TV guide: two-year-old children learn to use video as a source of information

Learning to use symbols is a challenge for young children even when the symbol in question (e.g., a live video image) is iconic and seems transparent to adults. This research examined the effect of experience on children's use of video-presented information. Two-year-old children saw themselves "live" on their family television for 2 weeks and then participated in an object-retrieval task. The children reliably used a live video presentation of an adult hiding a toy in an adjoining room to find the toy. Most also transferred what they learned to a task involving another symbol (pictures) that typically is very difficult for this age group. The results reveal flexibility in 2-year-olds' symbol use that follows from successful representation of a symbolic relation.     

The role of effort type and intensity in children's decisions about effort-based outcomes

Despite the importance of persistence in early learning, we know little about how children reason about outcomes that result from their efforts. Here we examined the role of effort type (i.e., physical vs. cognitive) and intensity (i.e., high vs. low effort) in shaping children's decision making about effort-based rewards. Five- to 7-year-olds (N = 133) were assigned to one of four conditions (High Physical Effort, Low Physical Effort, High Cognitive Effort, Low Cognitive Effort) and completed a series of tasks to construct a toy. Tasks varied in the type (physical/cognitive) and intensity (high/low) of effort required to complete them. After constructing their toy, children completed a series of tasks to probe how much they valued that toy. Across conditions, children preferred their toy and gave it a higher monetary value, relative to a stranger's. However, when choosing their toy came at a cost, children no longer preferred it. Only children who built their toy through either cognitive or low effort were willing to incur a cost for their toy. Older children, across conditions, were also more likely to incur a cost for their toy. These findings demonstrate that by age five, children are sensitive to variations in effort type and intensity, and these factors shape how they evaluate effort-based rewards.     

Domain effects in lexical development: learning words for foods and toys

We investigated 3-year-olds’ and adults’ use of domain cues in learning words for solid and nonsolid material entities. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants heard a novel neutral noun (e.g., “my X”) for a standard solid or nonsolid entity described as either a toy or a food. They then were asked to extend the word to one of two other entities. Both options matched the standard in solidity; but one differed from it in an object-relevant property (shape) and the other in a substance-relevant property (color, texture, or smell). Both children and adults were more likely to select the same-shaped entity if the standard was (1) solid than if it was nonsolid, and (2) described as a toy than if it was described as a food. Their interpretations of novel words for material entities were thus affected not only by perceptual information (about solidity) but also by conceptual information (about domain). In Experiment 3, the novel noun was presented in a syntactic context that suggested the solid entity should be interpreted as an object (e.g., “an X”) and that the nonsolid entity should be interpreted as a substance (e.g., “some X”). For adults, these changes largely eliminated the effect of the entity’s domain (toy, food) on interpretation. We interpret these findings in terms of the proposal that domain cues, like solidity cues, furnish information about whether an entity’s structure should be thought of as arbitrary or nonarbitrary and, hence, about whether a word should be interpreted as naming an object or a substance construal.     

The properties of retrieval cues constrain the picture superiority effect

In three experiments, we examined why pictures are remembered better than words on explicit memory tests like recall and recognition, whereas words produce more priming than pictures on some implicit tests, such as word-fragment and word-stem completion (e.g., completing -l-ph-nt or ele----- as elephant). One possibility is that pictures are always more accessible than words if subjects are given explicit retrieval instructions. An alternative possibility is that the properties of the retrieval cues themselves constrain the retrieval processes engaged; word fragments might induce data-driven (perceptually based) retrieval, which favors words regardless of the retrieval instructions. Experiment 1 demonstrated that words were remembered better than pictures on both the word-fragment and word-stem completion tasks under both implicit and explicit retrieval conditions. In Experiment 2, pictures were recalled better than words with semantically related extralist cues. In Experiment 3, when semantic cues were combined with word fragments, pictures and words were recalled equally well under explicit retrieval conditions, but words were superior to pictures under implicit instructions. Thus, the inherently data-limited properties of fragmented words limit their use in accessing conceptual codes. Overall, the results indicate that retrieval operations are largely determined by properties of the retrieval cues under both implicit and explicit retrieval conditions.     

Titchener at Leipzig

Twenty grade 3 and 20 grade 6 children were asked to identify a concealed target word (e.g., Banana) on the basis of four successively presented related cues (e.g., “It's a fruit” “It comes in a bunch”). Grade 6 children were more adept at using multiple cues to retrieve the target words than were grade 3 children, although practically all of the latter seemed to have the skills to do so. Younger children's failure to check spontaneously the consistency of answers to later presented cues with attributes indicated by the preceding cues appears to be the major source of their poor performance on retrieval tasks involving multiple cues.     

