Chinese kindergartners’ automatic processing of numerical magnitude in Stroop-like tasks

Using Stroop-like tasks, this study examined whether Chinese kindergartners showed automatic processing of numerical magnitude. A total of 36 children (mean age 5 5 years 10 months) were asked to perform physical size comparison (i.e., “Which of two numbers is bigger in physical size?”) and numerical magnitude tasks (i.e., “Which of two numbers is bigger in numerical magnitude?”) on 216 number pairs. These number pairs varied in levels of congruence between numerical magnitude and physical size (for Stroop effect) and numerical distance (for distance effect). On the basis of analyses of response time and error rates, we found that Chinese kindergartners showed automatic processing of numerical magnitude. These results are significantly different from previous studies’ findings about the onset age (ranging from around the end of first grade to third grade) for automatic processing of numerical magnitude.     

Attentional Processing of Letter Strings by Children

Reading a letter string requires attentional orienting toward the beginning of the string (left-dominant orientation), followed by orienting along the string. These attentional-orienting processes differ according to the lexicality of the letter string: Sequential processes apply when reading nonwords or pseudowords, while words can be processed more globally. The aim of this study was to evaluate the development of these attentional processes involved in reading. We conducted two experiments in 6- (first grade), 7- (second grade), and 9-year-old (fourth grade) children, using a procedure that required the detection of a letter (Experiment 1) or a nonletter (Experiment 2) target in a string of five characters. The target character could occur in the second (left) or fourth (right) position in the string. Results showed an advantage for left nonletter targets as early as age 6 and of left letter targets as early as age 7. In 6-year-olds, only good readers detected a left letter target faster than a right letter target; others detected a right letter target faster. Thus, dominant orienting toward the beginning of the letter string is not fully developed in children before the second year of reading. A possibility is that beginning readers have difficulties inhibiting an attention-orienting bias toward the right visual field in linguistic tasks. The results also showed that the lexicality effect on these attentional processes develops gradually until the fourth year of reading. We believe that the procedure used in this study will be very valuable for evaluating attentional difficulties during reading acquisition.     

Semantic access in number processing investigated with Japanese Kanji and Kana numerals

In number processing, semantic representations are efficiently activated. These representations frequently affect task performance, as demonstrated by semantic effects such as the distance effect (longer reaction times to closer numerical pairs in comparison tasks). The objective of this study was to investigate whether efficient semantic access is a distinctive feature of number processing using the Japanese language. Japanese was chosen to investigate possible effects of ideographic processing and word frequency: Kanji numerals in Japanese are ideograms and are used frequently, while Kana numerals are phonograms and are used infrequently. The results confirmed a distance effect in the numerical and physical matching tasks with both Arabic and Kanji numerals regardless of notation or task (Experiment 1). However, the effect was not observed with the Kana pairs (Experiment 2), thereby suggesting that semantic access is not always efficient in number processing. The results can be explained coherently within a general framework of word recognition by assuming that both the type of character and the word frequency play a critical role in determining the efficiency of semantic access.     

Defective number module or impaired access? Numerical magnitude processing in first graders with mathematical difficulties

This study examined numerical magnitude processing in first graders with severe and mild forms of mathematical difficulties, children with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) and children with low achievement (LA) in mathematics, respectively. In total, 20 children with MLD, 21 children with LA, and 41 regular achievers completed a numerical magnitude comparison task and an approximate addition task, which were presented in a symbolic and a nonsymbolic (dot arrays) format. Children with MLD and LA were impaired on tasks that involved the access of numerical magnitude information from symbolic representations, with the LA children showing a less severe performance pattern than children with MLD. They showed no deficits in accessing magnitude from underlying nonsymbolic magnitude representations. Our findings indicate that this performance pattern occurs in children from first grade onward and generalizes beyond numerical magnitude comparison tasks. These findings shed light on the types of intervention that may help children who struggle with learning mathematics.     

儿童数字估计的表征模式与发展

探讨中国儿童数字估计的表征模式与发展趋势。包括两个实验,均采用数字线估计任务,实验一以92名幼儿园、一年级及二年级儿童为被试,考察其在0~100范围的数字估计,结果显示,幼儿园儿童在数字估计更多地采用对数表征,而一二年级的儿童在数字估计中更多地采用线性表征;实验二以86名一、三、五年级儿童为被试,考察其在0~1000范围的数字估计,结果显示,一年级儿童有一半采用对数表征,另一半采用线性表征,而三五年级儿童大多采用线性表征。中国儿童的数字估计表现出与美国儿童相同的发展模式,都是由不精确的对数表征逐步向精确的线性表征发展;人的数表征有多种形式,即使在同一年龄阶段,也会因任务难度的不同而选择不同的表征模式。中国儿童精确数字估计能力的出现要早于美国儿童。     

