The relationship between the perception of axes of symmetry and spatial memory during early childhood

Early in development, there is a transition in spatial working memory (SWM). When remembering a location in a homogeneous space (e.g., in a sandbox), young children are biased toward the midline symmetry axis of the space. Over development, a transition occurs that leads to older children being biased away from midline. The dynamic field theory (DFT) explains this transition in biases as being caused by a change in the precision of neural interaction in SWM and improvements in the perception of midline. According to the DFT, young children perceive midline, but there is a quantitative improvement in the perception of midline over development. In the experiment reported here, children and adults needed to determine on which half of a large monitor a target was located. In support of the DFT, even the youngest children performed above chance at most locations, but performance also improved gradually with age.     

Maternal Style and Children's Participation in Reminiscing: Stepping Stones in Children's Autobiographical Memory Development

In this study we investigated maternal and child factors in children's autobiographical memory development. Fifty-eight mother-child dyads discussed unique past events when the children were 19, 25, 32, and 40 months old. In addition, children participated in experimenter-child interviews about unique events when they were 25, 32, and 40 months old. The developmental progression to children's independent verbal memory begins with children's early interest in participating in the conversations and maternal reminiscing style, which together elicit children's later shared memory elaborations. Subsequently, children's shared memory elaborations and maternal reminiscing style both contribute to children's later independent memory at approximately 3 1/2 years of age. We address the idea that autobiographical memory development is essentially a collaborative process, with children significantly contributing to the development of their own reminiscing style from its inception.     

The Development of Internal State Language during the Third Year of Life: A Longitudinal Parent Report Study

Children's talk about the mind has been scarcely studied in non‐English speakers. For this reason, this longitudinal study documents age‐related changes in German‐speaking children's internal state language. At 24, 30 and 36 months, children were administered general language tests and their internal state vocabulary levels were obtained via parental report. The developmental transition from a vocabulary rich in physiological, perceptual and desire terms to a vocabulary rich in a wider range of mental concepts confirmed previous research with French‐speaking and English‐speaking children and research in children's internal state comprehension. Further, children's category scores proved to be developmentally stable. Finally, with increasing age, children's category scores became more specifically related to each other, independent of general language skills. The results are discussed in regard to the universality of children's talk about the mind. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

母亲积极养育行为对儿童顺从行为的早期预测与双向作用:从婴儿到学步儿

顺从是儿童早期重要的社会化成就。传统理论关注父母控制策略对顺从的作用,但实证结果表明其解释率有限;当前理论更加关注积极养育行为在顺从发展中具有发展适宜性的作用机制。本研究采用追踪设计考察了84个家庭从儿童6个月到3岁时母亲的敏感性和鼓励自主两种积极养育行为与学步儿顺从发展的关系。结果表明:(1)1岁前母亲敏感性对学步儿2岁时的合作性顺从有正向预测作用,对2岁到3岁合作性顺从的变化没有预测作用;(2)1岁前母亲敏感性对学步儿2岁时的情境性顺从和2岁到3岁的情境性顺从的变化均有负向预测作用;(3)在2岁到3岁期间,母亲的鼓励自主与学步儿的合作性顺从水平有双向正向预测作用,但与情境性顺从不存在双向预测关系。     

Cumulative risk disparities in children's neurocognitive functioning: a developmental cascade model

The current longitudinal study examined the role of cumulative social risk on children's theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF) across early development. Further, we also tested a cascade model of development in which children's social cognition at 18 months was hypothesized to predict ToM and EF at age 4.5 through intermediary language skills at age 3. We then examined whether this developmental mechanism varied as a function of social risk status. Participants were 501 children recruited when they were newborns, at which point eight psychosocial risk factors were assessed and combined into a metric of cumulative social disadvantage. Families were followed up at 18 months, at which point four social‐cognitive skills were assessed using developmentally sensitive tasks: joint attention, empathy, cooperation, and self‐recognition. Language was measured at age 3 using a standardized measure of receptive vocabulary. At age 3 and 4.5, EF and ToM were measured using previously validated tasks. Results showed that there were notable cumulative risk disparities in overall neurocognitive skill development, and these effects became more differentiated over time. Support was also found for a developmental mechanism wherein the effect of social cognition at 18 months on ToM and EF in the preschool period operated specifically through children's receptive language ability at age 3. This pathway functioned similarly for children with both low‐ and high‐risk backgrounds. These results extend previous findings by documenting the role of cumulative social disadvantage on children's neurocognition and the pathways that link key neurocognitive abilities across early development.     