Development of gender discrimination: Role of stereotypic and counterstereotypic gender cues

Toddlers (41 girls and 35 boys) between 18 and 37 months old were given four gender discrimination tasks, each consisting of 6 pairs of color drawings. Three tasks depicted pairs of preschool girls and boys holding either sex-typical toys (stereotypic cues), sex-atypical toys (counterstereotypic cues), or no toys. The fourth task paired pictures of female-typed and male-typed toys. For each pair, subjects were asked to point to either the girl (girls' toy) or boy (boys' toy). Gender discrimination increased with age. Young children performed at chance level on all tasks. Older children made fewer correct choices on the Toy Alone task than on the tasks depicting children. Performance generally was unaffected by stereotyping or counterstereotyping of gender cues. Sex differences were minimal.Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD, April 1987.     

Children's metacognition: Exploring relations among knowledge,process, and motivational variables

Following a metamemory pretest, 60 first and third grade children (6 and 8 years of age, respectively) were divided into three treatment groups which received task-specific strategy instructions appropriate for three memory problems, general metacognitive information about subordinate and superordinate processing, or both strategy and metacognitive training. Maintenance and generalization versions of the memory tasks were given, followed by an attributional assessment of children's perceptions of the causes for specific success and failure outcomes. Post-training scores on the memory tasks showed that strategy training was highly successful. Metacognitive training appeared to have no effect on the metameory or strategy scores with one exception: metamemory and strategy use on the generalization task were significantly correlated only for children who received both metacognitive and strategy training. Apparently, children who were initially high in metamemory skills profited more from the comprehensive training package, using new metacognitive insights to aid the generalization of acquired strategies to the transfer tasks. Among strategy-trained children those who attributed success to effort were both more strategic and higher in metamemory than those who attributed task outcomes to noncontrollable factors such as ability or task characteristics. Results were discussed in terms of the interactive nature of knowledge, process, and motivational variables as determinants of strategy transfer.     

Involuntary memory and the development of retrieval skills in young children

An incidental memory paradigm was used to study involuntary encoding processes and voluntary retrieval strategies in children's memory. Preschool (mean age: 4 years, 4 months) and kindergarten (mean age: 5 years, 10 months) children sorted pictures according to their color or category membership, and then received either a recall test (Experiment 1) or a recognition test (Experiment 2). Better retention of category- than color-sorted items was observed for kindergarten children in free recall, preschool and kindergarten children in cued recall, and neither group in recognition. These results were interpreted in terms of the retrieval strategies used by children in each of the memory tasks. The importance of distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary memory processes, and between acquisition and retrieval, in studies of depth-of-processing was emphasized. Developmental differences in performance appear to derive primarily from the role of voluntary search strategies in retrieval, rather than from age differences in involuntary encoding processes.     

A sorting‐to‐matching method to teach compound matching to sample

Individuals with developmental disabilities may fail to attend to multiple features in compound stimuli (e.g., arrays of pictures, letters within words) with detrimental effects on learning. Participants were 5 children with autism spectrum disorder who had low to intermediate accuracy scores (35% to 84%) on a computer‐presented compound matching task. Sample stimuli were pairs of icons (e.g., chair–tree), the correct comparison was identical to the sample, and each incorrect comparison had one icon in common with the sample (e.g., chair–sun, airplane–tree). A 5‐step tabletop sorting‐to‐matching training procedure was used to teach compound matching. The first step was sorting 3 single pictures; subsequent steps gradually changed the task to compound matching. If progress stalled, tasks were modified temporarily to prompt observing behavior. After tabletop training, participants were retested on the compound matching task; accuracy improved to at least 95% for all children. This procedure illustrates one way to improve attending to multiple features of compound stimuli.     

Can one written word mean many things? Prereaders' assumptions about the stability of written words' meanings

Results of three experiments confirmed previous findings that in a moving word task, prereaders 3 to 5 years of age judge as if the meaning of a written word changes when it moves from a matching to a nonmatching toy (e.g., when the word "dog" moves from a dog to a boat). We explore under what circumstances children make such errors, we identify new conditions under which children were more likely correctly to treat written words' meanings as stable: when the word was placed alongside a nonmatching toy without having been alongside a matching toy previously, when two words were moved from a matching toy to a nonmatching toy, and when children were asked to change what the print said. Under these conditions, children more frequently assumed that physical forms had stable meanings as they do with other forms of external representation.     

Effects of repeated retrieval on long-term retention in a nonverbal learning task in younger children

Many studies have shown the benefits for long term retention of repeated retrieval during learning in verbal tasks, but few have shown its effectiveness using nonverbal materials. The aim of this study was to examine whether the retention benefits of repeated retrieval extend to preschool children performing a spatial location memory task. In this task, the children first studied where eight small toys were located in a partitioned box. Then, in the repeated retrieval condition, the children were asked to put each one of the toys in its place by themselves three times successively with feedback, whereas in the repeated study condition, they were asked to put each toy in its place with the experimenter showing them the correct location. Half of the children were then immediately tested and the remaining half tested after one day. The results showed that the 5 and 6 year old children in the retrieval condition retained location memory for the toys longer than those in the study condition in a memory task involving spatial content and enactment components. These findings have deep theoretical implications for the critical role of retrieval effort in long-term retention, and highlight the efficacy of repeated retrieval for different developmental ages and tasks.     

