Retrieval-induced forgetting in young children

A prominent theory of cognitive development attributes the poor performance that children show in many cognitive tasks to a general lack of inhibitory control. We tested this theory by examining children’s inhibitory capabilities in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), a memory task in which selective retrieval of previously studied material causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved material. Such forgetting is often attributed to inhibitory control processes, which supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items’ memory representation. We examined RIF in kindergartners, second graders, and adults, using both recall and recognition testing. Although all three age groups showed significant RIF in recall, only adults and second graders, but not kindergartners, showed RIF in recognition. Because inhibition-based RIF should be present in recall and recognition, these findings indicate that in adults and second graders, but not in kindergartners, RIF is mediated by inhibition. The results support the view of inefficient inhibitory processes in young children’s cognition.     

Boys’ and girls’ involvement in science learning and their self‐efficacy in Taiwan

This cross‐sectional study investigated the significant differences in students’ self‐efficacy and their involvement in learning science. Nine hundred and twenty‐two elementary school fifth graders, 499 junior high school eighth graders, and 1455 senior or vocational high school eleventh graders completed the students’ questionnaire. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and independent t‐tests compared the significant similarities and differences across school levels and genders. The initial findings were as follows: A sharp decline in boys’ and girls’ self‐efficacy scores from elementary to secondary school levels; boys have significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than girls at vocational and senior high school levels; students with more involvement in science learning presented significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than those with less involvement. The significant discrepancies in terms of gender and age in students’ self‐efficacy and involvement in learning science need to be addressed. Implications and limitations are provided.     

The development of cognitive inhibition in streams-of-consciousness and directed speech

This research examined the development of the ability to inhibit thoughts within free speech by manipulating the content requirements of overt streams-of-consciousness. A picture-naming task with procedural manipulations similar to the stream-of-consciousness task was created as an additional method of investigating the development of the inhibition of speech. Comparison of adults' performance in the two tasks indicated that mature performance reflected inhibitory processing rather than selective attention. The children's performance in the stream-of-consciousness task suggested a developmental change in their ability to produce a stream-of-consciousness overtly. An investigation of inhibition in the picture-naming task with kindergartners, second graders, fifth graders and adults revealed a developmental improvement in inhibitory ability over the middle childhood years. These results are consistent with the interpretation that developmental improvements in cognitive inhibition contribute to developmental improvements in cognitive function on a variety of tasks.     

Consistency-based compliance: when and why do children become vulnerable?

This study examines the nature and development of behavioral consistency pressures in children. Specifically, we examined the effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door procedure in producing consistent prosocial behavior and self-attributions in kindergartners and second and fifth graders. Children were either induced to comply with a request to share prize coupons or were not given this initial prosocial experience. Those who complied either were labeled as helpful by an adult or were not. Later, children were given the opportunity to help under public or private circumstances. Moreover. children's understanding of trait stability, their internal preference for consistent behavior, and their belief that adults prefer behavioral consistency were assessed. Consistent responding began to occur within the foot-in-the-door procedure in the second grade, and this developmental shift was paralleled by a shift in children's understanding of trait stability. Furthermore, once the foot-in-the-door effect appeared among the second and fifth graders, its strength was significantly affected by the children's internal preference for consistency.     

Listening comprehension for sentences: the accessibility of referents for pronouns as a function of age, topic continuity, and pronoun emphasis.

An auditory comprehension task was employed to determine how subjects (20 first graders, 20 fifth graders, and 20 adults) use topic continuity and contrastive emphasis in the assignment of referents for pronouns in sentences. Significant differences in performance for emphasized and unemphasized pronouns were found suggesting that subjects used contrastive emphasis when assigning referents for pronouns. Fifth graders overused the cue of topic continuity in assigning referents for emphasized pronouns. This effect has not been shown previously in studies of children's understanding of pronomial reference. An interaction between age and pronoun emphasis was also significant. This interaction suggests that developmental changes continued to take place in the learning of cues for resolving pronouns by school age children.     

What can the same–different task tell us about the development of magnitude representations?

