Developmental changes in children's abilities to share and allocate attention in a dual task

Characterizing developmental changes in children's dual-task performance has been problematic because differences in divided attention abilities are easily confounded with differences in overall capacity. Two experiments showed that after individual differences in children's capacity for single-task performance were controlled for, age differences between second- (M = 8.1 years) and fifth-grade (M = 11.1 years) children did not exist in dual-task performance when tasks were of equal priority. However, when tasks had different priorities, only fifth-grade children could differentially allocate attention in the dual task. Results are discussed within the coordination hypothesis framework (see A. F. Kramer & J. L. Larish, 1996), which suggests that changes in dual-task performance with aging are due to changes in the ability to coordinate and control the allocation of attention. It is argued that linking the investigations of children's attention with research on attention and aging provides both methodological and theoretical benefits.     

Developmental changes in children's understanding of future likelihood and uncertainty

Two measures assessed 4-10-year-olds’ and adults’ (N = 201) understanding of future likelihood and uncertainty. In one task, participants sequenced sets of event pictures varying by one physical dimension according to increasing future likelihood. In a separate task, participants rated characters’ thoughts about the likelihood of future events, their emotions, and their decisions in indeterminate social situations. Results showed significant development between ages 4 and 10 in seriating events according to future likelihood and in selecting thought and emotion ratings indicative of future uncertainty. Higher performance on the future likelihood ordering task correlated with greater understanding of future uncertainty in thought, emotion, and decision judgments. Females judged future events to be more uncertain than males.     

Developmental changes in children's understanding of the similarity between photographs and their referents

In a series of three experiments, we investigated the development of children's understanding of the similarities between photographs and their referents. Based on prior work on the development of analogical understanding (e.g. Gentner & Rattermann, 1991), we suggest that the appreciation of this relation involves multiple levels. Photographs are similar to their referents both in terms of the constituent objects and in terms of the relations among these objects. We predicted that children would appreciate object similarity (whether photographs depict the same objects as in the referent scene) before they would appreciate relational similarity (whether photographs depict the objects in the same spatial positions as in the referent scene). To test this hypothesis, we presented 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children and adults with several candidate photographs of an arrangement of objects. Participants were asked to choose which of the photographs was 'the same' as the arrangement. We manipulated the types of information the photographs preserved about the referent objects. One set of photographs did not preserve the object properties of the scene. Another set of photographs preserved the object properties of the scene, but not the relational similarity, such that the original objects were depicted but occupied different spatial positions in the arrangement. As predicted, younger children based their choices of the photographs largely on object similarity, whereas older children and adults also took relational similarity into account. Results are discussed in terms of the development of children's appreciation of different levels of similarity.     

Using domain-general principles to explain children's causal reasoning abilities

A connectionist model of causal attribution is presented, emphasizing the use of domain-general principles of processing and learning previously employed in models of semantic cognition. The model categorizes objects dependent upon their observed 'causal properties' and is capable of making several types of inferences that 4-year-old children have been shown to be capable of. The model gives rise to approximate conformity to normative models of causal inference and gives approximate estimates of the probability that an object presented in an ambiguous situation actually possesses a particular causal power, based on background knowledge and recent observations. It accounts for data from three sets of experimental studies of the causal inferencing abilities of young children. The model provides a base for further efforts to delineate the intuitive mechanisms of causal inference employed by children and adults, without appealing to inherent principles or mechanisms specialized for causal as opposed to other forms of reasoning.     

Measurement of individual differences in children's suggestibility across situations

The authors attempted to use scores on the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC, M. H. Scullin & S. J. Ceci, 2001) to predict 50 preschool children's performance during a field study in which they were interviewed suggestively 4 times about both a true event and a suggested event. Among the 25 children over age 4 years 6 months, tendencies on the VSSC to respond affirmatively to suggestive questions ("yield"), change answers in response to negative feedback ("shift"), and the sum of these ("total suggestibility") were all related to lack of accuracy about the true event in the field study and to both accuracy and lack of accuracy about the suggested event. Results support a 2-factor model of suggestibility.     

Developmental trends in the appraisal of anxiety-provoking situations

Empirical results on the appraisal of anxiety-provoking situations are integrated with general findings on perceptual and cognitive growth. It was hypothesized that younger teenagers would appraise relations between anxiety-provoking situations on the basis of manifest and perceptually salient characteristics of the situations more so than would older teenagers, whereas the latter group would view relations predominantly on the basis of latent, anticipatory qualities. The hypothesis was tested with a similarity rating method designed to enable subjects to rate similarity between situations both from manifest and latent situation characteristics. The results supported the hypothesis. Implications of results for stability of cross-situational behavior was discussed.     