Contextual analysis of home environment factors influencing the acquisition of early reading skills in Zambian families

This study examined the effect of home environment factors in the acquisition of early reading skills (orthographic awareness and decoding competence). To assess these factors, a sample of seventy-two (72) first grade learners (females?=?55%; age range?=?7–8 years) and their maternal parents (age range 26–61 years old) from low SES in Zambia's capital city, Lusaka were recruited. Parents, in response to a home literacy questionnaire, reported on their attitudes towards reading, literacy teaching in the home, the home literacy environment, presence of reading materials for adults and children, parental education, occupation, family size and family possessions. Two measures of reading skill were administered at school. Correlations revealed that parental education, occupation and the size of the family were not significantly associated with the reading measures. Family possessions, parental reading attitudes, literacy activities, and reading materials significantly predicted orthographic awareness. In predicting decoding competence, only family possessions, parental reading attitudes and literacy activities were predictive. Regardless of the context, children experience literacy in varied forms and quantities.     

Domain‐specific and domain‐general precursors of mathematical achievement: A longitudinal study from kindergarten to first grade

Background. Many contributing factors, both domain specific and domain general, influence children's performance in school achievement. Aims. This research aims to verify the importance of kindergarten measures of cognitive abilities and numerical competence in the role of predicting mathematical school achievement at the end of first grade. Sample and Methods. A total of 70 children (38 females and 32 males) took part in the study. We tested the children at the beginning of their last year of kindergarten (time 1) on the following cognitive abilities: IQ, phonology, counting skills, verbal short‐term memory, visuo‐spatial short‐term memory, working memory, and processing speed. Then, we tested the same children at end of their last year of kindergarten (time 2) on a measure of numerical competence and at the end of their first year of primary school (time 3) on a test of math achievement. Results. Path analysis models revealed the direct influence of working memory and processing speed on predicting numerical competence in pre‐schoolers and the influence of processing speed and verbal IQ on predicting math achievement in first graders. Moreover, this study found a direct link between numerical competence and math achievement. Conclusions. Both domain‐specific and domain‐general factors contribute to determining math achievement at the end of first grade.     

Tracking 10-year competitive winning performance of judo athletes across age groups

Little information is available concerning early specialization and competitive success in judo across the early training years. Thus, the present objective was to verify the stability of individual competitive performance of a state-level championship for judo athletes who had been previously successful. For this, 406 athletes from six age groups (9 to 20+ years old) of each sex were followed for 10 years. Using recorded data from the S?o Paulo State Judo Federation beginning in 1999, the scores and standings for these judo players were analyzed. The proportion of medal winners during this period was not constant, differing from the grand mean in all groups of both 204 males and 202 females. At the end of this period, only 7% of the male and 5% of the female athletes had maintained their competitive levels. Successful competitive performance in early judo competition was not associated with success later in adulthood.     

The development of automaticity in accessing number magnitude

This study traces developmental changes in automatic and intentional processing of Arabic numerals using a numerical-Stroop paradigm. In Study 1, university students compared the numerical or physical size of Arabic numerals varying along both dimensions. In Study 2, first graders (mean age = 6 years 6 months), third graders (mean age = 8 years 4 months), and fifth graders (mean age = 10 years 3 months) were tested to examine developmental changes in numerical and physical comparisons. In the numerical comparison task, a size congruity effect was found at all ages (i.e., relative to a neutral control, congruent physical sizes facilitated, and incongruent sizes interfered with, the numerical comparison). The pattern of facilitation and interference, however, was modulated by age. In the physical comparison task, the incongruity between physical and numerical size affected only older children and adults. These findings strongly suggest that the automatization in number processing is achieved gradually as numerical skills progress.     

Automaticity for numerical magnitude of two-digit Arabic numbers in children

This paper examines the automatic processing of the numerical magnitude of two-digit Arabic numbers using a Stroop-like task in school-aged children. Second, third, and fourth graders performed physical size judgments on pairs of two-digit numbers varying on both physical and numerical dimensions. To investigate the importance of synchrony between the speed of processing of the numerical magnitude and the physical dimensions on the size congruity effect (SCE), we used masked priming: numerical magnitude was subliminally primed in half of the trials, while neutral priming was used in the other half. The results indicate a SCE in physical judgments, providing the evidence of automatic access to the magnitude of two-digit numbers in children. This effect was modulated by the priming type, as a SCE only appeared when the numerical magnitude was primed. This suggests that young children needed a relative synchronization of numerical and physical dimensions to access the magnitude of two-digit numbers automatically.     