Implicit long-term memory for duration in young children

The aim of the present study was to investigate young children's ability to maintain in long-term memory a duration of an action they have previously experienced (i.e., implicit long-term memory for duration). Children aged 3 and 5 years were trained to produce an action for 5 s by simultaneous imitation of the experimenter's action. Then, they were tested after a retention interval lasting for 1, 24, or 48 hours (Experiment 1), or 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months (Experiment 2). The results showed that the young children remembered the learned duration after 48 hours and 6 months at the age of 3 and 5 years, respectively, although the temporal performance decreased at the 1 hour and the 6 weeks retention intervals for the first and the second age group. These findings are discussed in the framework of a discrepancy in the memory retention of duration as a function of the nature of the memory system, i.e., implicit or explicit.     

Developmental Differences in the Influence of Distractors on Maintenance in Spatial Working Memory

This study examined whether attention to a location plays a role in the maintenance of locations in spatial working memory in young children as it does in adults. This study was the first to investigate whether distractors presented during the delay of a spatial working-memory task influenced young children’s memory responses. Across 2 experiments, 3- and 6-year-olds completed a spatial working-memory task featuring a static target location and distractor location. Results indicated a change from 3 years to 6 years of age in how distractors influenced memory. Six-year-olds’ memory responses were biased away from a distractor that was close to the target location and on the outside of the target location relative to the center of the monitor. Distractors that were far from the target or that were toward the center of the monitor relative to the target location had no effect. Three-year-olds’ responses were biased toward a distractor when the distractor was on the outside of the target location and farther from the target. Distractors that were near the target location or toward the center of the monitor had no effect. These biases provide evidence that young children’s maintenance of a location in memory is influenced by attention.     

Social Antecedents of Children's Trustworthiness

A total of 1329 children were tested twice across 1 year (M = 7 years 5 months of age at Time 1 (T1)) in the Zurich Project on Social Development. The measures at T1 were corporal punishment, neighbourhood trustworthiness and children's trustworthiness (not lying/cheating and not stealing). At Time 2 (T2), children reported the promise keeping of their classmates, which, via social relations analyses, yielded evidence for individual differences in reliability trustworthiness. Structural equation modelling analyses confirmed that there was stability in children's trustworthiness as a latent variable. The structural equation modelling further yielded evidence that (1) corporal punishment at T1 was negatively associated with children's trustworthiness at T1 and negatively predicted changes in children's trustworthiness and (2) neighbourhood trustworthiness at T1 was positively associated with children's trustworthiness at T1 and positively predicted changes in children's trustworthiness. The findings yielded support for the hypotheses that corporal punishment negatively, and neighbourhood trustworthiness positively, contributes to the development of trustworthiness in children. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Event report training: An examination of the efficacy of a new intervention to improve children's eyewitness reports

This study tested the efficacy of Event Report Training (ERT), a training procedure designed to improve children's memory reports and decrease suggestibility. Children (N = 58) participated in two forensically relevant play events. Two weeks later, children received ERT or participated in control procedures, after which they received a memory interview. Results indicated that ERT decreased suggestibility to abuse‐related questions in preschoolers; their responses were highly accurate and age differences were eliminated. ERT did not increase the amount of information preschoolers provided in response to open‐ended questions. However, with ERT 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds reported 32% more information which included a 32% increase in actions, without an accompanying increase in incorrect information. Due to school‐aged children's high accuracy rates, it was impossible to gauge the effectiveness of ERT in reducing suggestibility. The failure to obtain an effect of ERT in preschoolers' open‐ended recall is discussed in terms of their cognitive‐developmental limitations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Contribution of Executive Function to Source Memory Development in Early Childhood

Age-related differences in episodic memory judgments assessing recall of fact information and the source of this information were examined. The role of executive function (EF) in supporting early episodic memory ability was also explored. Four- and 6-year-old children were taught 10 novel facts from two different sources (experimenter or puppet), and memory for both fact and source information was later tested. Measures of working memory, inhibitory control, and set shifting were obtained to produce an indicator of children's EF. Six-year-olds recalled more fact and source information than did 4-year-olds. Regression analyses revealed that age, language ability, and EF accounted for unique variance in children's fact recall and source recall performance. These findings suggest a link between episodic memory and EF, and we propose that developmental investigations should further explore this association.     

