Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: attention to relations and objects

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N=64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N=72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N=36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Connecting the dots: children's use of a systematic figure to facilitate mapping and search

Organizing locations into a systematic figure was predicted to facilitate children's use of spatial relations in a mapping task. In Study 1, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds used a map to find a sticker hidden under 1 of 27 locations. The search locations formed a systematic figure, the outline of a dog. Half of the children were shown that the locations formed a dog. Seeing the dog pattern facilitated the performance of 5-year-olds but not that of the younger children. Study 2 indicated that children had to see a systematic figure to gain an advantage; adding lines to an unsystematic figure did not convey an advantage. Study 3 indicated that a verbal label alone could not convey an advantage. Study 4 revealed that seeing the dog pattern could also facilitate performance when the map was rotated relative to the represented space. The importance of organizing spatial information to facilitate relational thinking and mapping is discussed.     

The effects of ongoing task absorption on event-based prospective memory in preschoolers

The current study applied a 2 × 2 experimental design to investigate the effects of ongoing task absorption on event-based prospective memory performance of children aged 3 and 5 years. Children were required to label pictures as ongoing task but to remember to refrain from picture naming and to respond to the target cues in a different way as the prospective memory task. Two differently absorbing ongoing tasks (high absorbing scenario game task vs. low absorbing computer-based task) were administered. Results indicated that prospective memory performance of 5-year-old children was significantly better than that of 3-year-old children. Ongoing task absorption affected the ongoing task performance of preschoolers, but not overall prospective memory performance. Only the 3-year-olds were negatively affected by high ongoing task absorption, which was not the case for the 5-year-olds. The findings are discussed within the light of the multiprocess theory.     

Young children's storage behavior in a memory-for-location task

Two experiments concerned with children's intentional preparation for future retrieval in a memory-for-location task are presented. In the first experiment, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds were instructed to store and subsequently retrieve an object on a large spatial display. All age groups, except the 3-year-olds, tended to store the object at distinctive locations and their retrieval performance was facilitated accordingly. The four age groups did not differ in the types of selections made in a nonmemory control task. The second experiment dealt with the effects of feedback and informational factors on strategy acquisition. Preschoolers were given experience at retrieving the object from distinctive and nondistinctive positions on the stimulus display. Later, when instructed to store the object by themselves, older preschoolers produced the distinctive-position storage strategy following a feedback procedure in which they directly observed the consequences of their retrieval selections. The strategy was adopted by younger preschoolers, but only when additional strategy and task information accompanied visual feedback. The use of external memory tasks with young children and factors affecting strategy acquisition and utilization are discussed.     

Cultural differences in the development of cognitive shifting: East-West comparison

Prior research has documented that Japanese children's performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sorting (DCCS) task can be influenced by their observation of another person completing the task, which is referred to as social transmission of disinhibition. The current study explored whether Canadian children would also show a social transmission of disinhibition and whether their performance would be comparable to that of Japanese children. In this study, 3- and 4-year-olds in Canada and Japan were given both the standard version and social version of the DCCS. Results indicated that Canadian children displayed the social transmission of disinhibition, but their effects were significantly weaker than those with Japanese children. On the other hand, performance on the standard DCCS was comparable between children in the two countries. We discuss the results in terms of cultural differences in the relationship between self and other.     

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.     

Encouraging pointing with the right hand,but not the left hand,gives right-handed 3-year-olds a linguistic advantage

