The influence of popular media characters on children's object choices

Children often prefer objects and food packaging bearing images of popular media characters. However, it is unclear what factors may influence this. This study investigated whether depictions of popular media characters on high-quality (brand new) and low-quality (dirty, broken) objects influenced 3- to 4-year-old children's (N = 84) object preferences, as well as which objects children selected to help them complete a functional task (e.g., using a bucket to transport several small items). We also investigated whether children's preferences were related to inhibitory control. We found children's preferences were influenced by images of popular characters, but not their choice of objects for functional use. Instead, children relied on object quality when selecting an object to complete a task. Inhibitory control was not related to children's object choices. These results suggest children may weigh object features differently when making decisions for different purposes.     

The role of surface-based representations of shape in visual object recognition

This study contrasted the role of surfaces and volumetric shape primitives in three-dimensional object recognition. Observers (N?=?50) matched subsets of closed contour fragments, surfaces, or volumetric parts to whole novel objects during a whole–part matching task. Three factors were further manipulated: part viewpoint (either same or different between component parts and whole objects), surface occlusion (comparison parts contained either visible surfaces only, or a surface that was fully or partially occluded in the whole object), and target–distractor similarity. Similarity was varied in terms of systematic variation in nonaccidental (NAP) or metric (MP) properties of individual parts. Analysis of sensitivity (d′) showed a whole–part matching advantage for surface-based parts and volumes over closed contour fragments—but no benefit for volumetric parts over surfaces. We also found a performance cost in matching volumetric parts to wholes when the volumes showed surfaces that were occluded in the whole object. The same pattern was found for both same and different viewpoints, and regardless of target–distractor similarity. These findings challenge models in which recognition is mediated by volumetric part-based shape representations. Instead, we argue that the results are consistent with a surface-based model of high-level shape representation for recognition.     

Maternal beliefs concerning young children's private speech

The goal of this study was to understand maternal reports, beliefs, and attitudes about their young children's use of private speech. Mothers of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 5 participated in a semi‐structured interview in which they reported on the frequency and context of their child's use of private speech, maternal responses toward such speech use in children, and beliefs about the utility of such speech for children. Interviews were transcribed and responses coded. Mothers also completed surveys on children's self control and parenting style. Results indicated that practically all parents reported that their child engaged in private speech and that such speech was more likely to appear during fantasy play than during problem‐solving activities. Parents varied in their personal responses to children's self talk and, as a group, do not appear to actively discourage or encourage its use. Ignoring/allowing child private speech use was common and this response was positively associated with authoritative parenting. Parental reports of the frequency with which their child talks to himself were negatively associated with parental reports of children's self‐control. Crib speech, or bedtime monologue, was reported to be very common and was negatively associated with children's self‐control and positively associated with children's private speech use. Parents were uniformly positive in their belief that private speech serves important functions and that it helps young children during task activities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of offer rates in controlling sharing by young children

The effects of different reinforcement contingencies on the rates of offers to share and their corresponding rates of acceptance by two small groups of preschool children were investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, food and praise were given after a 5-min play period to any subject who had made one or more offers to share during the play period. This procedure increased the rate of share-offers by all subjects. However, as share-offers increased, the percentage of offers accepted decreased. In the second experiment, reinforcement was made contingent on a subject reducing offers to share to only one or two per 5-min period. This led to a higher percentage of the offers being accepted. The results suggest that by controlling the rate of a social behavior, the manner in which other persons in the environment respond to the behavior may also be influenced.     

The role of the structure of parts and of the overall object shape in children's generalization of novel object names

We investigated the role of the structure of stimuli and their functional affordance on novel name generalization. Three- and 5-year-old children and adults were shown a training object with two possible functions, each one associated with a different part. They were taught about the name and the function of the object. We compared the classifications obtained for transfer stimuli composed of one part of the training stimulus—functional or not, perceptually transformed or not, or composed of all the original training parts. Even young children generalized the novel name to functional one-part transfer objects and disregarded non-functional or dysfunctional objects, although their generalizations were more constrained by perceptual similarity than that of the adults.     