We examined the development of magnitude representations in children (Exp 1: kindergartners, first-, second- and sixth graders, Exp 2: kindergartners, first-, second- and third graders) using a numerical same-different task with symbolic (i.e. digits) and non-symbolic (i.e. arrays of dots) stimuli. We investigated whether judgments in a same-different task with digits are based upon the numerical value or upon the physical similarity of the digits. In addition, we investigated whether the numerical distance effect decreases with increasing age. Finally, we examined whether the performance in this task is related to general mathematics achievement. Our results reveal that a same-different task with digits is not an appropriate task to study magnitude representations, because already late kindergarteners base their responses on the physical similarity instead of the numerical value of the digits. When decisions cannot be made on the basis of physical similarity, a similar numerical distance effect is present over all age groups. This suggests that the magnitude representation is stable from late kindergarten onwards. The size of the numerical distance effect was not related to mathematical achievement. However, children with a poorer mathematics achievement score seemed to have more difficulties to link a symbol with its corresponding magnitude.     

Reasoning about conditional sentences: development of understanding of cues to quantification

The previous literature has reported that when children are asked to judge the truth or falsity of universally quantified conditional sentences of the form If a thing is P then it is Q they typically give responses, e.g., responding "true" whenever there is a case of P and Q even if there are also cases of P and not-Q. Three experiments are reported that address possible sources of this error. Experiment 1 shows that the error survives on sentences that refer to particular things as well as to things of a particular kind, and further shows that articulating the necessity of the consequent (... then it has to be Q) eliminates the error for adults and reduces it for fifth graders, although it does not affect second grade performance. Experiment 2 shows that for second and fifth graders the error survives to problems that are not universally quantified and for second graders to problems that are not conditionals although are otherwise structurally similar. Experiment 3 compares various verbal formulations of such universally quantified conditionals: Second and fifth graders do not make the error when the quantification is expressed with the surface structure that makes its universality most explicit (all things ...); the error tendency is greatest when the indefinite article is used (if a thing ...); and formulations using any fall in between. We argue that such erroneous evaluations of universally quantified conditionals have more to do with the quantificational aspect than the conditional aspect of the problems; children interpret the indefinite article as existential, although they resist the error when the cue to universal quantification is completely clear. The error appears to result more from the surface-structure form of the stimuli than from an inability of children to appreciate the logic of universally quantified conditionals.     

中国颜色体系研究

概述了用颜色立体模型表示物体颜色,并做定量表示的颜色体系研究的理论意义及应用价值。介绍了国际上影响较大的颜色体系理论和编制原则的特点。中国颜色体系研究是在对国际上其它颜色体系的理论分析和对颜色样品测试的基础上,确立其理论依据和编制原则,开展了中国人眼对明度、色调、彩度等间距排列的视觉评价实验,建立了中国颜色体系理论模型。同时研制出《中国颜色体系样册》。该项研究于１９９３年７月通过了国家自然科学基金委员会和中国科学院联合召开的成果鉴定会,并得到良好的评价,又于１９９４年６月通过国家标准审查。该项研究的完成和推广,不仅能为我国国民经济各部门的颜色控制、标定和交流提供科学的颜色定量手段,同时也是对实用色度学的发展和颜色标准化工作做了有益的工作,产生了积极的经济效益和社会效益。     

Developmental trends in the understanding of perceptual adaptation

In the first of three studies, kindergartners, third graders, and sixth graders were questioned to determine whether they comprehend five types of perceptual adaptation or contrast effects. The results indicated little consistency among kindergartners, but there were strong improvements by the third-grade level, and at the sixth-grade level almost all of the children were showing perfect performance, demonstrating comprehension of the five forms of perceptual adaptation. In the second and third studies, children and adults were placed in a situation in which adaptation to temperature and weight could occur, and they were asked to predict subsequent perceptions. Correct performance in these studies generally occurred at later ages than in Study 1 with even college students showing incorrect performance in some cases. However, the age trends shifted quite markedly depending upon the nature and structure of the task. The results were consistent with a theory stressing the relation of early formed schemas in the form of memory traces of experiences to later appearing and more abstract schemas. The results show the importance of studying older children when considering developing theories of mind.     

Lexical search speed in children and adults

The retrieval of words from lexical memory was investigated in kindergartners (Age 6), first-graders (Age 7), third-graders (Age 9), and adults. A lexical decision task with auditorily presented words and nonwords was used, with decision latency as the dependent variable. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the effects of word frequency, age of word acquisition, and number of word meanings. Results showed that word frequency contributed to decision latency for all age groups, age of word acquisition contributed to all groups but the third-grade subjects, and number of word meanings did not contribute for any age group. Results are discussed in relation to a model of the lexicon in children and adults. It is suggested that factors from the external linguistic community are internalized in the lexicon at an early age.     

