Developmental differences in recall: Encoding or retrieval?

First- and fifth-grade children and college adults (ages 6, 10, and 18 years, respectively) were presented a 30-item set of pictures to recall in a 4-trial study-test procedure. The stimuli were presented in one of three ways (encoding condition): randomly, blocked (according to categories), or sort (the subject was given the stimuli in random order and asked to sort them into categories). Recall was either free, cued, or constrained (retrieval condition). Results indicated that maximum adult recall was a function of the interaction of encoding and retrieval conditions, and that first- and fifth-grader's recall was influenced by retrieval conditions but not by encoding conditions. The blocked and sort encoding conditions did result in increased clustering relative to random encoding at all three ages, however. It was concluded that encoding conditions influence recall only as they effect the use of retrieval strategies.     

Developmental differences in judgments of recency and frequency: Quantitative or qualitative?

The basis of young children's performance of judgments of recency and frequency was investigated using a modified version of Huppert and Piercy's [Huppert, F.A., & Piercy, M. (1978). The role of trace strength in recency and frequency judgements by amnesic and control subjects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 30, 347–354] paradigm. Children aged 4 and 6 years viewed pictures of nameable objects presented either once or three times on either of two consecutive days. At test, children judged how recently (“today” versus “yesterday”) or frequently (once versus three times) each picture had been presented. Developmental improvements in performance were observed for judgments of recency and frequency. Evidence for responding based on episode-specific information was found for both age groups, showing that young children do not confuse recency of presentation with frequency of presentation. There was no evidence for a qualitative shift from reliance on trace strength to reliance on episode specific information across this age range.     

Developmental changes in conditional reasoning: Linguistic or logical?

This study investigated reasoning with abstract conditional sentences as a function of age. Subjects from third-grade to eleventh-grade were required to evaluate the conclusion of several conditional arguments. The results confirmed the previously established finding that performance improves with age, particularly between 11 and 15 years. This finding could be interpreted to indicate that individuals become more logical as they get older. However, another possible interpretation is that the meaning of a conditional sentence like pthenq for naive Ss may not always be given by the truth function pq true, $\text{p}\text{q}$ false, $\text{p}\text{q}$ true, and $\text{p}\text{q}$ true. Further analysis suggested that at 9 years individuals treat the connective in the sentence, ifpthenq, as if it were either a conjunctive or a biconditional, that the conjunctive meaning disappears with increasing age and after 13 years is gradually superceded by the conditional.     

Developmental dyslexia in different languages: language-specific or universal?

Most of the research on developmental dyslexia comes from English-speaking countries. However, there is accumulating evidence that learning to read English is harder than learning to read other European orthographies (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003). These findings therefore suggest the need to determine whether the main English findings concerning dyslexia can be generalized to other European orthographies, all of which have less irregular spelling-to-sound correspondences than English. To do this, we conducted a study with German- and English-speaking children (n=149) in which we investigated a number of theoretically important marker effects of the reading process. The results clearly show that the similarities between dyslexic readers using different orthographies are far bigger than their differences. That is, dyslexics in both countries exhibit a reading speed deficit, a nonword reading deficit that is greater than their word reading deficit, and an extremely slow and serial phonological decoding mechanism. These problems were of similar size across orthographies and persisted even with respect to younger readers that were at the same reading level. Both groups showed that they could process larger orthographic units. However, the use of this information to supplement grapheme-phoneme decoding was not fully efficient for the English dyslexics.     

Developmental changes in retention: Independent of age?

It is commonly believed that age differences in memory are due primarily to input processes and secondarily, if at all, to retention processes. The present study examined this belief with a test-retest paradigm, varying rehearsal conditions orthogonal to age (first- and second-graders vs. college students). Large age effects were found for both original learning and retention, and these effects were independent of rehearsal conditions. An estimate of the relative magnitude of each suggested that age effects on retention were about half as large as age effects on original learning (e.g., input).     

