Age-related changes in children's use of external representations.

This study explored children's use of external representations. Experiment 1 focused on representations of self: Self-recognition was assessed by a mark test as a function of age (3 vs. 4 years), delay (5 s vs. 3 min), and media (photographs vs. drawings). Four-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds; children performed better with photographs than drawings; and there was no effect of delay. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-olds used a delayed video image to locate a sticker on themselves (self task) or a stuffed animal (other task). The 2 tasks were positively correlated with age and vocabulary partialed out. Experiment 3 used a search task to assess whether children have particular difficulty using external representations that conflict with their expectations: 3- and 4-year-olds were informed of an object's location verbally or through video: on half of the trials, this information conflicted with children's initial belief. Three-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds on conflict trials, indicating that assessments of self and other understanding may reflect children's ability to reason about conflicting external representations.     

Enhanced recognition and recall of new words in 7- and 12-year-olds following a period of offline consolidation

Recent studies of adults have found evidence for consolidation effects in the acquisition of novel words, but little is known about whether such effects are found developmentally. In two experiments, we familiarized children with novel nonwords (e.g., biscal) and tested their recognition and recall of these items. In Experiment 1, 7-year-olds were then retested on either the same day or the following day to examine changes in performance after a short delay compared with a longer delay that included sleep. Experiment 2 used two age groups (7- and 12-year-olds), with all participants being retested 24h later. The 12-year-olds accurately recognized the novel nonwords immediately after exposure, as did the 7-year-olds in Experiment 2 (but not in Experiment 1), suggesting generally good initial rates of learning. Experiment 1 revealed improved recognition of the novel nonwords after both short (3- to 4-h) and longer (24-h) delays. In contrast, recall was initially poor but showed improvements only when children were retested 24h later, not after a 3- to 4-h delay. Similar improvements were observed in both age groups despite better overall performance in 12-year-olds. We argue that children, like adults, exhibit offline consolidation effects on the formation of novel phonological representations.     

The Effect of Symbolic Distancing on Delay Tolerance across the Preschool Period

ABSTRACT

We aimed to longitudinally examine how symbolic distancing affects preschool children’s delay tolerance in a delay choice task. We presented children with choices between a smaller immediate reward and a larger delayed reward in conditions with either symbolic stimuli or edible rewards. Overall, symbolic distancing modulated children’s delay tolerance. In particular, whereas in the first phase (T1: 3- and 4-year-olds) children presented with edible rewards chose the larger option more often than children presented with symbolic stimuli, in the second phase (T2: 5- and 6-year-olds), there was no significant difference between children presented with symbolic stimuli and those presented with edible rewards. These results are discussed by examining how children’s delay tolerance changes during the development and comparing children to adult humans in a similar task.     

The susceptibility of young preschoolers to source similarity effects: Confusing story or video events with reality

This study examined children’s tendency to confuse events that varied in source similarity, which was manipulated using different media of event presentation. In Experiment 1, children in two age groups (3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds) experienced a live presentation of an event, and another event was either heard from a story (low similarity group) or seen on a video (high similarity group). Immediately afterward, the children were asked to monitor the source of the events. The children in the low similarity group produced higher source discrimination scores than did the children in the high similarity group. Overall, the older children were better at source monitoring than were the younger children. In Experiment 2, the procedure was replicated except that the children’s source monitoring was tested after a 4-day delay. When attributing the source of the story or video events, both 3- and 4-year-olds and 5- and 6-year-olds in the low similarity group produced more accurate story or video attributions than did their age mates in the high similarity group. However, when attributing the source of the live events, only the 3- and 4-year-olds evidenced this effect of source similarity. The 5- and 6-year-olds in both the low and high similarity groups performed at ceiling levels for live discriminations.     

Rumor mongering and remembering: how rumors originating in children's inferences can affect memory

This study examined how rumors originating in 3- to 6-year-olds' causal inferences can affect their own and their peers' memories for a personally experienced event. This was accomplished by exposing some members of classrooms to contextual clues that were designed to induce inferences about the causes of two unresolved components of the event. After a 1-week delay, a substantial number of children who were exposed to the clues misremembered their inferences as actual experiences. Causal inferential memory errors were most pronounced among 5- and 6-year-olds. Also, many of the children whose classmates were exposed to the clues mistakenly incorporated their classmates' causal inferences into their own accounts, with 3- and 4-year-olds being most likely to make this error.     

