Children's memory of recurring events: is the first event always the best remembered?

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of age (4–5 and 6–8 years) and retention interval on children's ability to remember separate occurrences of a repeated event that varied in terms of content (items, dialog, etc.) Experiment 1 explored children's ability to recall the first versus last occurrence of a series of six events, at either one week or six weeks delay. Experiments 2 and 3 explored children's ability to identify the position of items in terms of their order of presentation within the series across two retention intervals. Overall, the results revealed clear age differences in children's performance. In general, the 6‐ to 8‐year‐old children performed better on all tasks than the 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children. Further, the older children showed relatively good memory of the first and last items compared to the middle items, although the last items were more likely to be forgotten or misplaced in the sequencing tasks over time than the first items. For the younger children, the patterns of results were sometimes but not always consistent with that of the older children. The relevance and generalisability of these findings to the legal setting are discussed as well as directions for future research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's memory for the duration of a paediatric consultation

To learn about children's ability to estimate the duration of an event many days after it occurred, 6–12‐year‐old children were asked to judge the amount of time (range 5–45 minutes) they spent in the treatment room as part of a paediatric visit. Judgements were made 1 week or 1 month after the visit occurred. Children showed an average error of about 13 minutes. Retention interval did not significantly affect estimates. Other judgements of the length of the interview itself (mean length 8 minutes) provided what may be the first data on children's ability to make immediate retrospective duration estimates. The results also include information about children's capacity to judge how long ago they visited the clinic. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental progression in the confidence‐accuracy relationship in event recall: insights provided by a calibration perspective

The development of discrimination and realism was investigated in the event recall of 156 8‐year‐olds, 133 10‐year‐olds and 146 adults, using categorical confidence judgements. Target questions were either a mixture of misleading and unbiased (‘non‐bombardment’), or restricted to one question format (‘bombardment’). The confidence judgements of all age groups discriminated between incorrect and correct responses to unbiased questions, but with misleading questions, this ability was undermined in the children, particularly when ‘bombarded’. Calibration‐style analyses of unbiased questions revealed a systematic confidence–accuracy association across age and question mix for unbiased questions. For misleading questions, however, the absence of a drop in performance from intermediate to low confidence at all ages suggested relative underconfidence at the lowest confidence level. At high confidence levels, there was evidence of realistic congruence between confidence and performance in adults, but this was not the case in the 10‐year‐olds when bombarded with misleading questions, or in the 8‐year‐olds, regardless of bombardment. Exploratory analyses of question difficulty revealed poor calibration across ages for difficult unbiased questions, and in the 8‐year‐olds, even for easy unbiased questions when intermixed with misleading questions. Bombardment with difficult misleading questions further undermined children's calibration. Implications for the role of social and cognitive factors in the development of metacognitive monitoring are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Establishing the Duration of Crimes: An Individual Differences and Eye‐Tracking Investigation into Time Estimation

The time available for viewing a perpetrator at a crime scene predicts successful person recognition in subsequent identity line‐ups. This time is usually unknown and must be derived from eyewitnesses' duration estimates. This study therefore compared the estimates that different individuals provide for crimes. We then attempted to determine the accuracy of these durations by measuring observers' general time estimation ability with a set of estimator videos. Observers differed greatly in their ability to estimate time, but individual duration estimates correlated strongly for crime and estimator materials. This indicates that it might be possible to infer unknown durations of events, such as criminal incidents, from a person's ability to estimate known durations. We also measured observers' eye movements to a perpetrator during crimes. Only fixations on a perpetrator's face related to eyewitness accuracy, but these fixations did not correlate with exposure estimates for this person. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of changes in posture and clothing on the development of unfamiliar person recognition

In contrast to face recognition little is known about the development of unfamiliar whole‐person recognition. Various cues in a person's appearance may contribute to recognition performance. An age‐related influence of different features on person recognition performance is possible. Here, we investigated two variable features of person recognition, namely posture and clothing, in 4‐year‐olds, 6‐year‐olds, 8‐year‐olds, 10‐year‐olds and adults. The experimental methodology of a short‐term recognition‐test with an immediate four alternative forced choice (4AFC)‐array was used. Targets were shown for 5 seconds. Experiment 1 clearly indicates that a variation of both posture and clothing decreases performance in all age groups compared to a standard, i.e. a no‐change condition. An interaction age×variation of posture and clothing was not observed. In order to untangle the two aspects of posture and clothing, Experiment 2 varied only posture between encoding and recognition. An age‐effect was shown, but no other significant result occurred. Experiment 3 investigated variation of clothing only, and found main effects of clothing and age. Because there was no interaction between the two factors we infer that a change of clothing impairs all subjects' recognition performance. Children's person recognition performance suffers in a way similar to adults' person recognition performance when clothing is varied. In contrast, changing posture does not necessarily decrease recognition accuracy, neither in children nor in adults. No developmental gains were found for dealing with the transformation of posture and clothing between the encoding and recognition phase. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Logic and belief across the lifespan: the rise and fall of belief inhibition during syllogistic reasoning