Stability and change in children's division strategies

Age-related changes in children's performance on simple division problems (e.g., 6/2, 72/9) were investigated by asking children in Grades 4 through 7 to solve 32 simple division problems. Differences in performance were found across grade, with younger children performing more slowly and less accurately than older children. Problem size effects were also found in that children were faster and more accurate on small problems than on large problems. Two strategies changed across age, with children in Grade 4 relying heavily on the strategy of "addition" (adding the divisor until the dividend was reached) to solve the problems and children in Grades 5 through 7 relying primarily on the strategy of "multiplication" (recasting the division problem as a multiplication problem) to solve the problems. Surprisingly, the frequency of direct retrieval (retrieving the answer directly from memory) did not increase across grade and never became the dominant strategy of choice. Reasons for why retrieval use remains infrequent and age invariant are discussed. Overall, the results suggest that division is a unique operation and that the continued study of division may have implications for further understanding of how procedural and conceptual knowledge of arithmetic develops.     

Sex stereotyping in children's toy advertisements

Forty-eight categories of toys were rated in terms of sex appropriateness by 48 students. A sample of 392 pictures of children with toys in 12 toy catalogs and 538 pictures of children with toys on toy packages in four retail stores was coded according to toy type and sex(es) of children shown. The rated sex stereotype of the toy category proved to be very strongly related to the sex(es) of the children shown with the toy in catalogs (r=.89) and on toy packages (r=.87). Toys rated as moderately sex typed by raters were just as strongly stereotyped in toy advertisements as those rated as strongly sex typed.An earlier version of the paper by Lori A. Schwartz received the Howard W. Odum for the outstanding undergraduate paper of 1983 from the Southern Sociological Society.     

The relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities

Phonological processing skills have not only been shown to be important for reading skills, but also for arithmetic skills. Specifically, previous research in typically developing children has suggested that phonological processing skills may be more closely related to arithmetic problems that are solved through fact retrieval (e.g., remembering the solution from memory) than procedural computation (e.g., counting). However, the relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities (LDs) has not been investigated. Yet, understanding these relationships in children with LDs is especially important because it can help elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of math difficulties, explain why reading and math disabilities frequently co-occur, and provide information on which cognitive skills to target for interventions. In 63 children with LDs, we examined the relationship between different phonological processing skills (phonemic awareness, phonological memory, and rapid serial naming) and arithmetic. We distinguished between arithmetic problems that tend to be solved with fact retrieval versus procedural computation to determine whether phonological processing skills are differentially related to these two arithmetic processes. We found that phonemic awareness, but not phonological memory or rapid serial naming, was related to arithmetic fact retrieval. We also found no association between any phonological processing skills and procedural computation. These results converge with prior research in typically developing children and suggest that phonemic awareness is also related to arithmetic fact retrieval in children with LD. These results raise the possibility that phonemic awareness training might improve both reading and arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

Research Highlights

• Relationships between phonological processing and various arithmetic skills were investigated in children with learning disabilities (LDs) for the first time.
• We found phonemic awareness was related to arithmetic involving fact retrieval, but not to arithmetic involving procedural computation in LDs.
• The results suggest that phonemic awareness is not only important to skilled reading, but also to some aspects of arithmetic.
• These results raise the question of whether intervention in phonemic awareness might improve arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

     

Word fluency performance and strategies in children with cochlear implants: age‐dependent effects?

Löfkvist, U., Almkvist, O., Lyxell, B. & Tallberg, I.‐M. (2012). Word fluency performance and strategies in children with cochlear implants: age‐dependent effects? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 467–474. Word fluency was examined in 73 Swedish children aged 6–9 years divided into two age groups, 6–7 and 8–9 years; 34 deaf children with cochlear implants (CI) (15 girls/19 boys) and 39 age‐matched children with normal hearing (NH) (20 girls/19 boys). One purpose was to compare the ability to retrieve words in two different word fluency tasks; one phonemically based (FAS letter fluency) and one semantically based (animal fluency). A second purpose was to examine retrieval strategies in the two tasks by conducting an analysis of clustering and switching of word sequences. In general we found that age was an important factor for word fluency ability, in both the CI and the NH groups. It was also demonstrated that children with CI aged 8–9 years retrieved significantly fewer words and used less efficient strategies in the retrieval process, especially on the phonemically based task compared to children with NH of the same ages, whereas children 6–7 years performed similarly in both groups regarding number of retrieved words and use of strategies. The results are discussed with respect to factors such as age differences in performance for children with CI, especially for the phonemically based task.     