Selective postevent review and children's memory for nonreviewed materials

Two experiments investigated the impact of selective postevent questioning on children's memory for nonreviewed materials. In both experiments, children participated in a series of novel activities. Children in the selective-review condition were subsequently questioned about half of these and comparisons were made to memory in a no-review condition. In Experiment 1, participants were 60 5- and 9-year-olds. For children in both age groups, memory for nonreviewed activities was impaired 20 min later in free recall. In Experiment 2, participants were 60 5-year-olds. Memory impairment was found following a 1-day delay after spaced review (three sessions over 3 days) but not after massed review (three sessions on 1 day). In both experiments, memory impairment was absent when specific retrieval cues were provided. The possible mechanisms underlying these findings and their potential practical implications are discussed.     

Can children resist making interpretations when uncertain?

In two experiments, we examined young children's ability to delay a response to ambiguous input. In Experiment 1, 5- and 6-year-olds performed as poorly when they needed to choose between basing an interpretation on ambiguous input and delaying an interpretation as when making explicit evaluations of knowledge, whereas 7- and 8-year-olds found the former task easy. In Experiment 2, 5- and 6-year-olds performed well on a task that required delaying a response but removed the need to decide between strategies. We discuss children's difficulty with ambiguity in terms of the decision-making demands made by different procedures. These demands appear to cause particular problems for young children.     

da Vinci's window facilitates drawings of total and partial occlusion in young children

When two or more objects are present in a scene, children 5 and 6 years of age rarely draw the scene such that one object totally or partially occludes another object. Instead they draw complete objects. The present study separated two components of drawing: perspective taking and graphic skill. Perspective taking was examined by comparing a free viewing condition with a restricted viewing condition in which a model could only be viewed through four apertures. Graphic skill was examined by comparing drawings requiring total occlusion with drawings requiring partial occlusion under both viewing conditions. Experiment 1 showed that 90% of 5- and 6-year-olds drew total occlusions under restricted viewing conditions but only 32% did so in the free viewing condition. Experiment 2 showed that drawings of partial occlusion were unaffected by viewing condition among 5-year-olds, but that restricted viewing increased the number of partial occlusions that 6-year-olds drew. Thus, failures of young children to draw occlusions have less to do with graphic skill than was previously thought. Instead, it is suggested that young children have a more general difficulty selecting one perspective and maintaining it over time.     

Age-related changes in the misinformation effect

In these experiments, we examined the relation between age-related changes in retention and age-related changes in the misinformation effect. Children (5- and 6- and 11- and 12-year-olds) and adults viewed a video, and their memory was assessed immediately, 1 day, or 6 weeks later (Experiment 1). There were large age-related differences in retention when participants were interviewed immediately and after 1 day, but after the 6-week delay, age-related differences in retention were minimal. In Experiment 2, 11- and 12-year-olds and adults were exposed to neutral, leading, and misleading postevent information 1 day or 6 weeks after they viewed the video. Exposure to misleading information increased the number of commission errors, particularly when participants were asked about peripheral aspects of the video. At both retention intervals, children were more likely than adults to incorporate the misleading postevent information into their subsequent verbal accounts. These findings indicate that age-related changes in the misinformation effect are not predicted by age-related changes in retention.     

Best friends: children use mutual gaze to identify friendships in others

This study examined children's ability to use mutual eye gaze as a cue to friendships in others. In Experiment 1, following a discussion about friendship, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were shown animations in which three cartoon children looked at one another, and were told that one target character had a best friend. Although all age groups accurately detected the mutual gaze between the target and another character, only 5- and 6-year-olds used this cue to infer friendship. Experiment 2 replicated the effect with 5- and 6-year-olds when the target character was not explicitly identified. Finally, in Experiment 3, where the attribution of friendship could only be based on synchronized mutual gaze, 6-year-olds made this attribution, while 4- and 5-year-olds did not. Children occasionally referred to mutual eye gaze when asked to justify their responses in Experiments 2 and 3, but it was only by the age of 6 that reference to these cues correlated with the use of mutual gaze in judgements of affiliation. Although younger children detected mutual gaze, it was not until 6 years of age that children reliably detected and justified mutual gaze as a cue to friendship.     