Popular reasoning theories postulate that the ability to inhibit inappropriate beliefs lies at the heart of the human reasoning engine. Given that people's inhibitory capacities are known to rise and fall across the lifespan, we predicted that people's deductive reasoning performance would show similar curvilinear age trends. A group of children (12‐year‐olds), young adults (20‐year‐olds), and older adults (65+‐year‐olds) were presented with a classic syllogistic reasoning task and a decision‐making questionnaire. Results indicated that on syllogisms where beliefs and logic conflicted, reasoning performance showed the expected curvilinear age trend: Reasoning performance initially increased from childhood to early adulthood but declined again in later life. On syllogisms where beliefs and logic were consistent and sound reasoning did not require belief inhibition, however, age did not affect performance. Furthermore, across the lifespan we observed that the better people were at resisting intuitive temptations in the decision‐making task, the less they were biased by their beliefs on the conflict syllogisms. As with the effect of age, one's ability to override intuitions in the decision‐making task did not mediate reasoning performance on the no‐conflict syllogisms. Results lend credence to the postulated central role of inhibitory processing in those situations where beliefs and logic conflict.     

Internalising symptoms and verbal working memory in school‐age children: A processing efficiency analysis

The current study investigated differential contributions of internalising symptoms (state anxiety, trait anxiety, depression) to school‐age children's verbal short‐term (STM) and working memory (WM) span accuracy and efficiency (microanalysis of response times). Children's (N = 125, M_age = 11.44 years) STM/WM was assessed with simple/complex span tasks. Our analyses revealed that: (a) children with high levels of state anxiety displayed reduced simple span accuracy (on Word span) and poorer efficiency on both simple (preparatory intervals, interword pauses) and complex span (preparatory intervals) response time segments; (b) trait anxiety was a negative predictor of children's complex span accuracy, as well as their efficiency on both simple (word durations) and complex span (interword pauses) response time measures; (3) depressive symptoms predicted longer simple span interword pauses. Findings indicate that while all internalising symptoms were predictive of children's poorer memory search efficiency, especially during the “silent”, executive intervals (interword pauses), anxiety symptoms were specifically predictive of children's impaired span accuracy and other efficiency indicators (preparatory intervals, word durations). The study highlights the differential contributions of state, trait anxiety, and depressive symptoms to STM/WM in children, emphasising the need to measure both accuracy and efficiency to assess the role that such symptoms play in children's performance.     

Season of birth and childhood intelligence: Findings from the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s cohort study

Background. In this study, 2 main hypotheses have been put forward to explain the variation in childhood intelligence or school performance by season of birth. In the first hypothesis, it is suggested that it is due to school policy concerning school entry, whereas the second suggests that a seasonally patterned exposure such as temperature, maternal nutrition, or infection during critical periods of brain development have a lasting effect on intelligence. Aims. To determine whether childhood performance on tests of different domains of intelligence is patterned by season of birth and to examine possible mechanisms for any associations. Sample. 12,150 individuals born in Aberdeen, Scotland between 1950 and 1956. Methods. Birth cohort study in which the variation in different domains of childhood intelligence measured at ages 7, 9, and 11 by season of birth were examined. Results. Reading ability at age 9 and arithmetic ability at age 11 varied by season of birth, with lowest scores among those born in autumn or early winter (September–December) and highest scores among those born in later winter or spring (February–April); p = .002 for joint sine‐cosine functions for reading ability at age 9 and p = .05 for sine‐cosine function for arithmetic ability at age 11. The child's perception and understanding of pictorial differences at age 7, verbal reasoning at 11, and English language ability at 11 did not vary by season of birth. Age at starting primary school and age relative to class peers were both associated with the different measurements of childhood intelligence and both attenuated the association between month of birth and reading ability at age 9 and arithmetic ability at age 11 towards the null. Both adjusted and unadjusted differences in reading ability at age 9 and arithmetic ability at age 11 between those born from September to December compared with other times of the year were less than 0.1 of a standard deviation of the test scores. Ambient temperature around the time of conception, during gestation, and around the time of birth did not affect intelligence. Conclusion. Any variation in mean childhood intelligence by season of birth is weak and largely explained by age at school entry and age relative to class peers.     