物体表征强度对基于动态物体的注意的影响

基于物体的注意已得到许多静态物体实验的证实, 然而, 对注意分配如何受动态物体影响的研究较少, 存在提示物体假设和动态更新假设两种观点。提示物体假设认为基于物体的注意由最初的物体决定, 而动态更新假设则认为由变化之后的物体决定。动态物体的注意研究还发现了即时物体效应, 即注意基于新物体进行。对于物体变化时注意究竟基于旧物体还是新物体, 新旧物体的相对物体表征强度在其中起决定作用; 当提示物体表征较强时表现为提示物体(即旧物体)决定注意分配, 而当即时物体表征较强时表现为即时物体(即新物体)决定注意分配。相对物体表征强度的概念对理解物体动态变化情况下基于物体的注意的分配以及解决相关理论之冲突可能有重要作用。     

Implicit semantic perception in object substitution masking

Decades of research on visual perception has uncovered many phenomena, such as binocular rivalry, backward masking, and the attentional blink, that reflect ‘failures of consciousness’. Although stimuli do not reach awareness in these paradigms, there is evidence that they nevertheless undergo semantic processing. Object substitution masking (OSM), however, appears to be the exception to this rule. In OSM, a temporally-trailing four-dot mask interferes with target perception, even though it has different contours from and does not spatially overlap with the target. Previous research suggests that OSM has an early locus, blocking the extraction of semantic information. Here, we refute this claim, showing implicit semantic perception in OSM using a target-mask priming paradigm. We conclude that semantic information suppressed via OSM can nevertheless guide behavior.     

Adult modelling facilitates young children's generation of novel pretend acts

The present work investigated the effect of modelling on children's pretend play behaviour. Thirty‐seven children aged between 27 and 41 months were given 4 min of free play with a dollhouse and associated toy props (pre‐modelling phase). Using dolls, an experimenter then acted out a series of vignettes involving object substitutions, imaginary play and attribution of properties. Children were subsequently provided with an additional 4 min free play (post‐modelling phase). Consistent with past research, more pretence was exhibited after modelling than before. Furthermore, in the post‐modelling phase, children were as likely to generate their own novel pretence as they were to copy the actions demonstrated by the experimenter. They also increased the number of novel symbolic acts involving imaginary play from the pre‐ to the post‐modelling phase. This study highlights how young children will not only imitate a model's demonstration of pretend acts but also use this demonstration to catalyze the creation of their own pretence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of object recognition in young infants' object segregation

Needham's (2001, this issue) new results confirm that young infants draw on experientially derived representations in resolving individuation ambiguities due to shared boundaries between adjacent objects. They extend previous findings in a surprising way: The memory representations that infants draw upon have bound together information about shape, color, and pattern. Our commentary on these important results draws a distinction between two senses of "recognition" and asks in which sense object recognition contributes to object individuation in these experiments.     

The role of executive attention in object substitution masking

It was long thought that a key characteristic of object substitution masking (OSM) was the requirement for spatial attention to be dispersed for the mask to impact visual sensitivity. However, recent studies have provided evidence questioning whether spatial attention interacts with OSM magnitude, suggesting that the previous reports reflect the impact of performance being at ceiling for the low attention load conditions. Another technique that has been employed to modulate attention in OSM paradigms involves presenting the target stimulus foveally, but with another demanding task shown immediately prior, and thus taxing executive/temporal attention. Under such conditions, when the two tasks occur in close temporal proximity relatively to greater temporal separation, masking is increased. However this effect could also be influenced by performance being at ceiling in some conditions. Here, we manipulated executive attention for a foveated target using a dual-task paradigm. Critically, ceiling performance was avoided by thresholding the target stimulus prior to it being presented under OSM conditions. We found no evidence for an interaction between executive attention load and masking. Collectively, along with the previous findings, our results provide compelling evidence that OSM as a phenomenon occurs independently of attention.     

The interpolation of object and surface structure

One of the main theoretical challenges of vision science is to explain how the visual system interpolates missing structure. Two forms of visual completion have been distinguished on the basis of the phenomenological states that they induce. Modal completion refers to the formation of visible surfaces and/or contours in image regions where these properties are not specified locally. Amodal completion refers to the perceived unity of objects that are partially obscured by occluding surfaces. Although these two forms of completion elicit very different phenomenological states, it has been argued that a common mechanism underlies modal and amodal boundary and surface interpolation (the "identity hypothesis"; Kellman & Shipley, 1991; Kellman, 2001). Here, we provide new data, demonstrations, and theoretical principles that challenge this view. We show that modal boundary and surface completion processes exhibit a strong dependence on the prevailing luminance relationships of a scene, whereas amodal completion processes do not. We also demonstrate that the shape of interpolated contours can change when a figure undergoes a transition from a modal to an amodal appearance, in direct contrast to the identity hypothesis. We argue that these and previous results demonstrate that modal and amodal completion do not result from a common interpolation mechanism.     

The role of collaborative planning in children's source-monitoring errors and learning.