Invisible or Involved Fathers? A Content Analysis of Representations of Parenting in Young Children��s Picturebooks in the UK

Although gender-role stereotyping in children??s books is a consistent focus of research, the study of the gender role stereotyping of parenting in particular is less common, despite a developing academic interest in the changing social meanings of fathering and mothering in contemporary societies. Previous analysis has suggested that fathers are under-represented in children??s books and when present, are less likely than mothers to be featured expressing affection towards, or caring for, children. This paper reports the results of a content analysis of a sample of best-selling young children??s picturebooks in the UK which feature representations of parents. It was predicted that fathers would feature less often, particularly at home, and be less likely to be depicted sharing physical contact with other family members, involved in domestic chores or childcare activity, or expressing emotion. The results upheld a number of the hypotheses, indicating that fathers remain ??invisible?? in an important sense. However scenes featuring fathers with children, some forms of physical contact, or caring for children were not significantly less likely to feature in these picturebooks than equivalent scenes featuring mothers; perhaps reflecting a more progressive portrayal of ??involved?? fatherhood. The findings are discussed in terms of their methodological, social, and political implications.     

Inhibition difficulties in preterm children: Developmental delay or persistent deficit?

Among executive functions (EFs), research has highlighted specific inhibition difficulties in preterm children. The present paper reviews and classifies the studies that assessed response inhibition and interference control abilities in preterm children and adolescents aged 3 to 16 years. Most behavioral studies agree on a developmental delay at early school age in inhibition abilities and a catch-up before adolescence, with lesser response inhibition difficulties at pre-adolescence. However, persisting interference control difficulties have been reported into early adulthood. These results are discussed, along with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings. Finally, this paper outlines methodological issues that need to be overcome in order to define the developmental trajectory of inhibition abilities in the preterm population.     

Developmental changes in perceptions of attractiveness: a role of experience?

In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve-year-olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more attractive than faces with either low or high features. Although both 4-year-olds and 9-year-olds rated faces with high features as least attractive, unlike adults and 12-year-olds, they rated faces with low and average features as equally attractive. Three-year-olds with high levels of peer interaction, but not those with low levels of peer interaction, chose faces with low features as significantly more attractive than those with high-placed features, possibly as a result of their increased experience with the proportions of the faces of peers. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that experience influences perceptions of attractiveness, with the proportions of the faces participants see in their everyday lives influencing their perceptions of attractiveness.     

Disruptions to number bisection after brain injury: Neglecting parts of the Mental Number Line or working memory impairments?

The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanisms underlying consistent directional number bisection bias in a chronic neuropsychological sample, not selected based on behaviour or lesion definitions. Patients completed a test battery that included measures of number bisection, line bisection, verbal working memory, visual-spatial working memory, egocentric neglect and allocentric neglect. Neither the neglect nor working memory measures were found to significantly correlate with number bisection. Furthermore, when outlier patients with very distinct number bisection biases were compared to patients who did not show any number bisection difficulties, no differences were found between the two groups on any of the other behavioural measures. We conclude that number bisection difficulties are not consistently based on any single deficit, be it neglect or working memory, and biases in number bisection should not be assumed to directly reflect problems in either of these areas.     

Developmental trends in distractibility: Is absolute or proportional decrement the appropriate measure of interference?

Since baseline performance varies with age, diminished interference effects found with increasing age do not provide evidence for a developmental trend in distractibility unless their relationship to baseline performance is known. In the present study, baseline difficulty was varied in two speeded classification experiments to investigate whether interference effects due to irrelevant information could best be characterized by absolute or proportional decrement models. In Experiment 1, first graders, third graders, and adults sorted cards on the basis of square size, both in the presence and absence of extraneous stimulus information. In Experiment 2, first graders and adults sorted cards on the basis of the density of a regular array of dots and two kinds of irrelevant information were used. Robust interference effects were found which declined with age. Manipulating discriminability of the relevant stimulus dimension resulted in large changes in sorting time, but interference effects did not vary with baseline difficulty. These results were interpreted as strongly supporting both an absolute decrement model and a developmental trend in distractibility.     

