Swazi Children's Understanding of Time Concepts: A Piagetian Study

The development of conservation skills in tasks dealing with temporal and nontemporal concepts was investigated. Contrary to findings of previous researchers, time conservation tasks presented few difficulties for children from a non-technological culture. Consistent with the results of previous research, however, time conservation tasks did appear to be more difficult than related tasks employing similar materials.     

Cross- and within-cultural variations in children's understanding of distance, time, and speed interrelationships: a follow-up study

A problem with interpretations of differences in mathematic achievement between students from Asian countries and those from the United States is the seemingly implicit assumption of the cultural homogeneity of Asian societies. Researchers rarely measure the effects of variables within cultures that are hypothesized to be related to differences across cultures. In the present study, the authors examined the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and quality of instruction on Chinese students' (1st, 3rd, and 5th grades) understanding of distance, time, and speed. The results indicated that (a) low SES in China can impede the development of children's mathematical cognition and (b) higher SES does not guarantee better performance. The implication is that the gap in mathematical performance between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children can be narrowed or even eliminated through instructional practices that focus on the systematic training of children's mathematical thinking.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

Preschool children's social understanding: a pilot study of goals and strategies during conflict situations

This pilot study tested a new enactive measure of social information-processing skills and investigated whether preschool children's goals were related to their strategies during hypothetical conflict situations. Children (13 boys, 12 girls) ages 3 to 6 years (three 3-yr.-olds, three 4-yr.-olds, 11 5-yr.-olds, and eight 6-yr.-olds) engaged in a puppet interview of six hypothetical situations. Significant correlations were found between goals and strategies of the adapted version of Chung and Asher's Children's Conflict Resolution Measure, suggesting that preschool children who endorsed friendship goals tended to select more prosocial strategies (.41). Children who endorsed more retaliation goals tended to select more hostile strategies (.67) but fewer prosocial strategies (-.41), and children who endorsed more avoidance goals tended to select more adult-seeking strategies (.45).     

Getting a clear picture: young children's understanding of a televised image

Previous research has established that very young children, unlike older people, often have difficulty using a televised image as a source of information about a real event. After watching on a live video monitor as an adult in the next room hid a toy, 2‐year‐olds usually did not find it, but after watching directly through a window, children of this age succeeded. In the first experiment reported here, 2‐year‐olds could see hiding events directly and on a video monitor at the same time. This video–reality training did not improve performance on subsequent standard trials with video as the only source of information. In a second experiment, an adult demonstrated correct search behavior using video, finding a toy as the child watched on the video monitor. Despite this training and assistance, most of the children did not appear to recognize the connection between a video image and reality.     

Incomplete understanding of complex numbers Girolamo Cardano: a case study in the acquisition of mathematical concepts

In this paper, I present the case of the discovery of complex numbers by Girolamo Cardano. Cardano acquires the concepts of (specific) complex numbers, complex addition, and complex multiplication. His understanding of these concepts is incomplete. I show that his acquisition of these concepts cannot be explained on the basis of Christopher Peacocke’s Conceptual Role Theory of concept possession. I argue that Strong Conceptual Role Theories that are committed to specifying a set of transitions that is both necessary and sufficient for possession of mathematical concepts will always face counterexamples of the kind illustrated by Cardano. I close by suggesting that we should rely more heavily on resources of Anti-Individualism as a framework for understanding the acquisition and possession of concepts of abstract subject matters.     

Theory of mind finds its Piagetian perspective: why alternative naming comes with understanding belief

In the last of a series of experiments 48 3–5-year old children were tested on an alternative naming game with “synonyms,” e.g., if puppet calls the depicted item a “rabbit” the child has to call it a “bunny,” or the child has to judge puppet’s performance when roles are reversed. The game was also played with categories (rabbit–animal), name/colour (rabbit–black), colour/colour (black–white), and part/part (head–tail). The younger children (≤3.5 years) had severe problems with “synonyms” and categories (alternative names for the items, <10% correct), but not with names and colours, only colours, or only parts (>80% correct). Children’s increasing success with age on the alternative names tasks was closely paralleled (.53≤r≤.72) by their mastery of the false belief task in which they had to predict that a mistaken story character would look for a desired object in the wrong location. For explaining the synchrony between alternative naming and understanding false belief we draw on the Piagetian idea that children come to represent perspective at some point in their development. To apply this idea to the alternative naming game we draw on the philosophical discussion about sortals (terms that specify what sort of object something is) creating perspective differences.     