The aim of this research was to provide empirical evidence for a cognitive process that may contribute to children's learning from another person. A cornerstone of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is that knowledge is internalized from others; however, the cognitive processes that support this transformation are underspecified. In a series of three studies, kindergarten children (mean age 5 years 8 months) participated in a categorization task with an adult in several collaborative and noncollaborative conditions and then were tested on their memory of who had performed which actions in the task. After the memory task, children were asked to recategorize the items on their own. Source-monitoring patterns and children's learning varied across conditions according to predictions. A measure of recoding was related to children's planning language that, in turn, predicted learning among the children. The results suggest that one process that contributes to children's internalization of knowledge may involve recoding of agent information and that recoding can be indexed by source-monitoring performance.     

On the role of object representations in substitution masking

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the role of object representations in object substitution masking (OSM). OSM occurs when a very sparse mask is presented simultaneously with a target stimulus and the target offsets first, leaving the mask to linger in the display for some time. Results confirm earlier claims that there is an isolatable object-level component to OSM and indicate that a target can be protected from OSM if, prior to offsetting, it can be represented as a distinct object from the mask. When the mask was presented as sliding past the target (Experiment 1), as jiggling independently of the target (Experiment 2), or in a different color from the target (Experiment 3), OSM was reduced or eliminated. This suggests that OSM reflects basic updating processes that allow the perception of continuity of object identity over change.     

The role of comparison in preschoolers’ novel object categorization

We examined the role of the comparison process and shared names on preschoolers’ categorization of novel objects. In our studies, 4-year-olds were presented with novel object sets consisting of either one or two standards and two test objects: a shape match and a texture match. When children were presented with one standard, they extended the category based on shape regardless of whether the objects were named. When children were presented with two standards that shared the same texture and the objects were named with the same noun, they extended the category based on texture. The opportunity to compare two standards, in the absence of shared names, led to an attenuation of the effect of shape. These findings demonstrate that comparison plays a critical role in the categorization of novel objects and that shared names enhance this process.     

Do time-on-task effects reveal face specificity in object cognition?

ABSTRACT

Multiple experimental, neuropsychological, and individual differences studies indicated that faces are processed (e.g. perceived and memorized) differently from non-face objects. It was suggested that face specificity is a result of configural processing which is different from a rather part-based processing of other objects. In this research, we investigated the specificity of face cognition in terms of processing style. To this aim, we estimated Time-on-Task Effects (ToTEs) that allow inferring the level of automaticity of face and house processing. We collected data from 219 participants by applying four perception and recognition tasks. Generalized linear mixed-effects modelling was used to estimate fixed and random effects. Random slopes were interpreted as individual differences in ToTEs. Findings suggested that in the majority of tasks, face processing was dissociable from the processing of non-face objects. Thereby, these results offer a new perspective on the nature of differences in face and object processing.     

The role of surface discontinuity and shape in 4-month-old infants' object segregation

This research examined whether 4-month-old infants use a discontinuity in an object's front surface to visually segregate a display into two separate objects, and whether object shape enables its use. In Experiment 1, infants saw a three-dimensional display composed of two parts with distinctly different shapes. Two groups of infants saw a display in which these two shapes were divided by a visible discontinuity in the front surface (i.e., a boundary between the two objects). One of these groups saw the display move apart at the discontinuity when a gloved hand pulled one object; the second group saw the two objects move together as a single unit. A third group saw a modified version of this display that had no discontinuity present. The results suggested that infants regarded the discontinuity as an indication that the display could be composed of more than one object. In Experiment 2, infants saw the same display, but with a shape that did not highlight the discontinuity. The infants in this study showed no evidence of using the discontinuity. Together, the findings suggest that 4-month-old infants use the surface discontinuity between two objects as an indication that multiple objects could be present in a display, but only when scanning the outer edges of the display leads them to attend to it.     

The role of action-initiation in young children's causal explanations of action

Four studies examined preschoolers' use of the cue of action initiation to infer another's desired goal. In two studies, children watched as one protagonist self-initiated movement to a target while a second person was propelled there by an external force. Older 3-year-olds (M = 3;10) and 5-year-olds consistently judged only the self-initiated actor's movement as desire based. In the second study, however, younger 3-year-olds (M = 3;3 also participated, and they were equally likely to say that either movement was goal directed, even when the passive mover appeared to resist movement toward the goal. A third study, featuring only one protagonist, yielded no improvement among younger 3-year-olds. A fourth study emphasizing the single protagonist's persistence in approaching a target via repeated self-initiated movements revealed some improvement among younger 3-year-olds; older 3-year-olds were near ceiling performance. Altogether, these results suggest that differences in action initiation play an increasingly important role in 3-year-olds' mentalistic explanations of action. This development may be related to other critical changes occurring in 3-year-olds' developing theory of mind.