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations were investigated in the present study. Subjects were 40 boys and girls aged 8–9, who were asked to take the role of boy and girl story characters involved in the following kinds of aggressive situations: victim of a verbal attack, victim of a physical attack, and witness to an attack upon a friend. A significant interaction effect between type of conflict situation and sex of story character was obtained. Subjects expected boy characters to retaliate more strongly than girl characters when intervening in an attack upon a friend, and girl characters to retaliate more strongly than boy characters when being verbally or physically assaulted. These findings suggest the importance of situational factors in determining children's sex-stereotyped expectations for aggressive retaliation.     

Developmental differences in children's context-dependent word learning

In this study, 2.5-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (N = 108) participated in a novel noun generalization task in which background context was manipulated. During the learning phase of each trial, children were presented with exemplars in one or multiple background contexts. At the test, children were asked to generalize to a novel exemplar in either the same or a different context. The 2.5-year-olds’ performance was supported by matching contexts; otherwise, children in this age group demonstrated context dependent generalization. The 3-year-olds’ performance was also supported by matching contexts; however, children in this age group were aided by training in multiple contexts as well. Finally, the 4-year-olds demonstrated high performance in all conditions. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between word learning and memory processes; both general memory development and memory developments specific to word learning (e.g., retention of linguistic labels) are likely to support word learning and generalization.     

Developmental differences in children's labeling of movement

Children's encoding of information, specifically, the correct use and application of labels, is one factor frequently used to account for developmental differences in verbal learning. Labels may also be used in connection with remembering positional movements. The purpose of this study was to evaluate developmental differences in the effects of labels upon remembering movements. In addition, the study evaluated whether better or poorer labeling strategies would increase or decrease performance in the age groups studied. Subjects consisted of kindergarten children (N=27), fifth grade children (N=27), and adults (N=27) randomly assigned within each age level to one of three groups: subjective label, irrelevant label, and relevant label. Subjects were tested on a two-dimensional positioning task allowing estimates of radial, location, and distance errors. Results indicated that relevant labels (clock face) improved performance for remembering positions within all age conditions. Of major interest was the finding that relevant labels increased performance of the kindergarten children to the approximate level of the irrelevant label (animals) group for fifth graders. The same finding was evident for the fifth graders with the relevant label group approximating performance of adults forced to use a less sophisticated strategy (irrelevant label, i.e., animals). This finding suggests that a significant portion of the differences between younger and older children and adult performance is due to the processing deficit of poor encoding strategies used by children.     

Sex and age variations in the quality and intensity of children's emotional attributions to hypothetical situations

Sex and age differences in the quality and intensity of children's emotional attributions to affect-laden stories were explored. Seventy-two 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children, with equal numbers of boys and girls of each age, were individually told 10 affect-laden stories. After each story, children were asked to indicate how they would feel as the story protagonist by pointing to angry, sad, happy, and scared faces, each of which had three degrees of intensity. The results revealed that boys attributed anger to themselves more frequently than did girls; girls attributed sadness and fear to themselves more frequently than did boys. Boys' first responses to the stories were more intensely angry and more intensely happy than were girls' first responses; and the intensity of both boys' and girls' emotional attributions decreased with age.This research was funded by a grant from the Graduate School of Boston University, #GRS-661-PS. The author expresses appreciation to the faculty and students of the Bartlett School, Lowell, Massachusetts, and to the Lowell-Lesley College Teacher Corps Project, especially to Allan Alson, John Cronin, and Edna Robinson. The author would also like to thank Shirley Brody, Emily Flynn, Benjamin Gozun, and Richard Simon for their help in various phases of this project.     

Developmental changes in sensitivity to vocal paralanguage

Developmental changes in children’s sensitivity to the role of acoustic variation in the speech stream in conveying speaker affect (vocal paralanguage) were examined. Four‐, 7‐ and 10‐year‐olds heard utterances in three formats: low‐pass filtered, reiterant, and normal speech. The availability of lexical and paralinguistic information varied across these three formats in a way that required children to base their judgments of speaker affect on different configurations of cues in each format. Across ages, the best performance was obtained when a rich array of acoustic cues was present and when there was no competing lexical information. Four‐year‐olds performed at chance when judgments had to be based solely on speech prosody in the filtered format and they were unable to selectively attend to paralanguage when discrepant lexical cues were present in normal speech. Seven‐year‐olds were significantly more sensitive to the paralinguistic role of speech prosody in filtered speech than were 4‐year‐olds and there was a trend toward greater attention to paralanguage when lexical and paralinguistic cues were inconsistent in normal speech. An integration of the ability to utilize prosodic cues to speaker affect with attention to paralanguage in cases of lexical/paralinguistic discrepancy was observed for 10‐year‐olds. The results are discussed in terms of the development of a perceptual bias emerging out of selective attention to language.     

