Story Recall and Narrative Coherence of High-Functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Previous research has found few quantitative differences between children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and well-matched controls in the length, complexity, and structure of their narratives. Researchers have noted, however, that narratives of children with ASDs have an unusual and idiosyncratic nature. This study provides an analysis of narratives in 17 children with high-functioning ASDs and 17 typically developing children matched on age, gender, language abilities, and cognitive abilities. We examined story recall and narrative coherence. The study revealed no group differences in story length or syntactic complexity. Children with ASDs also did not differ from controls in their use of the gist of a story to aid recall, or in their sensitivity to the importance of story events. Children with ASDs did, however, produce narratives that were significantly less coherent than the narratives of controls. Children with ASDs appeared less likely to use the gist of the story to organize their narratives coherently. These findings are discussed with regard to their relationship to other cognitive and linguistic difficulties of children with ASDs.     

Whose idea is it anyway? The importance of reputation in acknowledgement

Six‐year‐old children negatively evaluate plagiarizers just as adults do (Olson & Shaw, 2011), but why do they dislike plagiarizers? Children may think plagiarism is wrong because plagiarizing negatively impacts other people's reputations. We investigated this possibility by having 6‐ to 9‐year‐old children evaluate people who shared their own or other people's ideas (stories). In Experiment 1, we found that children consider it acceptable to retell someone else's story if the source is given credit for their story (improving the source's reputation), but not if the reteller claims credit for the story (steals credit away from someone else). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that children do not consider it bad to lie by giving someone else credit for one's own good story (improving someone else's reputation), but do consider it bad to give someone else credit for one's own bad story (improving one's own reputation at the expense of someone else's). Experiment 4 demonstrated that children think it is equally bad to take credit for someone else's idea for oneself as it is to take someone else's idea and give credit to someone else, suggesting that children dislike when others take credit away from someone else, regardless of whether or not it improves the plagiarizer's reputation. Our results suggest that children dislike plagiarism because it negatively affects others' reputations by taking credit away from them.     

Reliance on visual and verbal information across ontological kinds: What do children know about animals and machines?

In two experiments, we systematically examined the reliance on visual (external shape and features) and verbal (origins and internal structure) information in isolation, and together in the identification of animals and machines by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, and adults. Experiment 1 examined the use of visual and verbal information independently in a visual classification task, a verbal classification task, and an induction task. Experiment 2 examined the relative weighting of visual and verbal information in an induction task and a categorization task. The three most important findings from Experiment 1 were that (a) children and adults can use either visual or verbal information to distinguish animals from machines; (b) all age groups classified items with mixed visual information as machines, a tendency that increased with age; and (c) with age, children became increasingly able to induce non-obvious properties, especially the non-obvious properties of machines. The findings from Experiment 2 indicate that the youngest and oldest participants relied on both visual and verbal information in the identification of animals and machines in categorization and induction tasks. Five-year-olds, however, relied only on visual information. As in Experiment 1, we observed a tendency to judge items with contrasting information as machines, suggesting that individuals utilize a more strict definition (both visually and verbally) for the category of animals. We discuss the implication of these results with respect to developmental differences in the use of perceptual and conceptual information across the ontological distinction between artifacts and natural kinds.     

The role of elaborative and schema processes in story memory

Three experiments examined recall for a story for which comprehension of some of its idea units required active construction on the part of the subject (letters were deleted from the words contained in one-third of the idea units). In Experiment 1, recall was significantly better for those ideas with letters deleted than for those with letters intact. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects were instructed to adopt a particular perspective while reading the story. Recall of idea units was found to be an additive function of (1) an idea's importance to the perspective adopted, and (2) the letter-deletion manipulation. These results suggest a model of story memory that incorporates both elaborative-processing and schema-based mechanisms.     