An Event-Related Potential Study of Item Recognition Memory in Children and Adults

The purpose of this study was to contrast children's event-related potentials (ERPs) with those of adults in an item recognition memory task. Four-year-old children and adults were presented with pictorial images, one half of which had been previously shown, and were asked to indicate whether each picture had been seen before. In both samples, an old-new effect was found in the ERP, namely that responses to correctly recognized old pictures elicited more positive-going ERPs than responses to correctly rejected new pictures. However, there were differences between adults' and children's ERPs with respect to the asymmetric scalp distribution and the time course of the old-new difference. In adults, the ERP differences between old and new pictures were bilateral, whereas in children the differences had a tendency to be stronger over the right hemisphere. In addition, children's ERP effects for correct discrimination between old and new pictures began around 400 to 500 msec later than it did in adults. The similarities and differences between the child and adult findings are discussed in terms of developmental changes in cognitive abilities that may be mirrored through corresponding changes in ERPs.     

Boosting Children's Memory by Training Mothers in the Use of an Elaborative Conversational Style as an Event Unfolds

An experimental methodology was adapted to examine children's language skills and mothers' conversational styles during a specified event as they are linked to the children's event memory. Thirty-nine preschoolers (mean age = 46.82 months) were pretested and grouped as having high or low language skills. Children in each group were then randomly assigned to either maternal-style training or no training conditions. Trained mothers were instructed to use 4 specific conversational techniques to enhance children's understanding of unfolding events: Wh- questions, associations, follow-ins, and positive evaluations. When observed engaging with their children in a specially constructed camping activity, trained mothers did indeed use these elements of style more than untrained mothers. Moreover, assessments of the children's memory after 1-day- and 3-week-delay intervals indicated substantial effects of both maternal training and children's language skills on remembering.     

Emotion comprehension between 3 and 11 years: Developmental periods and hierarchical organization

In the last 20 years, it has been established that children's understanding of emotion changes with age. A review of the extensive literature reveals at least nine distinct components of emotion understanding that have been studied (from the simple attribution of emotions on the basis of facial cues to the emotions involved in moral judgments). Despite this large corpus of findings, there has been little research in which children's understanding of all these various components has been simultaneously assessed. The goal of the current research was to examine the development of these nine components and their interrelationship. For this purpose, 100 children of 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 years were tested on all nine components. The results show that: (1) children display a clear improvement with age on each component; (2) three developmental phases may be identified, each characterized by the emergence of three of the nine components; (3) correlational relations exist among components within a given phase; and (4) hierarchical relations exist among components from successive phases. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.     

The Effects of Adult Suggestion and Child Consistency on Young Children's Reports1

The purpose of the present study was to contrast the effects of children's response consistency and adult leading questions in a structured memory interview. Children (N = 70) who viewed a 2‐min video clip were asked 3 questions (leading, misleading, and neutral) related to the video. Children's responses (assent vs. deny) were predicted by the type of question asked by the adult (neutral, leading, and misleading), but not by the previous response given by the child or the child's age in months. Specifically, children assented the least often to misleading questions. Accuracy was predicted by both question type and in the last question–answer pair, children's previous response accuracy. These findings are discussed with relation to interview dynamics.     

Mental context reinstatement or drawing: Which better enhances children's recall of witnessed events and protects against suggestive questions?

The aim of this experiment was to examine the effectiveness of two techniques in enhancing children's recall of an event that they experienced approximately a week earlier. Younger (5–6 years) and older (8–9 years) children were interviewed about a magic show event in one of three conditions. Before recalling the event, some children were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the event (MCR group), others were asked to draw the context of the event (DCR group), and others received no reinstatement instructions (NCR). Results showed that these instructions had no impact on children's free recall or responses to open‐ended prompts. However, reinstatement instructions impacted children's responses to suggestive questions: those in the DCR group gave more accurate responses than those in the NCR group. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of drawing as a potentially protective exercise that lessens the impact of biased questions with child witnesses.     

