenting, externalizing behavior and intelligence quotient (IQ) on the developmental course of children's attachment representations. Data were collected from 358 French-speaking Belgian children. Security and disorganization showed a linear improvement with age. The effect of time on the two growth curves was influenced by the child's externalizing behavior. When language abilities were controlled for in a subsample of referred children for externalizing behavior, the growth in security was found to be influenced by reasoning IQ, but the effects for disorganization were unchanged. The implications of the results for both research and clinical purposes are discussed.     

Explaining sex differences in mental rotation: role of spatial activity experience

Males consistently outperform females on mental rotation tasks, such as the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47(2), 599–604, mental rotation test (MRT; e.g. Voyer et al. 1995) in Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250–265. The present study investigates whether these sex differences in MRT scores can be explained in part by early spatial activity experience, particularly those spatial activities that have been sex-typed as masculine/male-oriented. Utilizing an online survey, 571 ethnically diverse adult university students completed a brief demographic survey, an 81-item spatial activity survey, and the MRT. Results suggest that the significant relation between sex of the participant and MRT score is partially mediated by the number of masculine spatial activities participants had engaged in as youth. Closing the gap between males and females in spatial ability, a skill linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics success, may be accomplished in part by encouraging female youth to engage in more particular kinds of spatial activities.     

Individual differences in children's emotion understanding: effects of age and language

Over the last two decades, it has been established that children's emotion understanding changes as they develop. Recent studies have also begun to address individual differences in children's emotion understanding. The first goal of this study was to examine the development of these individual differences across a wide age range with a test assessing nine different components of emotion understanding. The second goal was to examine the relation between language ability and individual differences in emotion understanding. Eighty children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years were tested. Children displayed a clear improvement with age in both their emotion understanding and language ability. In each age group, there were clear individual differences in emotion understanding and language ability. Age and language ability together explained 72% of emotion understanding variance; 20% of this variance was explained by age alone and 27% by language ability alone. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.     

The effects of repeated experience on children's suggestibility

The effect of suggestive questions on 3- to 5-year-old and 6- to 8-year-old children's recall of the final occurrence of a repeated event was examined. The event included fixed (identical) items as well as variable items where a new instantiation represented the item in each occurrence of the series. Relative to reports of children who participated in a single occurrence, children's reports about fixed items of the repeated event were more accurate and less contaminated by false suggestions. For variable items, repeated experience led to a decline in memory of the specific occurrence; however, there was no increase in susceptibility to suggestions about details that had not occurred. Most errors after repeated experience were intrusions of details from nontarget occurrences. Although younger children and children who were interviewed a while after the event were more suggestible, respectively, than older children and those interviewed soon after the event, repeated experience attenuated these effects.     

The effects of physical work, mental work, and quantity on children's time perception

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of work and quantity cues on children's time perception. Ninety-seven children in kindergarten and Grades 2, 4, and 6 lifted and transferred pipes under eight different conditions, after which they reproduced the perceived time taken to move the pipes. The conditions varied by quantity (two/four pipes), by mental work (no-matching/matching), and by physical work (light/heavy pipes). Significant main effects were found for quantity, physical work, and mental work, and for the quantity x age and mental work x physical work interactions. These results can help to disentangle possible confounds among these variables in the classic Piagetian experiments about their effects on time judgment and perception.