A longitudinal study of students' academic self‐concept in a streamed setting: The Singapore context

Background. Although several studies support the existence of a negative stream effect on lower‐ability stream students' academic self‐concept, there is not enough longitudinal research evidence to preclude the possibility that the stream effect may only be temporary. In addition, not much is known about the effect of streaming on changes in students' academic self‐concept over time. Aims. The main aims of the study were to examine the effect of streaming on (a) the students' academic self‐concept immediately after the streaming process, and at yearly intervals for 3 consecutive years, and (b) the changes in students' academic self‐concept over a 3 year period. Sample. The sample comprised 495 Secondary 1 students (approximate age 13) from three government coeducational schools in Singapore. Method. A longitudinal survey using a self‐reported questionnaire. Results. Results showed that the lower‐ability stream students had a more negative academic self‐concept than the higher‐ability stream students immediately after streaming, but they had a more positive academic self‐concept 3 years after being streamed. In addition, it was established that the students' academic self‐concept declined from Secondary 1 to Secondary 3. Nonetheless, the decline was more pronounced for the higher‐ability stream students than the lower‐ability stream students. Conclusions. Streaming may have a short‐term negative impact on lower‐ability stream students' academic self‐concept. However, in the long run, being in the lower‐ability stream may not be detrimental to their academic self‐concept.     

The role of relational reasoning in children's addition concepts

The study addresses the relational reasoning of different‐aged children and how addition reasoning is related to problem‐solving skills within addition and to reasoning skills outside addition. Ninety‐two 5‐ to 8‐year‐olds were asked to solve a series of conceptually related and unrelated addition problems, and the speed and accuracy of all self‐reported strategies were used to monitor their addition performance. Children were also given a series of general relational reasoning tasks to assess their ability to solve problems based on thematic, causal and visual relations. The results revealed that, while children were able to reason about commutativity relations, recognition of relations based on additive composition was rare. Furthermore, children's ability to reason about addition concepts increased with age and problem‐solving proficiency. Reasoning about addition concepts was related to performance on the thematic, causal and visual reasoning tasks for older children but not for younger children. Overall, the findings suggest that while children's early knowledge of addition relations is domain specific, as children develop in their broader reasoning abilities these developments enhance their addition reasoning.     

Time Points: A Gestural Study of the Development of Space–Time Mappings

Human languages typically employ a variety of spatial metaphors for time (e.g., “I'm looking forward to the weekend”). The metaphorical grounding of time in space is also evident in gesture. The gestures that are performed when talking about time bolster the view that people sometimes think about regions of time as if they were locations in space. However, almost nothing is known about the development of metaphorical gestures for time, despite keen interest in the origins of space–time metaphors. In this study, we examined the gestures that English‐speaking 6‐to‐7‐year‐olds, 9‐to‐11‐year‐olds, 13‐to‐15‐year‐olds, and adults produced when talking about time. Participants were asked to explain the difference between pairs of temporal adverbs (e.g., “tomorrow” versus “yesterday”) and to use their hands while doing so. There was a gradual increase across age groups in the propensity to produce spatial metaphorical gestures when talking about time. However, even a substantial majority of 6‐to‐7‐year‐old children produced a spatial gesture on at least one occasion. Overall, participants produced fewer gestures in the sagittal (front‐back) axis than in the lateral (left‐right) axis, and this was particularly true for the youngest children and adolescents. Gestures that were incongruent with the prevailing norms of space–time mappings among English speakers (leftward and backward for past; rightward and forward for future) gradually decreased with increasing age. This was true for both the lateral and sagittal axis. This study highlights the importance of metaphoricity in children's understanding of time. It also suggests that, by 6 to 7 years of age, culturally determined representations of time have a strong influence on children's spatial metaphorical gestures.     

KNOWING ABOUT READING BEFORE READING: PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS OF READING

This paper reports findings from an investigation of preschool children's concepts about reading. Three tasks related to several basic ideas about reading were presented to 60 preschool children, ranging in age from three to five years. The first task assessed children's ability to identify oral and silent reading. The number of children who correctly identified both forms of reading increased with age, with almost all five‐year‐olds giving accurate responses. The second task was aimed at establishing children's perceptions of their own reading ability. Only four of the 60 children incorrectly evaluated their own reading ability. The third task investigated children's ability to recognize what it is on a page that is read. Three‐year‐olds were, on the whole, quite unaware of the salient information in books. Even among the five‐year‐olds, who performed significantly better than three‐ and four‐year‐olds on this task, some children's responses indicated an ambiguity about the role of print in reading. Suggestions for adults who guide young children through their early experiences with print are drawn from the findings of this investigation.     