Developing normal reading skills: aspects of the visual processes underlying word recognition

Visual word recognition performance of first graders (mean age: 6.6 years) through fifth graders (mean age: 10.8 years) was investigated using an experimental technique that is known to elicit the "viewing position effect" in skilled readers. The results showed that this effect, which consists of a systematic variation of performance as a function of fixation position within words, emerged early at the end of the 1st year of reading instruction. Visual field asymmetries in recognizing individual letters in words were also observed starting from first grade. Effects of word familiarity were obtained as early as in second grade. In contrast to skilled readers, children showed a marked word-length effect, which persisted through the first 5 years of instruction. No other qualitative differences between beginning and skilled readers were apparent. Hence, the basics of reading skills, as measured by the present technique, seem to be attained very early during acquisition. Further experience mainly reduces the time a reader needs to extract visual information from print.     

Relationship between levels of oral and written language in beginning readers

The validity of a test battery, organized by a theoretical framework of levels of language processing and production, was evaluated at the end of kindergarten and theend of first grade. At the end of kindergarten two levels of oral language, phonemic and lexical, and at the end of first grade three levels of oral language, phonemic, lexical, and text, were correlated with word decoding and reading comprehension. At the end of first grade, the combination of phonemic and lexical skills accounted for more variance in both word decoding and reading comprehension than either phonemic or lexical skills alone. The strength of the relationship between specific levels of oral language and specific component reading skills changed after formal reading instruction was introduced. Functional relationships were found between improvement in phonemic skills or lexical skills and improvement in word decoding. Partial correlations between two levels of oral language with a third partialed out (receptive or expressive task requirements held constant) provided evidence for three semiindependent levels of oral language—phonemic, lexical, and text. Because the battery has concurrent and construct validity, school psychologists can use it to monitor beginning readers in order to prevent reading disabilities due to subtle language dysfunctions.     

Aggression and prosocial behaviors in social conflicts mediating the influence of cold social intelligence and affective empathy on children's social preference

This study proposes a model in which aggressive and prosocial behaviors exhibited in social conflicts mediate the influence of empathy and social intelligence to children's social preference by same‐sex peers. Data were obtained from kindergarten to the end of the first grade. The sample yielded 117 Spanish children (64 girls and 53 boys) with a mean age of 62.8 months (SD = 3.3) at the beginning of the study. For boys, affective empathy contributed to boys’ social preference through a decrease in physical aggression as responses to social conflict. For girls, affective empathy had an indirect effect on girls’ preference by increasing assistance to others in their conflicts. No mediating effect in the contribution of social intelligence on girls’ social preference was detected. Our results suggest that, only for girls, cold social intelligence can promote both indirect aggression (coercive strategic that do not leave social preference, at least at these ages) and behaviors that lead social preference (such as prosocial behaviors).     

Developmental bias for number words in the intraparietal sulcus

Children and adults show behavioral evidence of psychological overlap between their early, non‐symbolic numerical concepts and their later‐developing symbolic numerical concepts. An open question is to what extent the common cognitive signatures observed between different numerical notations are coupled with physical overlap in neural processes. We show that from 8 years of age, regions of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) that exhibit a numerical ratio effect during non‐symbolic numerical judgments also show a semantic distance effect for symbolic number words. In both children and adults, the IPS showed a semantic distance effect during magnitude judgments of number words (i.e. larger/smaller number) but not for magnitude judgments of object words (i.e. larger/smaller object size). The results provide novel evidence of conceptual overlap between neural representations of symbolic and non‐symbolic numerical values that cannot be explained by a general process, and present the first demonstration of an early‐developing dissociation between number words and object words in the human brain.     

Representation of grasp postures and anticipatory motor planning in children

In this study, we investigated anticipatory motor planning and the development of cognitive representation of grasp postures in children aged 7, 8, and 9?years. Overall, 9-year-old children were more likely to plan their movements to end in comfortable postures, and have distinct representational structures of certain grasp postures, compared to the 7- and 8-year old children. Additionally, the sensitivity toward comfortable end-states (end-state comfort) was related to the mental representation of certain grasp postures. Children with grasp comfort related and functionally well-structured representations were more likely to have satisfied end-state comfort in both the simple and the advanced planning condition. In contrast, end-state comfort satisfaction for the advanced planning condition was much lower for children whose cognitive representations were not structured by grasp comfort. The results of the present study support the notion that cognitive action representation plays an important role in the planning and control of grasp postures.     

