Assessment of the learning curve from the California Verbal Learning Test—Children's Version with the first-order system transfer function

A mathematical model is proposed to measure the learning curve in the California Verbal Learning Test–Children's Version. The model is based on the first-order system transfer function in the form Y = B3*exp[-B2*(X-1)]+B4*{1-exp[-B2*(X-1)]}, where X is the trial number, Y is the number of recalled correct words, B2 is the learning rate, B3 is interpreted as readiness to learn and B4 as the ability to learn. Children's readiness to learn and ability to learn were lower than adults. Modeling revealed that girls had greater readiness to learn and ability to learn than boys.     

Children’s first and second-order false-belief reasoning in a verbal and a low-verbal task

We can understand and act upon the beliefs of other people, even when these conflict with our own beliefs. Children’s development of this ability, known as Theory of Mind, typically happens around age 4. Research using a looking-time paradigm, however, established that toddlers at the age of 15 months old pass a non-verbal false-belief task (Onishi and Baillargeon in Science 308:255–258, 2005). This is well before the age at which children pass any of the verbal false-belief tasks. In this study we present a more complex case of false-belief reasoning with older children. We tested second-order reasoning, probing children’s ability to handle the belief of one person about the belief of another person. We find just the opposite: 7-year-olds pass a verbal false-belief reasoning task, but fail on an equally complex low-verbal task. This finding suggests that language supports explicit reasoning about beliefs, perhaps by facilitating the cognitive system to keep track of beliefs attributed by people to other people.     

Children’s choice strategies: the effects of age and task demands

Two experiments examined the effect of age and cognitive demands on children’s choice strategies. Children aged 8–9 and 12–13 years were asked to choose among either two or four products that differed in several attributes of varying importance to them. Choice tasks were designed to differentiate between the lexicographic and the equal-weighting strategies that the children used. The results showed that older children use the two strategies more appropriately than younger children do. The choice of strategies reflects the demands of the task. All children were more likely to use the strategies correctly when choosing between two alternatives and tended to rely on the relatively less cognitive-demanding lexicographic strategy to choose among four alternatives. However, they were less likely to employ the lexicographic strategy in simpler tasks and when its use was difficult to justify, indicating an adaptive use.     

Is Locke’s answer to Molyneux’s question inconsistent? Cross-modal recognition and the sight–recognition error

Abstract

Molyneux’s question asks whether someone born blind, who could distinguish cubes from spheres using his tactile sensation, could recognize those objects if he received his sight. Locke says no: the newly sighted person would fail to point to the cube and call it a cube. Locke never provided a complete explanation for his negative response, and there are concerns of inconsistency with other important aspects of his theory of ideas. These charges of inconsistency rest upon an unrecognized and unfounded assumption that seeing entails recognition. Locke’s negative answer to Molyneux’s question is consistent with his other philosophical commitments.     

Introducing dental students to reflective practice: a dental educator’s reflections

There is growing consensus that being reflective and developing reflective practice is an important part of becoming a healthcare professional, adding to and enhancing our everyday professional values, knowledge and skills. For dentists, reflective practice is an essential part of dental training and professional development with dental undergraduate curricula creating and scaffolding opportunities for students to be reflective and develop reflective writing skills. This article describes the introduction of a reflective portfolio to the undergraduate Bachelor of Dental Science (BDS) programme at the University of Bristol. This will be followed by the author sharing some personal reflections, as the faculty member overseeing the assessment of these reflective portfolios, on the first year of this initiative. Lessons learned from the exercise as well as areas for future work and improvement will also be mentioned.     

Development of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale - Short Version (SCAS-S)

The literature provides several examples of anxiety symptoms questionnaires for children. However, these questionnaires generally contain many items, and might not be ideal for screening in large populations, or repeated testing in clinical settings. The Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) is an extensively used and evaluated 44-item questionnaire developed to assess anxiety symptoms in children, and provides a sound base for the development of an abbreviated anxiety symptoms questionnaire. Although methodological standards have been presented in how to develop abbreviated questionnaires, previous studies have often suffered from several limitations regarding validating procedures. Guided by these methodological standards, the current study aimed at developing an abbreviated version of the SCAS, while retaining the content, convergent, and divergent validity of the original scale. A school-based sample (n?=?750) was used to reduce the number of items, and an independent school-based sample (n?=?371) together with a clinical sample (n?=?93), were used to validate the abbreviated scale. The abbreviated version of the SCAS contained 19 items, it showed a clear factor structure as evaluated in the independent sample, and it performed as good as the original questionnaire regarding classification accuracy, convergent, and divergent validity. In our view, the abbreviated version is a very good alternative to the original scale especially for younger children, in initial screening, or in order to reduce response burden.     