Developmental differences in response processing

Three age groups (kindergartners, fourth graders, and adults) were compared in their processing of response decisions in a two-choice reaction time task. Manipulation of spatial stimulus-response compatibility resulted in age-related differential effects on reaction time performance. For the younger children, selecting the appropriate response for an incompatibly paired stimulus light required proportionately longer processing time than for older subjects. Similar results were not found for performance under varying levels of response discriminability.     

小学3-6年级学生解决比较问题的研究

本研究对465名小学3—6年级学生解决不同类型的比较问题进行了研究。结果表明：(1)小学生解决比较问题的成绩受问题类型及年级的交互影响。儿童在一致算术问题上的成绩都很好,且显著优于不一致算术问题。在不一致算术问题、一致代数问题及不一致代数问题上,存在年级差异。5、6年级学生优于4年级学生。(2)小学生在算术问题上的通过率高于代数问题,5、6年级学生的通过率高于3、4年级。除一致算术问题外,其它类型比较问题的通过率较低。(3)小学生解决比较问题的成绩无性别差异。     

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.     

Word Stress in German Single-Word Reading

This article reports a lexical-decision experiment that was conducted to investigate the impact of word stress on visual word recognition in German. Reaction-time latencies and error rates of German readers on different levels of reading proficiency (i.e., third graders and fifth graders from primary school and university students) were compared in order to shed light on the role of word stress during reading and reading acquisition. Results show that word stress has a significant effect on the performance of third and fifth grade readers and thus influences single-word reading in at least some stages of reading acquisition.     

Event‐related potentials reveal linguistic suppression effect but not enhancement effect on categorical perception of color

The present study used the event‐related potential technique to investigate the nature of linguistic effect on color perception. Four types of stimuli based on hue differences between a target color and a preceding color were used: zero hue step within‐category color (0‐WC); one hue step within‐category color (1‐WC); one hue step between‐category color (1‐BC); and two hue step between‐category color (2‐BC). The ERP results showed no significant effect of stimulus type in the 100‐200 ms time window. However, in the 200–350 ms time window, ERP responses to 1‐WC target color overlapped with that to 0‐WC target color for right visual field (RVF) but not left visual field (LVF) presentation. For the 1‐BC condition, ERP amplitudes were comparable in the two visual fields, both being significantly different from the 0‐WC condition. The 2‐BC condition showed the same pattern as the 1‐BC condition. These results suggest that the categorical perception of color in RVF is due to linguistic suppression on within‐category color discrimination but not between‐category color enhancement, and that the effect is independent of early perceptual processes.     

Beliefs about the origins of human psychological traits

The development of children's reasoning about the origins of human psychological traits was investigated across 4 studies with a total of 316 participants ranging in age from kindergartners to 5th graders and adults. The primary methodology was a switched-at-birth task (L. A. Hirschfeld, 1995), which poses a hypothetical nature-nurture conflict. Two major issues were addressed: (a) the extent to which psychological traits are viewed as a product of environmental influence and (b) whether individuals can be primed to think about the origins of psychological traits in particular ways. Results suggest that there is an age-related increase in the tendency to make distinctions among different psychological traits and that over time, individuals come to believe that psychological traits are determined primarily by nurture. Results also show that young children's beliefs about trait origins are subject to subtle priming effects before an adultlike response pattern is seen.     

元认知监测与算术知识制约小学儿童心算策略运用能力的发展:一年纵向考察

为探究元认知监测与算术知识对儿童心算策略运用能力的影响如何随个体发展而变化，采用计算机任务与纸笔测量的方法，对85名小学三、五年级儿童进行了历时一年的纵向追踪研究。研究发现：（1）两组儿童的元认知监测和算术知识均呈增长趋势，算术知识的增长速度五年级显著快于三年级，且元认知监测增长速度与算术知识增长速度显著相关；（2）两组儿童中，元认知监测与算术知识增长速度更快的个体策略执行反应时与错误率的减少速度也更快；（3）五年级儿童的算术知识在元认知监测影响策略选择发展中起着完全中介作用。