Arousal at encoding,arousal at retrieval,interviewer support,and children's memory for a mild stressor

The relations among children's physiological arousal at encoding and retrieval, interviewer‐provided social support and children's memory for a mild stressor were examined in 109 five‐ and six‐year‐olds. The children came to a research laboratory and watched a fear eliciting video clip. A week later, their memory for the video clip was tested by either a supportive or nonsupportive interviewer. While watching the video and completing the memory interview, children's heart rate was monitored. Increased heart rate at encoding was associated with fewer incorrect responses. In contrast, increased heart rate at retrieval was associated with poorer memory, but only when the interviewer was nonsupportive. Heart rate was unrelated to memory when the interviewer was supportive. Results suggest that arousal at encoding and retrieval have different implications for children's memory for a mild stressor, particularly in nonsupportive interview contexts. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

阅读水平调节儿童阅读眼动注视模式的发展:基于9～11岁儿童的证据

按照3~5年级小学生的语文阅读水平,在各年级中分别选取年龄相同的高、中、低三组儿童作为被试,要求他们阅读适合本年级阅读水平的5篇短文,探讨同一年龄段内读者阅读水平的高低对阅读眼动注视模式的影响是否存在发展上的差异。通过记录其眼动轨迹,结果发现:9岁儿童的阅读眼动注视模式受读者本身阅读水平的影响最大,10岁次之,到11岁,随着儿童基本眼动行为的成熟,这种影响随之消失。表明读者阅读眼动注视模式的发展动力来源于语言操作技能和眼球运动协调性提高的交互作用。     

Young children's spontaneous utterances of mental terms and the accuracy of their memory behaviors: a different methodological approach

The purpose of this study was to determine whether young children's spontaneous utterances of mental terms would be congruent with the accuracy of their memory behaviours, and whether the use of an incidental memory task would yield similar developmental patterns as other methodologies. It was hypothesized that if children realize that internal mental activities influence behavioural actions, then the children's behavioural actions (recall) would be congruent with their utterances. A total of 27 three‐ and five‐year‐old children spontaneously used cognitive verbs such as knowing, forgetting, remembering, thinking, guessing and betting during a recall task. The results revealed that 39% of the 3‐year‐old children's behavioural responses and 67% of the 5‐year‐old children were congruent with their spontaneous utterances. These and other findings were consistent with studies that utilized different methodologies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental Changes in Early Comprehension and Production of Drawings: Evidence From Two Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Two studies examined young children's comprehension and production of representational drawings across and within 2 socioeconomic strata (SES). Participants were 130 middle-SES (MSES) and low-SES (LSES) Argentine children, from 30 to 60 months old, given a task with 2 phases, production and comprehension. The production phase assessed free drawing and drawings from simple 3-dimensional objects (model drawing); the comprehension phase assessed children's understanding of an adult's line drawings of the objects. MSES children solved the comprehension phase of the task within the studied age range; representational production emerged first in model drawing (42 months) and later in free drawing (48 months). The same developmental pathway was observed in LSES children but with a clear asynchrony in the age of onset of comprehension and production: Children understood the symbolic nature of drawings at 42 months old and the first representational drawings were found at 60 months old. These results provide empirical evidence that support the crucial influence of social experiences by organizing and constraining graphic development.     

Predicting Children's Recall of a Dental Procedure: Contributions of Stress,Preparation, and Dental History

We examined the extent to which three predictors of children's recall, selected on the basis of their theoretical significance, contributed to the prediction of children's recall for the details of dental operative procedures in a diverse sample of 28 children (54–140 months of age). Parents provided information regarding their children's dental histories and preparation for the dental visit. We obtained behavioral indices of stress from video recordings of the procedures and interviewed the children shortly after treatment to assess their memory. In a significant model predicting open‐ended recall, measures of prior dental experience and parent discussion emerged as unique predictors, although stress did not add to the prediction. The results attest to the importance of incorporating measures of individual differences in investigations of children's reports of their personal experiences. We discuss the importance of children's interpretations in understanding memory for stressful events.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.