Correlates of children's television viewing: Expectancies,age, and sex

The relationship of interpersonal trust and locus of control expectancies to amounts of television viewing and viewing preferences were examined among children in grades five through eight. Age and sex differences in viewing times, preferences, and viewing habits, as well as children's scores on the Children's Interpersonal Trust Scale and the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Scale were assessed. Several findings suggested that heavy viewing is associated with less trusting perceptions of others and less belief in controlling one's academic successes and failures, although the pattern found does not suggest so specific an effect of viewing television violence as Gerbner's cultivation hypothesis might suggest. Age and sex differences found were largely consistent with those reported in the previous literature.     

Young children's processing of television: Modality differences in the retention of temporal relations

Two experiments were conducted to examine modality differences in pre-schoolers' ability to recognize or recall temporally related events. Results of both experiments demonstrated that temporally related events were remembered more frequently when they were conveyed visually rather than aurally. This modality effect was found both when the semantic content of the auditory and visual sequences was either the same or different, and for shows designed for educational and purely entertainment purposes. The data suggest that children show relatively impoverished integration of the temporal parameters of auditory information, which may contribute to their misunderstandings about the plot of a televison show.     

Developmental trends in children's component selection

A new method is introduced for assessing children's component selection—i.e., the disposition to attend to a single feature of multifaceted stimuli. Eight-year-old children were found to exercise component selection to a lesser degree than 4-year-olds; while children at both age levels attended primarily to one stimulus component (shape), the older children showed a moderate amount of attention to a secondary redundant feature (color) as well. However, a comparable age difference in attention deployment was not observed when a single stimulus dimension (shape) was “relevant” in two variant tasks. These results imply a developmentally increasing ability to distinguish between conditions in which attending to redundant stimulus information can and cannot be useful. That this ability undergoes little further development beyond age 8 was suggested in a second experiment with 8- and 12-year-olds in which the three tasks produced relatively similar developmental trends in performance.     

Age trends in children's time-sharing performance

To investigate developmental differences in time-sharing performance, 60 boys, 20 in each of three age groups (7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds) performed an auditory matching task and a tracking task alone and concurrently, the latter under two sets of instructions. Decrements produced by concurrent performance were compared for the three age groups. When the time-shared tasks were presented as equally important, time-sharing produced significantly greater proportional decrements in the tracking performance of the younger children and for all age groups tracking task decrements were directly related to matching task difficulty. Subsequently, the children were instructed that one or the other of the tasks was more important and that they were to improve their performance on that task. All three age groups showed a significant improvement on the task emphasized by instructions. The relationship of the results to two models of information processing is discussed.     

Decision processes in children's recognition memory

Kindergarteners and third graders were given a continuous recognition memory task involving two-digit numbers. In addition, a rating scale consisting of photographs of various facial expressions was used to obtain confidence judgments from the Ss. Conventional analyses as well as signal detection analyses of the data revealed the following results: (a) the overall performance of the third graders was superior to that of the kindergarteners; (b) memory strength decreased as the number of intervening items increased; (c) there was no difference in the forgetting rates of the two grade levels; (d) the third graders exhibited a more liberal response bias than the kindergarteners; (e) both the hit rate (probability of correctly labeling an old stimulus as old) and the false-alarm rate (probability of incorrectly labeling a new stimulus as old) increased across blocks of items; (f) the increases in the hit rate and the false-alarm rate over blocks were due to a change in criterion from a relatively conservative level to a more lenient one; (g) the lower the S's level of confidence in judging an item as old, the lower was the probability of that item actually being old; (h) the third graders were better than the kindergarteners at gauging the accuracy of their recognition responses. It was concluded that with respect to recognition memory, chidren as young as $\text{5}\text{1}\text{2}$ years old are capable, to some extent, of monitoring their own memory states.     

Contextual sensitivity in young children's drawings

Previous research has examined the characteristic errors made by young children when drawing from a three-dimensional array. The aim of the present research was to investigate the influence of context in copying tasks. In a series of three experiments children between the ages of 4 and 7 years were presented with contrasting models to copy. These included cups and sugar bowls in various combinations and orientations. In each experiment the children's copies were scored for inclusion or omission of the occluded handle on the model. The results showed that nearly one third of the children did not respond consistently by either copying accurately or by always including the occluded handle. Instead the findings pointed to a large group of children whose responses were directed by the type of context present within the arrays.     

Evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory

The experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children, encoded words using the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential. In the second experiment, both 7- and 11-year-olds demonstrated the ability to encode words according to taxonomic categories. These findings were related to other recent work on the development of encoding in memory.     

Stimulus factors in children's learning set performance

Three experiments are reported which investigate the effects of attentional factors on learning set performance of children. Number of varying irrelevant dimensions, trials per problem, and age were examined. The first experiment tests with 6- and 8-year-old-children the effects of one as opposed to two varying irrelevant dimensions. An interaction between age and dimensions showed younger children to be differentially affected by the treatment conditions, two varying irrelevant dimensions being more difficult than one. There was no difference between treatments for the older children, nor between older and younger subjects receiving one varying irrelevant dimension. In the second experiment, 6- and 8-year-olds were examined on two varying irrelevant dimension problems, receiving either 4 or 12 trials per problem. Amount of exposure within-problems, affected performance with 12 trials per problem resulting in superior performance at both age levels. A third experiment tested 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old-children using one and two varying irrelevant dimension problems with 4 and 12 trials per problem. Results confirmed the finding that learning set acquisition is influenced by irrelevant dimensions and within-problems exposure, with these effects interacting with age and amount of training. These findings support the utility of applications of an attentional analysis to the learning set performance of normal children.     