How Children’s Cognitive and Affective Responses to a Novel Task Relate to the Dimensions of Perfectionism

The current study examined how the Maladaptive Evaluative Concerns (MEC) versus Positive Achievement Striving (PAS) dimensions of perfectionism relate to anxiety, goal-setting, and cognitive appraisal in third-grade to sixth-grade students who completed an object-naming task under three goal-demand conditions: self-set goals, and low and high experimenter goals. The results indicated that children high on a measure of socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP; a measure of MEC) experienced more anxiety across all conditions than children low in SPP. Children scoring high on SPP also rated performing well on the task as more important and were more likely to say they should have performed better than their low SPP counterparts, despite no significant differences in performance or standard-setting. The PAS component of perfectionism was unrelated to children??s responses. These results are consistent with Beck??s cognitive theory and support the utility of the maladaptive evaluative concerns dimension of perfectionism in predicting children??s cognitive and affective responses to new tasks.     

Alternative Factor Models and Heritability of the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory—Children’s Version

An alternative models framework was used to test three confirmatory factor analytic models for the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory-Children’s Version (Short LOI-CV) in a general population sample of 517 young adolescent twins (11–16 years). A one-factor model as implicit in current classification systems of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a two-factor obsessions and compulsions model, and a multidimensional model corresponding to the three proposed subscales of the Short LOI-CV (labelled Obsessions/Incompleteness, Numbers/Luck and Cleanliness) were considered. The three-factor model was the only model to provide an adequate explanation of the data. Twin analyses suggested significant quantitative sex differences in heritability for both the Obsessions/Incompleteness and Numbers/Luck dimensions with these being significantly heritable in males only (heritability of 60% and 65% respectively). The correlation between the additive genetic effects for these two dimensions in males was 0.95 suggesting they largely share the same genetic risk factors.     

Transporting a Manualized Treatment for Children’s Disruptive Behavior to a Community Clinic

We compared a research-based, manualized intervention called Helping the Noncompliant Child (HNC; McMahon and Forehand 2003) to treatment as usual (TAU) for 194 children, 3–9?years old, with disruptive behavior disorders in a community clinic. The two interventions did not produce different outcomes or levels of parent satisfaction. However, almost three times as many parents in the HNC condition stated they ended therapy because their goals had been met, and almost three times as many parents in TAU stated they terminated because of practical obstacles. Number of sessions was related to outcome in the HNC condition but not in TAU.     

Children’s sensitivity to pictorial depth information

Children, ranging in age from 3 years, 4 months to 5 years, 4 months, were tested for sensitivity to interposition, height in field, linear perspective, and retinal size under either restricted (monocular, head motionless) or unrestricted (binocular, head free) picture surface viewing conditions. All of the subjects’ relative depth responses (near vs. far) to two toy houses were remarkably accurate with interposition and or height in field pictorial depth information. Retinal size had relatively little control over their responses, and the addition of linear perspective resulted in no significant improvement. Performance was nearly equivalent under the two viewing conditions, indicating young children’s ability to take a “pictorial attitude.”     

Parental Emotional Response to Children’s Traumas

To better understand how parents react to their child’s trauma exposure and evaluate whether different reactions are related to different types of traumas, 120 parents (79.2% mothers, 18.3% fathers, 2.5% other caregivers) were asked about their emotional reactions related to their child’s self-reported worst trauma. Emotional reactions were assessed with the Parental Emotional Reactions Questionnaire (PERQ). Parents reported high levels of distress and guilt. Furthermore, there was a significant relationship between type of trauma and parents’ overall emotional reactions. Parental distress was equally endorsed among the different trauma groups. Parents of children who experienced intrafamilial violence and extrafamilial sexual abuse reported the highest levels of guilt, and child exposure to intrafamilial violence was associated with higher levels of parental shame.     

Fathers’ Emotional Resources and Children’s Socioemotional and Behavioral Adjustment Among Children with Learning Disabilities

This study examined a cumulative model of risk/protective factors at the individual level (child’s sense of coherence; attachment with father) and family level as manifested by fathers’ emotional resources (fathers’ negative/positive affect; attachment avoidance/anxiety), to explain socioemotional adjustment among children age 8–12 years with or without learning disabilities (LD). Participants were 205 father–child dyads: 107 fathers and their children with LD; 98 fathers and their non-LD children. Preliminary analyses indicated significant group differences on all child measures. Path analysis revealed high fit between the theoretical model and empirical findings; moreover, the model’s components revealed partially different patterns of relations for the two populations. Thus, the current study suggested the potentially important role of fathers’ positive and negative affect and fathers’ avoidant and anxious attachment for children’s socioemotional and behavioral adjustment and children’s mediating variables. Discussion focused on understanding the value of these fathers’ emotional factors and their children’s characteristics for well-adjusted functioning.     