Development and training of role-taking abilities with emotionally disturbed preschoolers: A pilot study

The purposes of the present study were to verify whether emotionally disturbed preschoolers admitted to a medical day-care center would evidence a developmental lag in role-taking skills as compared to nondisturbed kindergartners and to study the effects of a training program with as its purpose to teach the MDC children to deal with their own and others' emotions. Forty-three children from a kindergarten (n=22; mean age of 4.11 years) and a medical day-care center (n=21; mean age of 4.11 years) participated in this study. The MDC children were randomly assigned to a control (n=9) and to a training condition (n=12). The training for the latter group covered a 10-week period. The results from this pretest and posttest design revealed no differences in performance for emotional role-taking (i.e., Borke-task) and social guessing (i.e., De Vries-task) between the disturbed and nondisturbed children on the pretest. On the posttest, however, a significant developmental lag was evident for the MDC-children who did not receive the training and those who did and the control group.     

Assessment of children's social problem-solving skills in hypothetical and actual conflict situations

This study compared the social problem-solving skills of 57 maladjusted and 57 well adjusted first and second graders in a series of hypothetical and actual provocations. All children were asked how they would react to four videotaped provocations involving same-age peers. They were also exposed to three provocations simulated by a peer-confederate; their verbal and nonverbal behaviors were videotaped. Multivariate analyses of variance indicated that, overall, maladjusted subjects displayed less assertiveness and more verbal and nonverbal aggressive responses to the actual provocations. Conversely, hypothetical situations yielded few between-group differences with respect to verbal strategies. The validity of hypothetical situations is questioned; the importance of actual situations for assessment and intervention purposes is stressed.This research was funded by the Conseil Québécois de Recherche Sociale. We thank the authorities and directors of the Outaouais-Hull and Aylmer School Boards as well as the first- and second-grade teachers and children for their collaboration. Josée Bouchard, Doreen McCaughry, Michel Diotte, Elizabeth Ruel, David Cuthill, and Alain Gendron also deserve our thanks for their participation in the collection or analysis of the data.     

Validating a measure of children's monitoring-blunting coping styles in dental situations

The monitoring-blunting theory of coping suggests that when faced with a threatening situation, individuals can respond by either monitoring or avoiding (blunting) threatening information. The current study sought to validate a scale of children's preferences for monitoring or blunting in dental situations (the Monitoring Blunting Dental Scale or MBDS). The psychometric characteristics of the scale were assessed in a sample of 240 New Zealand children aged 11-13. Reliability was adequate for both monitoring (α = 0.74) and blunting (α = 0.76) subscale scores. Convergent validity was indicated by strong correlations (>0.6) between the measure's subscales and those of a related scale, although discriminant validity with respect to dental anxiety was problematic for the blunting subscale. Exploratory factor analysis supported a two-factor monitoring-blunting model, although confirmatory factor analysis indicated reasonable but imperfect fit for this model, SBχ2(251) = 510.7, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.066. We reflect on conceptual issues which may underlie the difficulties experienced here and elsewhere in developing psychometrically sound measures of Miller's blunting construct and suggest that the monitoring subscale of the study scale may be most useful to other researchers.     

Developmental changes in neural activity to familiar words and gestures

Infants younger than 20 months of age interpret both words and symbolic gestures as object names. Later in development words and gestures take on divergent communicative functions. Here, we examined patterns of brain activity to words and gestures in typically developing infants at 18 and 26 months of age. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a match/mismatch task. At 18 months, an N400 mismatch effect was observed for pictures preceded by both words and gestures. At 26 months the N400 effect was limited to words. The results provide the first neurobiological evidence showing developmental changes in semantic processing of gestures.     

Age-related changes in children's hedonic response to male body odor

Male sweat smells disgusting to many adults, but it is unclear whether children find it so. In Experiment 1A, children (mean age = 8.7 years) and adolescents (M=16.6 years) smelled male sweat and other odors, rated each for liking, and attempted their identification. Only female adolescents disliked male sweat and could identify it. Experiment 1B, using the same procedure, obtained this gender difference in adults (M=26.7 years). In Experiment 2, children (M=8.1 years) and adolescents (M=16.6 years) were cued about the identity of the same odors. Irrespective of gender, adolescents disliked male sweat more than did children. In sum, dislike for the odor of male sweat may be an acquired social response that is based on odor identification.