Response latency as a predictor of the accuracy of children's reports

Researchers have explored various diagnostic cues to the accuracy of information provided by child eyewitnesses. Previous studies indicated that children's confidence in their reports predicts the relative accuracy of these reports, and that the confidence-accuracy relationship generally improves as children grow older. In this study, we examined the added contribution of response latency to the prediction of children's accuracy over and above that of confidence ratings. In Experiments 1 and 2, 2nd and 5th graders studied picture-event pairs and were tested using forced-choice, 2-alternative, or 5-alternative questions. In Experiment 3, children watched a slideshow depicting a story and were tested by 5-alternative questions about story details. The children indicated their confidence in each response, and response latency was measured. The results of all experiments suggested that children in both age groups relied on response latency as a cue for confidence, and this reliance contributed to the success with which they monitored the accuracy of their reports. When the test format was easy (Experiment 1), 2nd graders were as accurate as 5th graders in monitoring the accuracy of their answers, and the latency of their responses was no less predictive of accuracy. When the task was more difficult, age differences emerged. Nevertheless, in all experiments and for both age groups, response latency was found to have added value for predicting accuracy over and above that of confidence. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for predicting the accuracy of children's reports are discussed.     

Aging and Source Monitoring of Characters in Literary Texts

This research examines adult age differences in source monitoring for literary texts. Source monitoring refers to processes that lead to attributions regarding the source or origin of information (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). Young and older adults read a literary play (Experiment 1) or short story (Experiment 2). In a later source-monitoring test, participants decided whether statements originated from Character A, Character B, Character C, or none of them. Recognition memory for statements was lower for older adults. Age differences in source monitoring were also consistently observed in both experiments, suggesting that older adults are impaired in everyday source-monitoring tasks that involve written discourse.     

Knowing what to remember and forget: A developmental study of cue memory in intentional forgetting

These experiments are the first to investigate children’s encoding and use of information about a memory cue in Bjork’s (1972) intentional forgetting task. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 and college students were given cues to either remember or forget after the presentation of each picture. Recall and recognition tests of pictures and cues followed. The procedure in Experiment 2 was identical to that in Experiment 1 except that the list of presentation pictures was altered for some children (Grades 3 and 4) and adolescents (Grades 8 and 9) so that remember and forget cues were associated with particular taxonomic categories. In Experiment 3, the testing component was modified so that children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and college students were asked to recall only the cue associated with each picture. The results indicated that (1) children as young as second graders encode the cue associated with each picture, although to a lesser extent than do college students, (2) much improvement in intentional forgetting is still occurring during adolescence, (3) only adults adequately cluster their recall by cue, (4) associating remember and forget cues with items from different categories does not increase the differentiation between cues, and (5) eliminating picture recall and recognition has minimal effects on the magnitude of cue judgments. These results suggest that children’s difficulties on intentional forgetting tasks stem, at least in part, from their poorer encoding of information about whether an item should be remembered or forgotten.     

The development of cynicism

Two experiments explored the development of cynicism by examining how children evaluate other people who make claims consistent or inconsistent with their self-interests. In Experiment 1, kindergartners, second graders, and fourth graders heard stories with ambiguous conclusions in which characters made statements that were aligned either with or against self-interest. Older children took into account the self-interests of characters in determining how much to believe them: They discounted statements aligned with self-interest, whereas they accepted statements going against self-interest. Experiment 2 examined children's endorsement of three different explanations for potentially self-interested statements: lies, biases, and mistakes. Like adults, sixth graders endorsed lies and bias as plausible explanations for wrong statements aligned with self-interest; younger children did not endorse bias. Implications for the development of cynicism and children's understanding of bias are discussed.     

Memory for instances and categories in children and adults

College subjects and 7-year-olds were trained in sorting 16 words into two conceptual categories. Training consisted of either three list presentations (Experiment I) or training to solution (Experiment II). Then either immediately or after a 3 to 4 week delay subjects received a recognition test which assessed memory for the instance vs categorical properties of the task stimuli by embedding words from the original list and from the list categories with confusion items from either the same or different categories as those on the original list. The data indicated that learning and memory were controlled primarily by categorical properties of the task items in adults and by specific instance properties in children. However, there was evidence that children had learned the categorical attributes of the task and may have differed from adults chiefly in their failure to utilize these attributes to assist learning and memory performance. The age differences in learning and memory were independent of the degree of initial training.     

Video reminders in a representational change task: memory for cues but not beliefs or statements

Two experiments investigated the effect of video reminders on 3-year-olds' performance in a representational change task. In Experiment 1, children in a video support condition viewed videotapes of their initial incorrect statements about a misleading container prior to being asked to report their initial belief. Children in a control condition viewed an irrelevant videotape. Despite reporting what they had said on the videotape, children in the video support condition typically failed the representational change task. Experiment 2 replicated the main findings from Experiment 1 and also revealed that a video reminder failed to increase the likelihood that children would correctly report what they had said about the object. Results are discussed in terms of the processes whereby mnemonic cues might affect performance on tasks assessing theory of mind.     