Drawing is Integrating: An Examination of Students’ Graphic Representations of Multiple Texts

In this study, integration, or students’ connection formation across texts, was examined across two tasks: when undergraduates were asked to complete a writing assignment and a novel, diagram construction task. While the writing assignment asked students to compose an argument based on multiple texts, the diagram construction task asked students to visually represent a set of eight conflicting texts and the relations among them. The Documents Model Framework (DM) was used to code undergraduates’ written responses and diagrams for the type of multiple text representations they featured (i.e., mush models, separate representations models, and documents models of multiple texts). Moreover, written responses and diagrams were coded for the specificity at which they integrated texts, corresponding to the formation of evidentiary, thematic, and contextual relations. Limited associations were found between college students’ written responses and the diagrams constructed. Implications for understanding multiple text integration are discussed.     

Women and Leadership: A Developmental Paradox?

In this article, the author explores the nature of leadership from a gendered perspective, specifically addressing leadership challenges for women. Leadership challenges, gender stereotypes, and definitions of leadership are discussed. Recommendations for professional redefinition of leadership within the counseling profession and strategies for successful negotiation of leadership roles are provided.     

Developmental recall lag in learning-disabled children: Perceptual deficit or verbal mediation deficiency?

To investigate the development of mediational deficiencies in verbal and non-verbal visual short-term memory of learning disabled children, the recall task of Atkinson, Hansen, and Bernback was administered to learning disabled children in two experimental conditions. In Experiment 1 no significant diferences on nonverbal short-term memory recall between normal and learning-disabled children were found. Similar recall responses (e.g., middle response bias, primacy effects, and recency effects) were found for both groups. Non-verbal recall was comparable for disabled and normal children as suggested by stimulus content and association scores/. Experiment 2 found that while the effects of overt rehearsal on pretrained labels on learning disabled children's recall was negligible, labels provided superior recall for normal children. Results suggested that learning disabled children suffer from a verbal mediational deficiency consistent with Flavell's (1970) mediation deficiency hypothesis.The research herein was supported by a faculty research grant at the University of Northern Colorado. Appreciation is due to the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Public School System and the Richland 1 School District, Columbia, South Carolina.     

Representations of Poverty in British Newspapers: A Case of ‘Othering’ the Threat?

The meanings of social problems like poverty develop within the public sphere. This paper uses the theory of social representations to examine how poverty is represented in British newspapers. Poverty has been discussed and interpreted in numerous ways, and newspapers not only provide a platform for these elaborations but also contribute to shaping public understanding on the issue. The study sampled news coverage on poverty in four British newspapers during two randomly chosen one‐month periods in the years 2001 and 2011. The data set of news reports (n = 274) was thematically analysed to examine representations of poverty. The study found that in the domestic context, media represents poverty as a problem limited to vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly. With a lack of discussion on the wider socio‐economic causes and contributing factors, poverty within the UK appears as an ‘orphan phenomenon’ with an unknown genesis. In contrast, the representations of poverty outside the UK are vivid and elaborate, and the news reports hold the socio‐political inefficiency of countries responsible for poverty. The study also found that the media uses poverty to make sense of catastrophic events in society: the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the London riots of 2011 were both anchored using poverty. This paper discusses the representational dynamics of these findings and argues that the media representations distance general society from poverty, representing it as a problem of the other. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Happened in Dialogical Classes of Intercultural Understanding?: An Analysis of Exchanging Classes between Chinese and Japanese University Students

Chinese and Japanese university students make an exchanging of opinions regarding the topic "making a mobile phone call in the bus". Both sides of the communication can achieve different changes of cognition through different ways. This paper focuses on Chinese university students, and analyzes their cognition of the traffic etiquette in Japan and China. Unlike Japanese university students’ change of cognition, Chinese university students have made more negative evaluation on Japanese traffic etiquette after the communication. However, this does not mean to shield their traffic etiquette. They have the two-way changes of cognition in both social etiquette and personal behavior. These changes may be related to the unbalanced dialogue relationship, as well as the generation of hot issues. How to generate the hot issues, and promote the two-way movement of understanding are the important clues for the design of communication curriculum to enhance the cultural understanding.     