Previous research has shown a strong positive association between right-handed gesturing and vocabulary development. However, the causal nature of this relationship remains unclear. In the current study, we tested whether gesturing with the right hand enhances linguistic processing in the left hemisphere, which is contralateral to the right hand. We manipulated the gesture hand children used in pointing tasks to test whether it would affect their performance. In either a linguistic task (verb learning) or a non-linguistic control task (memory), 131 typically developing right-handed 3-year-olds were encouraged to use either their right hand or left hand to respond. While encouraging children to use a specific hand to indicate their responses had no effect on memory performance, encouraging children to use the right hand to respond, compared to the left hand, significantly improved their verb learning performance. This study is the first to show that manipulating the hand with which children are encouraged to gesture gives them a linguistic advantage. Language lateralization in healthy right-handed children typically involves a dominant left hemisphere. Producing right-handed gestures may therefore lead to increased activation in the left hemisphere which may, in turn, facilitate forming and accessing lexical representations. It is important to note that this study manipulated gesture handedness among right-handers and does therefore not support the practice of encouraging children to become right-handed in manual activities.

Research Highlights

• Right-handed 3-year-olds were instructed to point to indicate their answers exclusively with their right or left hand in either a memory or verb learning task.
• Right-handed pointing was associated with improved verb generalization performance, but not improved memory performance.
• Thus, gesturing with the right hand, compared to the left hand, gives right-handed 3-year-olds an advantage in a linguistic but not a non-linguistic task.
• Right-handed pointing might lead to increased activation in the left hemisphere and facilitate forming and accessing lexical representations.

     

Preschoolers’ understanding of multiple orientations to reality: The adjectives task

Preschoolers’ understanding that an object can be accurately described using two different non-synonymous words was investigated using a task in which children (N = 36) had to judge which of two animals had provided correct adjectival labels for a series of pictures. For some pictures, only one animal provided a correct adjective, for some both animals were correct, and for some neither was correct. For all types of judgement, 4-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds. Children in both age groups performed worst on trials where both animals were correct. Children's performance on the adjectives task related to concurrent understanding of the appearance–reality distinction, but not to false-belief task performance. Implications for children's mentalizing development are discussed.     

Toddlers benefit from labeling on an executive function search task

Although labeling improves executive function (EF) performance in children older than 3 years, the results from studies with younger children have been equivocal. In the current study, we assessed performance in a computerized multistep multilocation search task with older 2-year-olds. The correct search location was either (a) not marked by a familiar picture or given a distinct label, (b) marked by a familiar picture but not given a distinct label, (c) marked by a familiar picture and labeled by the experimenter, or (d) marked by a familiar picture and labeled by the participant. The results revealed that accuracy improved across conditions such that children made the fewest errors when they generated the label for the hiding location. These findings support the hierarchical competing systems model, which postulates that improved performance can be explained by more powerful representations that guide search behavior.     

A New Look at Gaze: Preschool Children's Understanding of Eye-Direction

This study challenges the consensus view that children can judge what someone is looking at from infancy. In the first experiment 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children were asked to judge what a person in a drawing was looking at and which of two people was “looking at” them. Only 6% of 2-year-olds and young 3-year-olds passed both gaze-direction tasks, but over 70% passed an analogous point-direction task. Most older 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds passed all three tasks. Experiment 2 compared children's ability to judge what the experimenter was looking at with performance on the picture tasks. Three-year-olds performed significantly worse than 4-year-olds on the real life and picture gaze tasks. Performances on the two types of gaze task were highly correlated. Experiment 3 included stimuli with the additional cue of head-direction. Even the younger children performed well on these stimuli. These results suggest that, regardless of task format, children cannot judge what someone is looking at from eye-direction alone until the age of 3 years. Weaknesses in the evidence supporting the consensus view are highlighted and discussed.     

Lexical competition in young children's word learning

In two experiments, 1.5-year-olds were taught novel words whose sound patterns were phonologically similar to familiar words (novel neighbors) or were not (novel nonneighbors). Learning was tested using a picture-fixation task. In both experiments, children learned the novel nonneighbors but not the novel neighbors. In addition, exposure to the novel neighbors impaired recognition performance on familiar neighbors. Finally, children did not spontaneously use phonological differences to infer that a novel word referred to a novel object. Thus, lexical competition--inhibitory interaction among words in speech comprehension--can prevent children from using their full phonological sensitivity in judging words as novel. These results suggest that word learning in young children, as in adults, relies not only on the discrimination and identification of phonetic categories, but also on evaluating the likelihood that an utterance conveys a new word.     

