Young children’s acquisition of knowledge about the Earth: A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study examined the acquisition of early knowledge of astronomy to determine whether children’s knowledge at any point in time is consistent with a naive “mental model.” Children were first assessed by means of open questions and drawing tasks at 2 and 3 years of age (N = 143). The knowledge was reassessed over the course of the following 3 years. The results showed that although a few indications of naive mental models were found, in most cases young children’s knowledge was fragmented and accurate knowledge was often expressed alongside inaccurate/synthetic ideas. Furthermore, it was shown that children need to know scientific facts before they start taking the global perspective when describing the world and, when faced with ambiguous open questions, children often experience difficulties that can induce them to change the types of answers they provide.     

Children's knowledge of the earth: a new methodological and statistical approach

In the field of children’s knowledge of the earth, much debate has concerned the question of whether children’s naive knowledge—that is, their knowledge before they acquire the standard scientific theory—is coherent (i.e., theory-like) or fragmented. We conducted two studies with large samples (N = 328 and N = 381) using a new paper-and-pencil test, denoted the EARTH (EArth Representation Test for cHildren), to discriminate between these two alternatives. We performed latent class analyses on the responses to the EARTH to test mental models associated with these alternatives. The naive mental models, as formulated by Vosniadou and Brewer, were not supported by the results. The results indicated that children’s knowledge of the earth becomes more consistent as children grow older. These findings support the view that children’s naive knowledge is fragmented.     

Priming as a way of understanding children’s mental representations of the social world

Priming is a well established tool for experimental examination of how mental representations drive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that has been widely used in adult research. Priming is also a well established technique in cognitive development research. Social development research, however, has rarely used priming as a research method despite evidence that this technique is promising for helping researchers untangle causal connections between children’s mental representations and children’s social development outcomes. This paper discusses how priming methods may yield important insights into the role that children’s mental representations of the social world play in children’s social functioning. We begin by discussing the theoretical conceptualization underlying priming and priming methods. We next review evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of priming techniques in child development research. We conclude by suggesting ways in which priming can inform future research in social development using research examining attachment, social-information-processing, gender development, and mood and mental health as examples.     

Effects of action on children’s and adults’ mental imagery

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and which aspects of a concurrent motor activity can facilitate children’s and adults’ performance in a dynamic imagery task. Children (5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds) and adults were asked to tilt empty glasses, filled with varied amounts of imaginary water, so that the imagined water would reach the rim. Results showed that in a manual tilting task where glasses could be tilted actively with visual feedback, even 5-year-olds performed well. However, in a blind tilting task and in a static judgment task, all age groups showed markedly lower performance. This implies that visual movement information facilitates imagery. In a task where the tilting movement was visible but regulated by means of an on-and-off remote control, a clear age trend was found, indicating that active motor control and motor feedback are particularly important in imagery performance of younger children.     

The development and robustness of young children’s understanding of aspectuality

We investigated whether 6-year-olds’ understanding of perceptual aspectuality was sufficiently robust to deal with the presence of irrelevant information. A total of 32 children chose whether to look or feel to locate a specific object (identifiable by sight or touch) from four objects that were hidden. In half of the trials, the objects were different on only one modality (e.g., four objects that felt different but were the same color). In the remainder of the trials, the objects also differed (partially) on one irrelevant modality (e.g., four objects that felt different, two red and two blue, where the goal was to locate the soft object). Performance was worse on the latter trials. We discuss children’s difficulty in dealing with irrelevant information.     

Children’s understanding of addition and subtraction concepts

After the onset of formal schooling, little is known about the development of children’s understanding of the arithmetic concepts of inversion and associativity. On problems of the form a + b − b (e.g., 3 + 26 − 26), if children understand the inversion concept (i.e., that addition and subtraction are inverse operations), then no calculations are needed to solve the problem. On problems of the form a + b − c (e.g., 3 + 27 − 23), if children understand the associativity concept (i.e., that the addition and subtraction can be solved in any order), then the second part of the problem can be solved first. Children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 solved both types of problems and then were given a demonstration of how to apply both concepts. Approval of each concept and preference of a conceptual approach versus an algorithmic approach were measured. Few grade differences were found on either task. Conceptual understanding was greater for inversion than for associativity on both tasks. Clusters of participants in all grades showed that some had strong understanding of both concepts, some had strong understanding of the inversion concept only, and others had weak understanding of both concepts. The findings highlight the lack of developmental increases and the large individual differences in conceptual understanding on two arithmetic concepts during the early school years.     