The Effects of Feedback on Perseverative Errors in Preschool Aged Children

Research using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) showed that young children are usually able to sort accurately by an initial rule but are unable to switch to a new rule when the two rules conflict. In 2 experiments, the DCCS was modified to study the effects of feedback on 3- to 5-year-old children in a problem-solving task. In Experiment 1, half of the children in each of two age groups (36 to 44 months and 52 to 60 months) were administered the DCCS task using the standard (no feedback) procedure and the other half received feedback on their post-switch responses. Children who received feedback were able to categorize according to the new (correct) rule, whereas the children in the younger age group who did not receive feedback continued to perseverate. Experiment 2 with 3-year-olds replicated the results from Experiment 1 but found that children's successful performance with feedback on the card-sorting task did not lead to improved performance on the post-switch phase of a subsequent DCCS task. Successful performance under conditions of feedback in both studies implies that 3-year-olds are capable of shifting their response mode from one rule to an alternate rule under conditions that offer clear guidance. Poor performance on the standard version is interpreted to be a reflection of the inability to monitor their own task performance in the absence of clear contextual cues.     

How Mathematics Propels the Development of Physical Knowledge

Three studies examined whether mathematics can propel the development of physical understanding. In Experiment 1, 10-year-olds solved balance scale problems that used easy-to-count discrete quantities or hard-to-count continuous quantities. Discrete quantities led to age typical performances. Continuous quantities caused performances like those of 5-year-olds. In Experiment 2, 11-year-olds solved problems with feedback. They were encouraged to use math or words to justify their answers. Children who used math developed an understanding superior to most adults, whereas children who used words did not. In Experiment 3, 9-year-olds solved problems with or without prompts to use math. Children encouraged to use math exhibited greater qualitative understanding, even though they were unable to discover metric proportions. The results indicate it is possible to design symbolic experiences to propel the development of physical understanding, thereby relating developmental psychology to instructional theory.     

Children's Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions Through Photographs and Drawings

The author's purpose was to examine children's recognition of emotional facial expressions, by comparing two types of stimulus: photographs and drawings. The author aimed to investigate whether drawings could be considered as a more evocative material than photographs, as a function of age and emotion. Five- and 7-year-old children were presented with photographs and drawings displaying facial expressions of 4 basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, and fear) and were asked to perform a matching task by pointing to the face corresponding to the target emotion labeled by the experimenter. The photographs we used were selected from the Radboud Faces Database and the drawings were designed on the basis of both the facial components involved in the expression of these emotions and the graphic cues children tend to use when asked to depict these emotions in their own drawings. Our results show that drawings are better recognized than photographs, for sadness, anger, and fear (with no difference for happiness, due to a ceiling effect). And that the difference between the 2 types of stimuli tends to be more important for 5-year-olds compared to 7-year-olds. These results are discussed in view of their implications, both for future research and for practical application.     

Rigidity in children's drawings and its relation with representational change

Four studies tested the application of to the drawing domain. In particular, we tested her claim that young children are inhibited in their attempts at changing their graphic representations (representational change) due to being constrained by the order in which the elements of the representation are drawn (procedural rigidity). The first study required 60 children (4- to 6-year-olds and an older comparison group of 8-year-olds) to make three drawings of a familiar and novel topic. From these drawings each child was measured for procedural rigidity. In a further drawing the child was asked to modify their usual representation of each topic. Regression analyses revealed procedural rigidity levels were not predictive of manipulation performance. A second study, testing 75 4- to 6-year-olds and a third study, testing 30 3- to 4-year-olds, revealed that when young children were specifically asked to manipulate rigid sub-procedures on a familiar topic they were indeed able to do so. Finally, a fourth study (testing 40 5-year-olds and 40 8-year-olds) removed the notational trace in drawing (a possible aid for procedural interruption) but this still produced no evidence of a relation between procedural rigidity and representational change. We suggest how the concept of procedural rigidity might be re-interpreted for the drawing domain so that the RR model can remain as a domain-general theory of cognitive development. We also suggest the development of information processing may be crucial for flexibility in drawing.     