A little labeling goes a long way: Semi‐supervised learning in infancy

There is considerable evidence that labeling supports infants' object categorization. Yet in daily life, most of the category exemplars that infants encounter will remain unlabeled. Inspired by recent evidence from machine learning, we propose that infants successfully exploit this sparsely labeled input through “semi‐supervised learning.” Providing only a few labeled exemplars leads infants to initiate the process of categorization, after which they can integrate all subsequent exemplars, labeled or unlabeled, into their evolving category representations. Using a classic novelty preference task, we introduced 2‐year‐old infants (n = 96) to a novel object category, varying whether and when its exemplars were labeled. Infants were equally successful whether all exemplars were labeled (fully supervised condition) or only the first two exemplars were labeled (semi‐supervised condition), but they failed when no exemplars were labeled (unsupervised condition). Furthermore, the timing of the labeling mattered: when the labeled exemplars were provided at the end, rather than the beginning, of familiarization (reversed semi‐supervised condition), infants failed to learn the category. This provides the first evidence of semi‐supervised learning in infancy, revealing that infants excel at learning from exactly the kind of input that they typically receive in acquiring real‐world categories and their names.     

Ensemble coding of faces occurs in children and develops dissociably from coding of individual faces

Ensemble coding allows adults to access useful information about average properties of groups, sometimes even in the absence of detailed representations of individual group members. This form of coding may emerge early in development with initial reports of ensemble coding for simple properties (size, numerosity) in young children and even infants. Here we demonstrate that ensemble coding of faces, which provides information about average properties of social groups, is already present in 6–8‐year‐old children. This access to average information increases with age from 6 to 18 years and its development is dissociable from age‐related improvements in the coding of individual face identities. This dissociation provides the first direct evidence that distinct processes underlie ensemble and individual coding of face identity, evidence that has been lacking from adult studies. More generally, our results add to the emerging evidence for impressively mature sensitivity to statistical properties of the visual environment in children. They indicate that children have access to gist information about social groups that may facilitate adaptive social behaviour.     

Expanding on the mental number line: Zero is perceived as the "smallest"

The representation of 0 in healthy adults was studied with the physical comparison task. Automatic processing of numbers, as indicated by the size congruity effect, was used for detecting the basic numerical representations stored in long-term memory. The size congruity effect usually increases with numerical distance between the physically compared numbers. This increase was attenuated for comparisons to 0 or 1 (but not to 2) when they were perceived as the smallest number in the set. Furthermore, the size congruity effect was enlarged in these cases. These results indicate an end effect in automatic processing of numbers and suggest that 0, or 1 in the absence of 0, is perceived as the smallest entity on the mental number line. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to models of number representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Color perception involves color representations firstly at a semantic level and then at a lexical level

Studies and models have suggested that color perception first involves access to semantic representations of color. This result leads to two questions: (1) is knowledge able to influence the perception of color when associated with a color? and (2) can the perception of color really involve only semantic representations? We developed an experiment where participants have to discriminate the color of a patch (yellow vs. green). The target patch is preceded either by a black-and-white line drawing or by a word representing a natural object associated with the same or a different color (banana vs. frog). We expected a priming effect for pictures because, with a 350-ms SOA, they only involve access to semantic representations of color, whereas words seem only elicit an access to lexical representations. As expected, we found a priming effect for pictures, but also for words. Moreover, we found a general slowdown of response times in the word-prime-condition suggesting the need of an additional processing step to produce priming. In a second experiment, we manipulated the SOA in order to preclude a semantic access in the word-prime-condition that could explain the additional step of processing. We also found a priming effect, suggesting that interaction with perception occurs at a lexical level and the additional step occurs at a color perception level. In the discussion, we develop a new model of color perception assuming that color perception involves access to semantic representations and then access to lexical representations.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORTHOGRAPHIC LINGUISTIC AWARENESS IN KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN AND THE RELATIONSHIP OF THIS AWARENESS TO LATER READING ACHIEVEMENT

ABSTRACT

To examine the developmental course of children's understanding of print concepts, orthographic linguistic awareness, the Concepts About Print (CAP) test was given to 29 boys and 27 girls three times during their kindergarten year and on two occasions during their first‐grade year. That approximately 20% of these children did not understand print‐direction and letter‐word concepts at the beginning of the first grade confirmed previous findings that many children entering formal reading instruction may have little knowledge of the reading instruction register. Orthographic linguistic awareness, measured even at the beginning of kindergarten, was found to be highly correlated with reading achievement measured at the end of the first grade, and these relationships between orthographic linguistic awareness and reading achievement were consistently higher for the girls than for the boys. Path analyses including the Record of Oral Language, Metropolitan Readiness Test and Iowa Test of Basic Skills revealed strong direct influences of orthographic linguistic awareness at the beginning of the first grade on reading achievement measured at the end of first grade