Enabling conditions and children’s understanding of pretense

Two experiments examined whether preschoolers’ difficulties on tasks that required relating pretending and knowledge (e.g., Lillard, A. S. (1993a). Young children’s conceptualization of pretense: Action or mental representational state? Child Development, 64, 372-386) were due to children’s inability to appreciate the causal mechanism behind enabling conditions. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were told about a character who knew about one kind of animal and did not know about another. The character acted in a manner consistent with both animals. Children were asked whether the character was pretending to be the animal of which he was ignorant. The character’s knowledge was either represented in a generic manner (as a picture) or in a manner that suggested a particular enabling condition relation that children found accessible (as a battery, which most 4-year-olds recognize is critical for making toys work). Children were more successful at relating knowledge and pretending in the battery condition. This improvement in performance extended to another task in which children had to identify the enabling condition relation between knowledge and identification, in which there were reduced demands on the inhibitory mechanisms necessary for success. Experiment 2 found that the results in Experiment 1 were not due to demands of the procedure used in Experiment 1. These results are discussed in the context of recent theories of theory of mind that focus on the importance of causal relations among mental states.     

Choosing between hearts and minds: Children's understanding of moral advisors

Moral development research has often focused on the development of moral reasoning without considering children's understanding of moral advisors. We investigated how children construe sources of moral advice by examining the characteristics that children deem necessary for reasoning about moral or scientific problems. In two experiments, children in grades K, 2, and 4 were presented with dilemmas of a moral nature or scientific nature and chose between two advisors. Second and fourth graders chose advisors differentially based on their expertise, while kindergartners did not discriminate between advisors. In a third experiment, older children indicated that only certain characteristics are needed to solve moral or scientific problems, and they endorsed these characteristics differentially based on the problem to be solved. Thus, by middle childhood, children construe moral knowledge as distinct from scientific knowledge and select advisors in each area accordingly.     

Information learned from generic language becomes central to children’s biological concepts: Evidence from their open-ended explanations

Generic sentences (e.g., “Snakes have holes in their teeth”) convey that a property (e.g., having holes in one’s teeth) is true of a category (e.g., snakes). We test the hypothesis that, in addition to this basic aspect of their meaning, generic sentences also imply that the information they express is more conceptually central than the information conveyed in similar non-generic sentences (e.g., “This snake has holes in his teeth”). To test this hypothesis, we elicited 4- and 5-year-old children’s open-ended explanations for generic and non-generic versions of the same novel properties. Based on arguments in the categorization literature, we assumed that, relative to more peripheral properties, properties that are understood as conceptually central would be explained more often as causes and less often as effects of other features, behaviors, or processes. Two experiments confirmed the prediction that preschool-age children construe novel information learned from generics as more conceptually central than the same information learned from non-generics. Additionally, Experiment 2 suggested that the conceptual status of novel properties learned from generic sentences becomes similar to that of familiar properties that are already at the category core. These findings illustrate the power of generic language to shape children’s concepts.     

Relations between children’s metamemory and strategic performance: Time-varying covariates in early elementary school

Although much is known about the development of memory strategies and metamemory during childhood, evidence for linkages between these memory skills, either concurrently or over time, has been limited. Drawing from a longitudinal investigation of the development of memory, repeated assessments of children’s (N = 107) strategy use and declarative metamemory were made to examine the development of these skills and the relations between them over time. Latent curve models were used first to estimate the trajectories of children’s strategy use and metamemory and then to examine predictors of children’s performance in each of these domains. Children’s metamemory at the beginning of Grade 1 was linked to child- and home-level factors, whereas the development of both skills was related to maternal education level. Additional modeling of the longitudinal relations between strategic sorting and metacognitive knowledge indicated that metamemory at earlier time points was predictive of subsequent strategy use.     

The role of illustrations in children’s inferential comprehension

Illustrations are a salient source of information in children’s books, yet their effect on children’s reading comprehension has been studied only through literal factual recall. The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of illustrations on bridging inferences, an important aspect of meaning making in comprehension models. Identical short stories were presented under different illustration conditions with pictures that represented different parts of the story. Participants were 73 7- to 11-year-olds. Illustrations both facilitated and interfered with inferencing depending on the type of information depicted; however, this effect was reduced as grade increased. Additional findings were that the overall ability to make inferences increased with age and working memory was a significant predictor of this skill. Results are discussed in relation to cognitive and developmental models of comprehension.     