A temporal discriminability account of children's eyewitness suggestibility

Children's suggestibility is typically measured using a three‐stage ‘event–misinformation–test’ procedure. We examined whether suggestibility is influenced by the time delays imposed between these stages, and in particular whether the temporal discriminability of sources (event and misinformation) predicts performance. In a novel approach, the degree of source discriminability was calculated as the relative magnitude of two intervals (the ratio of event–misinformation and misinformation–test intervals), based on an adaptation of existing ‘ratio‐rule’ accounts of memory. Five‐year‐olds (n =150) watched an event, and were exposed to misinformation, before memory for source was tested. The absolute event–test delay (12 versus 24 days) and the ‘ratio’ of event–misinformation/misinformation–test intervals (11:1, 3:1, 1:1, 1:3 and 1:11) were manipulated across participants. The temporal discriminability of sources, measured by the ratio, was indeed a strong predictor of suggestibility. Most importantly, if the ratio was constant (e.g. 18/6 versus 9/3 days), performance was remarkably similar despite variations in absolute delay (e.g. 24 versus 12 days). This intriguing finding not only extends the ratio‐rule of distinctiveness to misinformation paradigms, but also serves to illustrate a new empirical means of differentiating between explanations of suggestibility based on interference between sources and disintegration of source information over time.     

The role of repeated interviewing in children's responses to cross‐examination‐style questioning

The negative effect of cross‐examination‐style questioning on children's accuracy is likely to be due to the complex and credibility‐challenging questions that characterize the interview. Given that cross‐examination occurs after at least one prior interview, however, it is equally possible that repeated interviewing per se impairs children's accuracy, and that the questions asked have little bearing on children's responses. To examine this issue, 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children (n= 82) and 9‐ and 10‐year‐old children (n= 103) took part in a surprise event and were then interviewed using an analogue of direct examination. Either 1 week or 6 months later, half of the children were re‐interviewed with an analogue of cross‐examination designed to challenge their direct examination responses. Remaining children were re‐interviewed with the same questions that were asked during direct examination. Children's accuracy decreased following their second interview, irrespective of age or delay; however, delay particularly impacted younger children's second interview performance. Children's accuracy was most impaired following a cross‐examination‐style interview. Overall, cross‐examination‐style questioning appears to be particularly detrimental to obtaining accurate event reports from children.     

Evidence for a young adult face bias in accuracy and consensus of age estimates

Adults' face processing may be specialized for the dimensions of young adult faces. For example, young and older adults exhibit increased accuracy in normality judgments and greater agreement in attractiveness ratings for young versus older adult faces. The present study was designed to examine whether there is a similar young adult face bias in facial age estimates. In Experiment 1, we created a face age continuum by morphing an averaged young adult face with an averaged older adult face in 5% increments, for a total of 21 faces ranging from 0 to 100% old. Young and older adults estimated facial age for three stimulus age categories [young (morphs 0–30%), middle‐aged (morphs 35–65%), and older adult (morphs 70–100%)]. Both age groups showed the least differentiation in age estimates for young adult faces, despite showing greater consensus across participants in estimates for young faces. In Experiment 2, young and older adults made age estimates for individual young and older adult identities. Both age groups were more accurate and showed greater consensus in age estimates for young faces. Collectively, these results provide evidence for a bias in processing young adult faces beyond that which is often observed in recognition and normality/attractiveness judgment tasks.     

Individual differences in children's understanding of inversion and arithmetical skill

Background and aims. In order to develop arithmetic expertise, children must understand arithmetic principles, such as the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction, in addition to learning calculation skills. We report two experiments that investigate children's understanding of the principle of inversion and the relationship between their conceptual understanding and arithmetical skills. Sample. A group of 127 children from primary schools took part in the study. The children were from 2 age groups (6–7 and 8–9 years). Methods. Children's accuracy on inverse and control problems in a variety of presentation formats and in canonical and non‐canonical forms was measured. Tests of general arithmetic ability were also administered. Results. Children consistently performed better on inverse than control problems, which indicates that they could make use of the inverse principle. Presentation format affected performance: picture presentation allowed children to apply their conceptual understanding flexibly regardless of the problem type, while word problems restricted their ability to use their conceptual knowledge. Cluster analyses revealed three subgroups with different profiles of conceptual understanding and arithmetical skill. Children in the ‘high ability’ and ‘low ability’ groups showed conceptual understanding that was in‐line with their arithmetical skill, whilst a 3rd group of children had more advanced conceptual understanding than arithmetical skill. Conclusions. The three subgroups may represent different points along a single developmental path or distinct developmental paths. The discovery of the existence of the three groups has important consequences for education. It demonstrates the importance of considering the pattern of individual children's conceptual understanding and problem‐solving skills.     