Do First Graders Make Efficient Use of External Number Representations? The Case of the Twenty-Frame

External number representations are commonly used throughout the first years of instruction. The twenty-frame is a grid that contains two rows of 10 dots each, and within each row, dots are organized in two groups of five. The assumption is that children can make use of these structures for enumerating the dots, rather than relying on one-by-one counting. We compared first-grade children's performance on two types of computerized enumeration tasks, in which between one and 20 dots were presented in random arrangements or on a twenty-frame. The number of dots was a strong predictor of response times and accuracy rates in the enumeration task with random arrangements but not in the twenty-frame task. Performance on the twenty-frame task was correlated with performance on a number and arithmetic test, even when other cognitive variables were statistically controlled. We discuss these findings in the light of theories on utilizing external representations to support numerical learning.     

A Question of Balance or Blind Faith?: Scientists’ and Science Policymakers’ Representations of the Benefits and Risks of Nanotechnologies

In recent years, in the UK and elsewhere, scientists and science policymakers have grappled with the question of how to reap the benefits of nanotechnologies while minimising the risks. Having recognised the importance of public support for future innovations, they have placed increasing emphasis on ‘engaging’ ‘the public’ during the early phase of technology development. Meaningful engagement suggests some common ground between experts and lay publics in relation to the definition of nanotechnologies and of their benefits and risks. However, views on nanotechnologies are likely to vary according to where actors stand in the technology production/consumption/assessment cycle. Drawing on data from a recent UK-based study, this article examines how scientists (‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’) and policymakers portray the benefits and risks of nanotechnologies, particularly as they relate to two major areas of predicted application, namely medicine/public health and environmental sustainability. The findings reveal that, in the main, scientists and science policymakers held a positive conception of nanotechnologies and see imminent applications, although they acknowledged particular risks, including adverse public reaction. While definitions of ‘benefit’ and ‘risk’ varied, most saw the benefits as outweighing the risks and believed that the risks could be adequately regulated once they were assessed. The difficulties of assessing risk, however, were acknowledged. The study raises a number of questions that will need to be addressed if regulations are to be developed that not only protect people’s heath and wellbeing and the environment but also engender public trust in nanotechnologies.

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: same or different?

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) were for many years treated as distinct disorders but are now often regarded as different manifestations of the same underlying problem, differing only in severity or developmental stage. The merging of these categories has been motivated by the reconceptualization of dyslexia as a language disorder in which phonological processing is deficient. The authors argue that this focus underestimates the independent influence of semantic and syntactic deficits, which are widespread in SLI and which affect reading comprehension and impair attainment of fluent reading in adolescence. The authors suggest that 2 dimensions of impairment are needed to conceptualize the relationship between these disorders and to capture phenotypic features that are important for identifying neurobiologically and etiologically coherent subgroups.     

Children's preference for novelty in selective learning: Developmental stability or change?

Data relating novelty preference to age for normal children are inconsistent, although a current theory predicts a developmental shift from novelty to familiarity preference in selective learning (D. Zeaman, 1976, in T. J. Tighe & R. N. Leaton (Eds.), Habituation: Perspectives from child development, animal behavior, and neurophysiology (pp. 297–320), Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). Support for this theory, however, has been derived primarily from studies of retardate learning. Normal children's novelty preference was examined within a modified Moss-Harlow (E. Moss & H. F. Harlow, 1947, Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 40, 333–342) design to compare Zeaman's model with that of S. L. Witryol and W. Wanich (1983, The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 143, 3–8). Each of 16 problems, consisting of three single-stimulus demonstration trials and one two-choice test, was administered to 180 children (mean CA 4, 5.5, and 7 years) in three reward conditions. Novelty was manipulated by varying stimulus familiarization in the demonstration trials. Experiment 1 showed strong preferences for novel over familiar (demonstrated) stimuli at each age. Experiment 2 revealed novelty preference across age levels, two levels of reward contrast, and two levels of task difficulty. It was reasoned that Moss-Harlow tasks designed for normal children typically present a much higher level of difficulty than that intended by researchers. Furthermore, developmental decreases in novelty preference by retardates may derive from (a) transfer of training from prior experiments and (b) specific, repetitive instructions which may have directed attention away from stimulus novelty.