Children's understanding of the arithmetic concepts of inversion and associativity

Previous studies have shown that even preschoolers can solve inversion problems of the form a+b-b by using the knowledge that addition and subtraction are inverse operations. In this study, a new type of inversion problem of the form d x e/e was also examined. Grade 6 and 8 students solved inversion problems of both types as well as standard problems of the form a+b-c and d x e/f. Students in both grades used the inversion concept on both types of inversion problems, although older students used inversion more frequently and inversion was used most frequently on the addition/subtraction problems. No transfer effects were found from one type of inversion problem to the other. Students who used the concept of associativity on the addition/subtraction standard problems (e.g., a+b-c=[b-c]+a) were more likely to use the concept of inversion on the inversion problems, although overall implementation of the associativity concept was infrequent. The findings suggest that further study of inversion and associativity is important for understanding conceptual development in arithmetic.     

Statistical frequency in perception affects children’s lexical production

Children’s early word production is influenced by the statistical frequency of speech sounds and combinations. Three experiments asked whether this production effect can be explained by a perceptual learning mechanism that is sensitive to word-token frequency and/or variability. Four-year-olds were exposed to nonwords that were either frequent (presented 10 times) or infrequent (presented once). When the frequent nonwords were spoken by the same talker, children showed no significant effect of perceptual frequency on production. When the frequent nonwords were spoken by different talkers, children produced them with fewer errors and shorter latencies. The results implicate token variability in perceptual learning.     

Children's understanding of the inverse relation between multiplication and division

Children's understanding of the inversion concept in multiplication and division problems (i.e., that on problems of the form d * e/e no calculations are required) was investigated. Children in Grades 6, 7, and 8 completed an inversion problem-solving task, an assessment of procedures task, and a factual knowledge task of simple multiplication and division. Application of the inversion concept in the problem-solving task was low and constant across grades. Most participants approved of the inversion-based shortcut but only a slight majority preferred it. Three clusters of children were identified based on their performance on the three tasks. The inversion cluster used and approved of the inversion shortcut the most and had high factual knowledge. The negation cluster used the negation strategy, had lower approval of the inversion shortcut, and had medium factual knowledge. The computation cluster used computation and had the lowest approval and the weakest factual knowledge. The findings highlight the importance of addressing the multiplication and division inversion concept in theories of children's mathematical competence.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of children’s early memory skills

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children’s Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied across the different ages. Language ability emerged as a predictor of immediate Elicited Imitation performance by 24 months of age and predicted delayed performance at each age. In addition to the contributions of language, children’s abilities to search for and retrieve toys in the deliberate memory task were associated with their immediate Elicited Imitation performance at each age. In addition to language, working memory was positively associated with aspects of both immediate and delayed performance at all ages. The extent to which it was possible to replicate and extend previous cross-sectional work in this longitudinal study is discussed.     

The development of automatic associative processes and children’s false memories

We investigated children’s ability to generate associations and how automaticity of associative activation unfolds developmentally. Children generated associative responses using a single associate paradigm (Experiment 1) or a Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM)-like multiple associates paradigm (Experiment 2). The results indicated that children’s ability to generate meaningful word associates, and the automaticity with which they were generated, increased between 5, 7, and 11 years of age. These findings suggest that children’s domain-specific knowledge base and the associative connections among related concepts are present and continue to develop from a very early age. Moreover, there is an increase in how these concepts are automatically activated with age, something that results from domain-general developments in speed of processing. These changes are consistent with the neurodevelopmental literature and together may provide a more complete explanation of the development of memory illusions.     

Never getting to zero: Elementary school students' understanding of the infinite divisibility of number and matter

Clinical interviews administered to third- to sixth-graders explored children's conceptualizations of rational number and of certain extensive physical quantities. We found within child consistency in reasoning about diverse aspects of rational number. Children's spontaneous acknowledgement of the existence of numbers between 0 and 1 was strongly related to their induction that numbers are infinitely divisible in the sense that they can be repeatedly divided without ever getting to zero. Their conceptualizing number as infinitely divisible was strongly related to their having a model of fraction notation based on division and to their successful judgment of the relative magnitudes of fractions and decimals. In addition, their understanding number as infinitely divisible was strongly related to their understanding physical quantities as infinitely divisible. These results support a conceptual change account of knowledge acquisition, involving two-way mappings between the domains of number and physical quantity.