Family Context and Five-Year-Old Children’s Attitudes Toward Literacy When They are Learning to Read

This study explored associations in the family context, conceptualized as comprising parent–child practices and parental expectations, and five-year-old children's attitudes toward literacy. A total of 94 children from four primary schools and their parents participated in the study. Each child completed an individually administered Literacy Attitude Scale that assessed her enjoyment in reading-related activities. Parents completed a questionnaire about aspects of their family context. The results revealed a high level of positive attitudes toward literacy by beginning readers, with no gender difference. Frequency of parent–child everyday interactions and parental expectations had significant relationships with children's attitude toward literacy. This study highlights the importance of looking beyond parent–child literacy activities when examining children's attitudes toward literacy.     

Children’s prayers from a Hospital Chapel

Children’s prayers, from prayer books left in the Chapel of a Children’s Hospital between 1998 and 2002, were studied for what the children’s God-talk would reveal about their perceptions of God. Of the 3893 prayers written during this period, 346 were confidently identified as being authored by children. The sample of 346 prayers, which gave rise to 558 expressions of prayer, was explored through a content analysis, used quantitatively to summarise and describe the data, and a thematic analysis, informed by methods from Grounded Theory. The psychological and spiritual significance of the prayers is drawn out, demonstrating the richness and relationality of children’s spirituality. The predominance of prayers written by female writers, suggests that the extent to which relationality is present is related to gender. Questions concerning possible gender-related differences in girls’ and boys’ spirituality are raised and implications for practice are considered.     

What Preschoolers Bring to the Show: The Relation Between Viewer Characteristics and Children’s Learning from Educational Television

The capacity model (Fisch, 2000, 2004) is one of the few existing theoretical models developed to explain how children learn from educational television, but it has yet to receive much empirical validation. The model posits that various characteristics of the viewers influence both narrative comprehension and educational content comprehension, two distinct parallel processes. While many studies of media effects and processes control for individual differences, the goal of this study was to investigate several viewer characteristics that are predicted to influence comprehension. Seventy-eight preschool-age children watched a short educational television program and completed assessments of cognitive abilities, interest in the program, prior knowledge related to the program, and comprehension of the program content. Regression analyses revealed general support for Fisch’s predictions that viewer characteristics influence narrative comprehension and educational content comprehension. Results provide an important step in theorizing about children’s learning from educational television.     

Children’s rights and the non-identity problem

Abstract

Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against it in the contemporary literature: (1) the identifiability objection; (2) the non-existence objection; (3) the waiving of rights objection, (4) the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and (5) the unfairness objection.     

A normative study of the Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT) in the Cypriot population

Background: The Children’s Color Trails Test (CCTT) is a neuropsychological test that measures attention, divided attention, and speed of mental processing. It has been increasingly used in the assessment of children in cross-cultural environments for neurological and psychiatric disorders such as seizures and closed head injuries, learning and/or language disabilities, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, children with manganese exposure, and children diagnosed with HIV virus. However, there is a paucity of studies presenting normative data. The aim of the present study was to provide normative data for the CCTT in the Cypriot population. Methods: A total of 709 native Cypriot children aged 7–16 years, recruited from various public schools across the island, took part in the study. Exclusion criteria involved the existence of neurological, psychiatric, cardiological, and metabolic diseases, premature birth, history of maternal alcohol and drug abuse during pregnancy, low birth weight, hearing loss, visual problems, native language other than Greek, and abnormality in fine-motor movements. Results: Age and gender were found to be important factors for the interpretation of scores in all CCTT variables. Older children required less time and exhibited fewer errors, near misses, and prompts compared to younger children. There was a consistent pattern of a 3–4 seconds improvement (less time in seconds) in the CCTT completion time as age increased. Conclusions: CCTT is a promising tool for the measurement of attention in the native Cypriot population. Further research is needed in children diagnosed with various neurological and psychiatric diseases in order to estimate validity of the CCTT in clinical populations.     

Relating familiarity-based recognition and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Detecting a word’s recency in the absence of access to the word

After viewing a list of single-word answers to general knowledge questions, participants received a test list containing general knowledge questions, some of whose answers were studied, and some of whose were not. Regardless of whether participants could provide the answer to a test question, they rated the likelihood that the answer had been studied. Across three experiments,participants consistently gave higher ratings to unanswerable questions whose answers were studied than to those whose answers were not studied. This discrimination ability persisted in the absence of reported tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states and when no information about the answer could be articulated. Studying a question's answer did not increase the likelihood of a later TOT state for that question, yet participants gave higher recognition ratings when in a TOT state than when not in a TOT state. A possible theoretical mechanism for the present pattern is discussed, as are relevant theories of familiarity-based recognition and of the TOT phenomenon.