TEACHING IDIOM COMPREHENSION TO CHILDREN WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

This study examined the effectiveness of a training program designed to teach children with mild mental retardation the meaning of 12 idiomatic phrases, such as “to hit the sack.” Four 9-year-old children participated in the training. A multiple baseline design across subjects and across three sets of idioms was implemented. Training consisted of presenting both literal and idiomatic contexts in the form of story narratives, and asking the children to explain the outcome of the story and to select one picture from an array of four that represented the outcome. All children demonstrated learning, although 1 child required review procedures to facilitate maintenance. Children were able to generalize their receptive learning to an expressive task with varying levels of success. All children demonstrated an ability to understand the learned idioms when presented in unfamiliar contexts.     

Presence and place of main ideas and examples in study texts

Background: How indispensable are examples and main ideas in study texts? In research into comprehension of expository texts examples are sometimes considered as cognitive support, sometimes as seductive details. According to the cognitivist view, text comprehension is based on main ideas, whereas the constructivist view holds that examples are the basis of understanding. Aims: This study explored how text comprehension is influenced by main ideas and examples in study texts, in relation to Vermunt's (1992, 1998) ‘concrete elaboration’ learning style. In Experiment 1, concrete texts with many examples were compared with abstract texts with many main ideas. In Experiment 2, idea‐oriented texts, in which main ideas preceded examples, were compared with example‐oriented texts, in which examples preceded main ideas. Samples: In both experiments, undergraduate social sciences students studied various versions of an introductory text on educational psychology. Methods: The text contained sections with a varying number of relevant and irrelevant examples and with or without a main idea (Experiment 1), and sections with a main idea followed by examples, sections with a main idea without examples, or sections with examples followed by a main idea (Experiment 2). After studying the text, students completed a verbatim recognition test and an explanation test. Results: Best results were obtained after studying sections with a main idea and two or five examples. Irrelevant examples were detrimental to understanding. Students used examples to construct knowledge or to activate prior knowledge. Students with a strong habit of concrete elaboration used main ideas to recollect episodes of personal experience. This may interfere with understanding underlying concepts and principles by relating main ideas to examples in the text. Students with a low score on the concrete elaboration scale were sensitive to the presence of examples in the study text. Conclusion: In expository texts, examples are indispensable. The findings suggest that main ideas are useful, and, in order to prevent interference effects, the more so when they are put at the end of sections.     

The Underlying Architecture of the Creative Worlds of Children: Young Persons from the UK and China Unwittingly Generate More Concepts that Violate Ontological Category Structure Than Do Older Adults During an Exemplar‐Generation Task

Is our cognition the underlying architecture of the recurrent and pan‐cultural imaginative ideas of children and adolescents? Recent cross‐cultural studies show that children and adolescents recall proportionally more creative, counterintuitive concepts than older adults. One outstanding concern is that cultural transmission is also constrained by how concepts emerge into culture. Hence, a broad sample of age demographics in UK and China (10–58 years; N = 90) participated in an exemplar‐generation task where participants assembled statements exemplifying conceptual categories of positive and negative emotion, imagery, humor, and inferential potential. Multiple regression analysis considering counterintuitiveness and age revealed young persons generated significantly more imaginative, counterintuitive ideas than older adults, in both UK and China groups. This cross‐cultural support for an underlying cognitive architecture of human creativity builds on Ward's (1994) research on structured imagination.     

Modeling face identification processing in children and adults

Two face identification experiments were carried out to study whether and how children (5-year-olds) and adults integrate single facial features to identify faces. Using the paradigm of the Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception each experiment used the same expanded factorial design, with three levels of eyes variations crossed with three levels of mouth variations as well as their corresponding half-face conditions. In Experiment 1, an integration of facial features was observed in adults only. But, in adjusting the salience of the features varied, the results of Experiment 2 indicate that children and adults evaluated and integrated information from both features to identify a face. A weighted Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception fit the judgments significantly better than a Single Channel Model and questions previous claims of holistic face processing. Although no developmental differences in the stage of the integration of facial information were observable, differences between children and adults appeared in the information used for face identification.     