Aligning body and world: Stable reference frames improve young children’s search for hidden objects

This study investigated how young children’s increasingly flexible use of spatial reference frames enables accurate search for hidden objects by using a task that 3-year-olds have been shown to perform with great accuracy and 2-year-olds have been shown to perform inaccurately. Children watched as an object was rolled down a ramp, behind a panel of doors, and stopped at a barrier visible above the doors. In two experiments, we gave 2- and 2.5-year-olds a strong reference frame by increasing the relative salience and stability of the barrier. In Experiment 1, 2.5-year-olds performed at above-chance levels with the more salient barrier. In Experiment 2, we highlighted the stability of the barrier (or ramp) by maximizing the spatial extent of each reference frame across the first four training trials. Children who were given a stable barrier (and moving ramp) during these initial trials performed at above-chance levels and significantly better than children who were given a stable ramp (and moving barrier). This work highlights that factors central to spatial cognition and motor planning—aligning egocentric and object-centered reference frames—play a role in the ramp task during this transitional phase in development.     

The Effect of Retention Interval Task Difficulty on Young Children's Prospective Memory: Testing the Intention Monitoring Hypothesis

The current study examined the impact of retention interval task difficulty on 4- and 5-year-olds’ prospective memory (PM) to test the hypothesis that children periodically monitor their intentions during the retention interval and that disrupting this monitoring may result in poorer PM performance. In addition, relations among PM, working memory, theory of mind (ToM), and 2 types of planning were investigated. Children (N = 64) were randomly assigned to an easy or difficult filler task during the retention interval prior to the PM task. Five-year-olds outperformed 4-year-olds on the PM task, and children receiving the easy filler task outperformed those receiving the difficult filler task. Further, working memory, planning, and ToM were positively associated with PM for children receiving the difficult filler task but not for children receiving the easy filler task. Findings are interpreted with respect to the predictions of the intention monitoring hypothesis as well as the multiprocess framework of PM.     

The power of well-connected arguments: early sensitivity to the connective because

Connectives, such as because, are routinely used by parents when addressing their children, yet we do not know to what extent children are sensitive to their use. Given children's early developing abilities to evaluate testimony and produce arguments containing connectives, it was hypothesized that young children would show an appropriate reaction to the presence of connectives. Three experiments were conducted to test this hypothesis. In each, two informants gave contradicting statements regarding the location of an object and justified their positions by using a similar argument. Only one of the informants used the connective because to link his argument to the statement. In each experiment, the 3-year-olds performed at chance in selecting choices containing the connective because, but the 4- and 5-year-olds performed above chance. Moreover, in Experiments 2 and 3, the 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults performed significantly better than the 3-year-olds. These findings show that 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults are sensitive to the presence of connectives. An interpretation of the difference in performance between the 3-year-olds and the 4- and 5-year-olds in terms of metarepresentational skills is suggested.     

小学儿童空间物体位置编码( Ⅱ)

采用找物范式研究小学7、9、11岁儿童利用线与线之间的关系对目标物位置进行编码的认知发展。结果表明:交点位置编码和平行线上对应点编码认知成绩的年龄效应显著。实验任务对儿童认知成绩的影响不同,11岁组儿童交点位置编码认知成绩显著好于平行线上对应点编码认知成绩,7岁组和9岁组两个任务的认知成绩差异不显著。     

Children's search strategies and accompanying verbal and motor strategic behavior: Developmental trends and relations with task performance among children age 5 to 17