Coping style and memory specificity in adolescents and adults with histories of child sexual abuse

Individuals with histories of childhood trauma may adopt a nonspecific memory retrieval strategy to avoid unpleasant and intrusive memories. In a sample of 93 adolescents and adults with or without histories of child sexual abuse (CSA), we tested the hypothesis that nonspecific memory retrieval is related to an individual's general tendency to use avoidant (i.e., distancing) coping as a personal problem-solving or coping strategy, especially in victims of CSA. We also examined age differences and other individual differences (e.g., trauma-related psychopathology) as predictors of nonspecific memories. Distancing coping was significantly associated with less specific autobiographical memory. Younger age, lower vocabulary scores, and non-CSA childhood maltreatment (i.e., physical and emotional abuse) also uniquely predicted less autobiographical memory specificity, whereas trauma-related psychopathology was associated with more specific memory. Implications for the development of autobiographical memory retrieval in the context of coping with childhood maltreatment are discussed.     

Girls’ Spatial Skills and Arithmetic Strategies in First Grade as Predictors of Fifth-Grade Analytical Math Reasoning

This study investigated longitudinal pathways leading from early spatial skills in first-grade girls to their fifth-grade analytical math reasoning abilities (N = 138). First-grade assessments included spatial skills, verbal skills, addition/subtraction skills, and frequency of choice of a decomposition or retrieval strategy on the addition/subtraction problems. In fifth grade, girls were given an arithmetic fluency test, a mental rotation spatial task, and a numeric and algebra math reasoning test. Using structural equation modeling, the estimated path model accounted for 87% of the variance in math reasoning. First-grade spatial skills had a direct pathway to fifth-grade math reasoning as well as an indirect pathway through first-grade decomposition strategy use. The total effect of first-grade spatial skills was significantly higher in predicting fifth-grade math reasoning than all other predictors. First-grade decomposition strategy use had the second strongest total effect, while retrieval strategy use did not predict fifth-grade math reasoning. It was first-grade spatial skills (not fifth-grade) that directly predicted fifth-grade math reasoning. Consequently, the results support the importance of early spatial skills in predicting later math. As expected, decomposition strategy use in first grade was linked to fifth-grade math reasoning indirectly through first-grade arithmetic accuracy and fifth-grade arithmetic fluency. However, frequency of first-grade decomposition use also showed a direct pathway to fifth-grade arithmetic reasoning, again stressing the importance of these early cognitive processes on later math reasoning.     

Ophthalmic disorder may affect visuo-attentional performance in childhood

The aim of this study was to explore the visuo-attentional skills of children with an ophthalmic disorder. Twenty-four patients and 60 healthy controls between the ages 4 and 7 years, all right-handed with normal or corrected-to-normal close visual acuity, were divided into four age groups. Patients' diagnoses included refractive disorders (e.g., myopia, hypermetropia), strabismus, amblyopia, cataract, and nystagmus. All participants performed nine paper-and-pencil visuospatial tasks aiming to assess selective attention (cancellation tasks), spatial working memory (symbol orientation task), fine visual analysis (embedded figures test), and simple perceptual analysis (shape-matching task). In healthy children, the results showed that performance on all visuo-attentional tasks improved with age. While perception, orientation of attention, and visual working memory develop by the time children begin school (age 5), more sophisticated abilities such as attention disengagement and motor control continue to develop during late childhood. Moreover, a spatial bias in attention orienting appeared with reading acquisition (6–7 years). In ophthalmic children, at 4 years of age defects were observed in all assessed functions, but at 7 years an attentional deficit was virtually the only one remaining. Overall, the results demonstrate that children with an ophthalmologic disorder may experience difficulties with visuospatial tasks despite corrected-to-normal visual acuity.     

Background and Focal Environmental Conditions of the Home and Attention in Young Children1

A conceptual distinction is drawn between two aspects of the perceptual field, focal features which the individual selectively engages and extraneous background conditions which serve as a context within which these activities occur, and a study is described which examined the relationship between these aspects of the home environment and attentional skills in young children. Ninety-four families with kindergarten age children participated in the project. Interviews and observations were conducted in the homes in order to assess background conditions (e.g., noise and activity levels) and variation and patterning of focal features (e.g., furnishings), and tasks designed to assess attentional skills were administered to the children. The results indicated that children from homes with high noise levels had longer response latencies on a visual search task and also subsequently recognized fewer incidental aspects of the task than did children from quieter homes. Furthermore, the former group appeared to be less distractible, i.e., less responsive to an auditory distractor. Neither variation nor patterning of focal features was found to be associated with task performance. In general, the findings are interpreted as indicating the adverse effects of high noise levels in the home on attentional skills in spite of apparent adaptation, i.e., lower distractibility, to these conditions.