How children know the relevant properties for generalizing object names

Young children’s novel word extensions indicate that their animal categories, like those of adults, are characterized by multiple similarities among instances; whereas their artifact categories, again like those of adults, are characterized more simply by commonalities among instances in shape. Three experiments shed light on the nature and development of a mechanism that enables children to organize novel lexical categories differently for different kinds of objects. Experiment 1 shows that, by adult judgments, animals and artifacts present different category organizations. Experiment 2 shows relations between both age and the number of nouns young children have acquired, and children’s kind‐specific generalizations of newly learned nouns. Experiment 3 is a training study in which even younger children show an ability to learn and then generalize highly abstract relations between different contextual cues and different category structures; and importantly, to learn more than one set of such relations at a time. Together, these three findings indicate one way in which children are able to rapidly and accurately form lexical categories that parallel those of adults in their language community.     

Normative study of the implicit causality of 100 interpersonal verbs in Spanish

This study provides normative data on the implicit causality of interpersonal verbs in Spanish. Two experiments were carried out. In Experiment 1, ratings of the implicit causality of 100 verbs classified into four types (agent-patient, agent-evocator, stimulus-experiencer, and experiencer-stimulus) were examined. An offline task was used in which 105 adults and 163 children had to complete sentences containing one verb. Both age and gender effects in the causal biases were examined. In Experiment 2, reading times for sentences containing 60 verbs were analyzed. An online reading task was used in which 34 adults had to read sentences that were both congruent and incongruent with the implicit causality of the verb. The results support the effect of implicit causality in both adults and children, and they support the taxonomy used.     

5岁儿童能够理解假装的心理表征:对Moe任务的质疑

本研究通过三个实验对Lillard的Moe假装任务进行了重复与改进,旨在探讨儿童对假装行为中知识状态作用的理解,进而讨论儿童对假装的心理本质的理解。实验一表明,“是否”问题使得5岁儿童在该任务上表现出肯定回答倾向;实验二表明．当改变提问方式,在问题中提供选择项目后,5岁儿童在该任务上的通过率有显著提高．肯定回答倾向明显减弱;实验三表明,当减少指导语中相互矛盾的信息、明确指出主人公知道某物而不知道另一物以及减弱对未知状态和知道状态的强调的情况下．5岁儿童能根据主人公所知道的事物来推断出其行为是在假装成该事物,能理解到知识状态在假装行为中的作用。这一结果表明5岁儿童能够理解到假装中所隐含的心理表征,Lillard所提出的Moe任务范式低估了儿童对假装的心理本质的理解能力。     

Age-related changes in odor discrimination

Odor naming and recognition memory are poorer in children than in adults. This study explored whether such differences might result from poorer discriminative ability. Experiment 1 used an oddity test of discrimination with familiar odors on 6-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults. Six-year-olds were significantly poorer at discrimination relative to 11-year-olds and adults, who did not differ. Experiment 2 used the same procedure but with hard-to-name visual stimuli and compared only 6-year-olds with adults (as with the remaining experiments in this study). There was no difference in performance between these groups. Experiment 3 used the same procedure as Experiment 1 but with less familiar odors. Six-year-olds were significantly poorer at discrimination than adults. In Experiment 4 the researchers controlled for verbal labeling by using an articulatory suppression task, with the same basic procedure as in Experiment 1. Six-year-old performance was the same as for Experiment 1 and significantly poorer than that of adults. Impoverished olfactory discrimination may underpin performance deficits previously observed in children. These all may result from their lesser experience with odors, relative to adults.     

Differences in the Evaluation of Generic Statements About Human and Non‐Human Categories

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. Current theories suggest that people should be especially inclined to accept generics that involve threatening information. However, previous tests of this claim have focused on generics about non‐human categories, which raises the question of whether this effect applies as readily to human categories. In Experiment 1, adults were more likely to accept generics involving a threatening (vs. a non‐threatening) property for artifacts, but this negativity bias did not also apply to human categories. Experiment 2 examined an alternative hypothesis for this result, and Experiments 3 and 4 served as conceptual replications of the first experiment. Experiment 5 found that even preschoolers apply generics differently for humans and artifacts. Finally, Experiment 6 showed that these effects reflect differences between human and non‐human categories more generally, as adults showed a negativity bias for categories of non‐human animals, but not for categories of humans. These findings suggest the presence of important, early‐emerging domain differences in people's judgments about generics.