Children's understanding of counterfactual emotions: Age differences,individual differences,and the effects of counterfactual‐information salience

The present study investigated developmental trends in the effects of the salience of counterfactual alternatives on judgments of others' counterfactual‐thinking‐based emotions. We also examined possible correlates of individual differences in the understanding of these emotions. Thirty‐four adults and 102 children, 5–8 years of age, were presented scenarios in which characters would be expected to experience regret. In one version of each scenario, the regret‐relevant counterfactual alternative was made more salient than was the case with the other version. Adults consistently judged that a character for whom a counterfactual course of events would have resulted in a better outcome would feel worse than a character for whom an alternative course of events would not have resulted in a more positive outcome. The majority of the children's judgments were not affected by the counterfactual alternatives. However, the judgments of the oldest children (the 8‐year‐olds) were significantly more adult‐like in the high‐salience than in the low‐salience condition. Although the three predictors examined in the present study (verbal ability, working memory capacity, second‐order false belief task performance) together accounted for significant variance in performance on the emotions judgment task, no single predictor alone accounted for significant unique variance in performance. The importance of different social cognitive abilities for understanding people's affective responses is discussed.     

Developmental changes in attention: the effects of endogenous cueing and of distractors

We used two reaction time tasks to examine age differences in the ability to use an endogenous cue to shift attention covertly and to ignore distractors. In Experiment 1, 8‐year‐olds, 10‐year‐olds and adults (n = 24 per age) were asked to push a button as soon as they detected a target that was presented in a cued, miscued or non‐cued peripheral location at 100, 400 or 800 ms after the appearance of a central cue. In Experiment 2, 10‐year‐olds and adults (n = 24 per age) were asked to indicate which of two shapes appeared in the periphery 400 ms after a central cue, with those shapes surrounded by compatible or incompatible distractors. Unlike previous studies, the data were corrected for a reaction time bias that can inflate the apparent effect of cueing. Children were slower and more variable than adults overall. However, there were no age differences in the effects of the cues in either experiment: at all ages, the speed of responding was increased similarly by correct cueing and slowed similarly by incorrect cueing. Thus, under these conditions, the ability to use endogenous cues to orient covertly to the periphery is already adult‐like by 8–10 years of age, although there may be subsequent changes in the consistency of responding. In Experiment 2, 10‐year‐olds were slowed more than adults by incompatible distractors. Thus, the ability to ignore distracting information is not adult‐like even by 10 years of age. The findings suggest different rates of development for the ability to shift attention following an endogenous cue and for the ability to filter out irrelevant information.     

Traces of the artist: Sensitivity to the role of the artist in children's pictorial reasoning

In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5‐year‐old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 years do not consider the artists' attributes when making judgments, but 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds do. Furthermore, whereas the oldest children were adept at both machine‐person (sentience) and person‐person (age) contrasts, 4‐year‐olds succeeded only with person‐person contrasts. In Study 2, videotaped artists displayed differences in degree of agitation (affective style) while drawing, and this attribute was manipulated in the drawing by varying line density, asymmetry, line overlap and line gap, or all four features, across stimuli. Three‐ and five‐year‐old children judged whether a calm or agitated person drew the stimuli. Findings showed that five‐year‐old, but not 3‐year‐old, children easily completed the task. In Study 3, 3‐, 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children judged whether happy or sad artists made paintings of matching emotional tone. Performance on this picture judgment task was contrasted with performance on three theory of mind tasks (false belief, emotion and interpretative). The results indicated that 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds successfully judged the impact of artists' emotions on paintings, but 3‐year‐olds did not. Performance on the picture task was related to that on the false belief task, but not to the emotion or interpretive tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that children's view of visual symbols includes a consideration of the qualities of the artist beginning around 5 years, and there appears to be a common link between judgments of the mind behind the visual symbol in the picture task and judgments of mental state reasoning in the false belief task.