儿童心理理论能力中特质理解的研究

特质是可以概括、预测和解释行为的稳定的内部特征,包含了人的理智、情绪和社会方面的特征。特质理解是心理理论研究中的一个重要研究领域,它对于社会能力的促进和发展具有重要意义。文章概述了国内外该研究领域的主要研究成果及研究动态,包括儿童自由描述中特质词的使用、特质稳定性的理解、特质心理因果性的理解及与特质理解相关的其他方面的理解的研究。     

Young children's understanding of desire formation

Two studies examined preschoolers' appreciation of how mental states arise. In Study 1, children aged 3 to 5 (24 at each age) better understood perception-generated beliefs (e.g., that looking in a certain location generates a belief about the location's content) and attitude-generated desires (e.g., that positive experiences with an activity generate a desire to partake of the activity again) than physiology-generated desires (e.g., that not eating for a long time generates a desire for food). In Study 2, 4- and 5-year-olds (48 at each age) better understood the effects of quantity of experience (e.g., eating a lot vs. a little) than of time of experience (eating just now vs. a long time ago) on physiological states and desires. The findings suggest that whether children reason in more advanced fashion about desires or beliefs depends on which aspects of these mental states are considered.     

Preschool children's understanding of causal connections

Preschool-aged children's understanding of causal mechanism was assessed by showing them a simple event sequence in which two objects moved in tandem. The central question was whether children would infer the presence of a mechanism linking the two objects whose movement covaried. This was tested by assessing five responses: actions when asked to move one object, explanations for how the object moved, predictions as to whether both objects would still move without a connection, inferences about the nature and location of the connection, and surprise when the objects moved without any apparent connection. The results from 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds indicated that an understanding of mechanism is firmly established by 5 years but fragile at 3 years and only revealed by some response modes. The implications of the results concerning how to characterize and test for early competence are discussed.     

Constructing an understanding of mind: the development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction.     

The endurance of children's working memory: a recall time analysis

We analyze the timing of recall as a source of information about children’s performance in complex working memory tasks. A group of 8-year-olds performed a traditional operation span task in which sequence length increased across trials and an operation period task in which processing requirements were extended across trials of constant sequence length. Interword pauses were longer than are commonly found in immediate serial recall tasks yet shorter than for reading span. These pauses increased with the demands of recall, decreased across the output sequence, and were to some extent predictive of scholastic ability. Overall, timing data illustrate that recall in working memory tasks involves subtle processes of item access rather than simple readout of information from an immediate store.     

Notation to symbol: Development in children's understanding of print

Three studies used the moving word task to examine children's understanding of the symbolic nature of print. A card containing a printed word is presented with two pictures, one of which is named by the word. The child is told what the card says and then asked three times what the word is. For the second question, the card is spatially adjacent to the picture it does not name, and 4-year-olds typically respond that the word has changed to name this picture. The studies examined the impact of how the move is carried out and the role of other cognitive abilities (Study 1), the influence of the source of the print and the visibility of the cards (Study 2), and the role of the matching picture in children's solutions (Study 3). In all cases, children continued to name the picture that is closest to the card, indicating an incomplete grasp of how print carries meaning. The conclusion is that children's error in this task represents a fundamental misconception about how print signifies meanings, and that prior to reading, children do not understand the symbolic function of the constituents of print. Furthermore, executive processes of representation and inhibition are identified as significant to children's solutions.     

Japanese children's development of false belief understanding

Two studies were conducted to examine the Japanese children's false belief understanding. Study 1, a small-scale meta-analysis that included 21 Japanese false belief studies yielding 60 data points, revealed that the Japanese children's false belief understanding develops with age (effect size = 2.48 in odds ratio for 1 year), the Japanese children's performance exceeds the chance level at the age of 64 months, and question type (think vs look-for) produced no statistically significant difference. An experiment (Study 2) employing a change-of-locations task was conducted to confirm these findings, manipulating question type as a within-participant factor. Participants were 43 Japanese kindergartners (24 boys and 19 girls; 3 yr. 4 mo. to 6 yr. 1 mo.). The results showed that Japanese children's false belief performance developed with age. Their performance level exceeded the chance level at the age of 5 years, and question type did not affect their performance.     

Remote control and children's understanding of robots

Children use goal-directed motion to classify agents as living things from early in infancy. In the current study, we asked whether preschoolers are flexible in their application of this criterion by introducing them to robots that engaged in goal-directed motion. In one case the robot appeared to move fully autonomously, and in the other case it was controlled by a remote. We found that 4- and 5-year-olds attributed fewer living thing properties to the robot after seeing it controlled by a remote, suggesting that they are flexible in their application of the goal-directed motion criterion in the face of conflicting evidence of living thing status. Children can flexibly incorporate internal causes for an agent’s behavior to enrich their understanding of novel agents.     

Young children's understanding of cultural common ground

Human social interaction depends on individuals identifying the common ground they have with others, based both on personally shared experiences and on cultural common ground that all members of the group share. We introduced 3‐ and 5‐year‐old children to a culturally well‐known object and a novel object. An experimenter then entered and asked, ‘What is that?’, either as a request for information or in a recognitory way. When she was requesting information, both 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds assumed she was asking about the novel object. When she seemed to recognize an object, 5‐year‐olds assumed she was referring to the culturally well‐known object. Thus, by 3 years of age, children are beginning to understand that they share cultural common ground with other members of their group.