Changes in reality monitoring and episodic memory in early childhood

The purposes of this research were to examine the developmental relation between reality monitoring and episodic memory, to link reality monitoring to autobiographical memory by using extended naturalistic events, and to examine prefrontal functioning as a potential contributor to development in reality monitoring and episodic memory. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were worse than 6- or 8-year-olds at reality monitoring after a week delay, despite the fact that they remembered more about real than imagined events and remembered different aspects of each. In Experiments 2 and 3, reality monitoring and episodic memory were evaluated for 4- and 6-year-olds immediately after the events occurred and, in Experiment 3, again after a week delay. Reality monitoring was at higher levels for both age groups, but age differences remained. These data suggest that preschoolers' difficulties with reality monitoring result from a combination of episodic memory deficits and strategic differences. In addition, correlation analyses more directly linked preschoolers' reality monitoring to episodic memory and supported the hypothesis that episodic memory development is related to prefrontal functioning.     

The long-term retention of time: A developmental study

Two experiments investigated the age-related changes in long-term retention of duration and their effects on time judgement. Children aged 3, 5, and 8 years old were given a temporal bisection task with or without a 15-min interfering task (Experiment 1), or a retention delay lasting for 0 min, 15 min, or 24 hr (Experiment 2) between the presentation of the standard durations and the comparison stimulus durations. An interfering task and the increase of the retention delay significantly decreased the time sensitivity in the 3- and the 5-year-olds, and to a greater extent in the younger children, but had no effect in the 8-year-olds. This decrease in time sensitivity with the interfering task or the retention delay might be due to an increase in the variability of the remembered duration.     

Abraham Lincoln and Harry Potter: Children’s differentiation between historical and fantasy characters

Based on the testimony of others, children learn about a variety of figures that they never meet. We ask when and how they are able to differentiate between the historical figures that they learn about (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) and fantasy characters (e.g., Harry Potter). Experiment 1 showed that both younger (3- and 4-year-olds) and older children (5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds) understand the status of familiar figures, correctly judging historical figures to be real and fictional figures to be pretend. However, when presented with information about novel figures embedded in either a realistic narrative or a narrative with obvious fantasy elements, only older children used the narrative to make an appropriate assessment of the status of the protagonist. In Experiment 2, 3-, and 4-year-olds were prompted to judge whether the story events were really possible or not. Those who did so accurately were able to deploy that judgment to correctly assess the status of the protagonist.     

Development of beliefs about storybook reality

The goal of this research was to assess children's beliefs about the reality status of storybook characters and events. In Experiment 1, 156 preschool age children heard realistic, fantastical, or religious stories, and their understanding of the reality status of the characters and events in the stories was assessed. Results revealed that 3-year-olds were more likely to judge characters as real than were 4- and 5-year-olds, but most children judged all characters as not real for all story types. Children of all ages who heard realistic stories made more claims that the events in the stories could happen in real life than did children who heard fantastical stories. Five-year-olds made significantly more claims that events in religious stories could happen in real life than did younger children. In Experiment 2, 136 4- and 5-year-olds heard similar stories. Results replicated those from Experiment 1, and also indicated a growing awareness of the basic nature of realistic fiction.     

Supporting children’s counterfactual thinking with alternative modes of responding

To speculate about counterfactual worlds, children need to ignore what they know to be true about the real world. Prior studies yielding individual differences data suggested that counterfactual thinking may be related to overcoming prepotent responses. In two experiments, we manipulated how 3- to 5-year-olds responded to counterfactual conditional and syllogism tasks. In Experiment 1 (N = 39), children’s performance improved on both conditional and syllogism tasks when they responded with an arrow rather than pointing with a finger. In Experiment 2 (N = 42), 3- and 4-year-olds benefited from both an arrow manipulation and, separately, the introduction of a delay before responding. We suggest that both manipulations help children to overcome an impulsive prepotent response to counterfactual questions arising from a default assumption that information about the past is true.