Children's reported use of single and multiple search strategies during a matching numbers task, along with accompanying verbal (private speech, self-talk) and motoric (finger pointing, place-holding) strategic behaviors were examined with a large, nationally representative cross-sectional sample (n = 1979) of children between the ages of 5 and 17. Strategic searching increased with age, especially between the ages of 5 (15% strategic) and 9 (63%), with 9-year-olds’ strategy use being similar in many ways to that of 17-year-olds. Use of multiple search strategies similarly increased with age. Relations between reported strategy use and task performance were positive for 5- to 7-year-olds, nonexistent for 8- to 12-year-olds, and slightly negative for adolescents. Self-talk, although relatively rare during this task, was a performance asset for young children who were strategic and a liability for young children who were non-strategic. Pointing was negatively related with performance for those who were strategic and irrelevant for those non-strategic.     

The Development of Symbolic Coordination: Representation of Imagined Objects,Executive Function,and Theory of Mind

Children's developing competence with symbolic representations was assessed in 3 studies. Study 1 examined the hypothesis that the production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime requires the simultaneous coordination of the dual representations of a dynamic action and a symbolic object. We explored this coordination of symbolic representations in 3- to 5-year-olds with a modified action pantomime task that employed both a "dynamic action + object" condition and a "hold + object" condition. Consistent with earlier research, production of imaginary symbolic objects rather than body-part-as-objects increased with age, although, even at age 5, children did not perform at adult levels. As hypothesized, children produced fewer body-part-as-object anchors when they were simply asked to hold an object, rather than perform a dynamic action with the object. Study 2 repeated the conditions of Study 1 and examined these conditions in relation to performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. This study replicated the developmental findings of the earlier study and indicated a modest relation between pantomime and the DCCS, which disappeared with age partialled out. Study 3 examined the action pantomime task in relation to the DCCS, false belief, and appearance-reality with 3- to 5-year-olds. Though performance on the DCCS was related to theory of mind, production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime was not strongly related to theory of mind or the DCCS. Results are discussed in terms of children's developing reflective competence in coordinating symbolic representations.     

A heart rate analysis of developmental change in feedback processing and rule shifting from childhood to early adulthood

Over the course of development, the ability to switch between different tasks on the basis of feedback cues increases profoundly, but the role of performance monitoring remains unclear. Heart rate indexes can provide critical information about how individuals monitor feedback cues indicating that performance should be adjusted. In this study, children of three age groups (8-10, 12-14, and 16-18 years) performed a rule change task in which sorting rules needed to be detected following positive or negative feedback. The number of perseverative errors was lower for 16- to 18-year-olds than for 8- to 10-year-olds, and 12- to 14-year-olds performed at an intermediate level. Consistent with previous findings, heart rate slowed following feedback indicating a rule change, and the magnitude of slowing was similar for all age groups. Thus, 8- to 10-year-olds are already able to analyze feedback cues. In contrast, 12- to 14-year-olds and 16- to 18-year-olds, but not 8- to 10-year-olds, showed heart rate slowing following performance errors, suggesting that with age children are increasingly able to monitor their performance online. Performance monitoring may therefore be an important contributor to set-shifting ability.     

Relative sensitivity of the mutual exclusivity and novel-name-nameless category assumptions

The mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption states that children affix a novel label to only one unfamiliar object, while the novel-name-nameless category (N3C) assumption states that children affix a novel label to multiple unfamiliar objects. To compare the relative sensitivity of the two assumptions, two types of tasks, with two trials in each, were given to 5-year-olds. In the first trial of each task, all children selected only the unfamiliar object for a novel label, which was consistent with the ME assumption. For the task which did not have the same unfamiliar object in the two trials, 94% of the children selected the object with the same shape but black-white reversed image in the second trial, which was consistent with the N3C assumption. For the task which had the same unfamiliar object in the two trials, 43% of the children selected the same object in the second trial, which was consistent with the ME assumption, and 48% of them selected the object with the same shape but reversed image, which was consistent with the N3C assumption. The findings suggest that the ME and N3C assumptions can be flexibly applied to children's word learning.