Deep and surface structure in children's sentence learning

Fifth-graders were asked to learn 32 syntactically varied, semantically unrelated sentences containing combinations of agentive, objective and instrumental case relations. Five learning trials, each followed by a noun-prompted recall test, were provided. Recall patterns indicated that variations in surface structure complexity (i.e., verb voice and sentential position of noun prompts) exerted less influence on Ss' memory for sentences than deep structures. Several trials were required for Ss to reproduce syntactic details accurately and many transformational errors were observed. Even then, children were unable to learn one syntactic form. Although patterns of recall were more consistent with deep structure predictions, results were not completely supportive of Fillmore's analysis of deep structure in terms of case relations, and the possibility that other non-linguistic means were used to store sentences loomed as an alternative to the deep structure view.     

Young children's free responses to anomalous commands

Twelve children, 21–34 months old, six in R. Brown's Stage I and six in Stages II and III, responded to commands varying in length, grammaticality, and meaning. All of the children responded significantly less often when the commands were situationally anomalous and/or ungrammatical. Results failed to replicate the results of E. Shipley, E. Smith, and L. Gleitman (Language, 1969, 44, 332–342) and J. Wetstone and B. Friedlander (Child Development, 1973, 44, 743–750). The results also suggest that young children rely heavily upon situational cues in their earliest comprehension of adult speech, and this supports arguments made by J. Strohner and K. Nelson (Child Development, 45, 567–576) and R. Chapman and J. Miller (Journal of Speech and Hearing, 1975, 18, 355–371). Since subjects rely upon nonlinguistic cues to respond appropriately, syntactic competence cannot be inferred from apparent comprehension.     

Young children's storage behavior in a memory-for-location task

Two experiments concerned with children's intentional preparation for future retrieval in a memory-for-location task are presented. In the first experiment, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds were instructed to store and subsequently retrieve an object on a large spatial display. All age groups, except the 3-year-olds, tended to store the object at distinctive locations and their retrieval performance was facilitated accordingly. The four age groups did not differ in the types of selections made in a nonmemory control task. The second experiment dealt with the effects of feedback and informational factors on strategy acquisition. Preschoolers were given experience at retrieving the object from distinctive and nondistinctive positions on the stimulus display. Later, when instructed to store the object by themselves, older preschoolers produced the distinctive-position storage strategy following a feedback procedure in which they directly observed the consequences of their retrieval selections. The strategy was adopted by younger preschoolers, but only when additional strategy and task information accompanied visual feedback. The use of external memory tasks with young children and factors affecting strategy acquisition and utilization are discussed.     

Some variables affecting children's compliance with instructions

Children were given instructions to perform different tasks. Compliance was studied as a function of several variables: the prevailing pattern of reinforcement for different instructions, the availability of a competing reinforced activity, and the similarity among tasks. Rate of compliance tended to decrease when the probability of reinforcement for compliance decreased, or when a competing reinforced activity was available. Differential reinforcement over the tasks did not always produce discriminative responding even under favorable conditions. Novel instructions obtained compliance at the same rate as that for frequently repeated instructions, independent of the novel instruction's past or present reinforcement history. Greater discrimination in responding was found when tasks were less similar. Results imply that sets of instructions may form a response class, with characteristics similar to those found in studies of generalized imitation.     

Parents' and preschool children's choices of disciplinary childrearing methods

Forty preschoolers individually were shown a videotape containing six 30-second scenes depicting common parent/child conflicts. The children were asked to tell the experimenter what they would do if they were the parent on the tape, and what their own parents would do if this happened at home. In addition, 15 mothers of these children were selected randomly to view the same scenes and to indicate their choice of conflict resolution methods. Taped responses of parents and children were then coded as verbal/physical coercion or no coercion. Results indicated that preschoolers tended to choose disciplinary actions in accordance with their perceptions of their parents' manner of dealing with the same situation, and also revealed a high congruence between parent and child on consequences for discipline. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of childrearing methods at an early age and the intergenerational transmission of family violence.     

Category similarity effects in children's semantic memory retrieval

Fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students were required to indicate whether or not a stimulus word belonged in either of two semantic categories that were held in memory. Each category pair was either semantically similar or semantically dissimilar. The results indicated that even for the youngest children, similar categories required less search time than dissimilar categories. It was suggested that while dissimilar categories had to be accessed successively prior to search, subjects were able to consolidate similar categories into a superordinate group which eliminated the time to shift from one category to another during search. The results were contrasted with clustering studies which have demonstrated a minimal amount of memory facilitation in children for conceptually related items over unrelated items.     

Semantic integration in children's reconstruction of narrative sequences

Preschool to fourth grade subjects were required to reconstruct a previously seen logical sequence by selecting old items from a set containing actually seen events and two types of new items, those consistent or inconsistent with the ordered sequence of the story. Older children were more efficient at adopting a consistent choice strategy, at rejecting inconsistent items and at retaining the end-anchor items of the story. When performance on the old anchor items was excluded, however, all grades had difficulty distinguishing the new-consistent items from the actually experienced old items. It is suggested that memory for logical narrative sequences involves the retention of the gist or theme in an integrated unified representation of the meaning rather than a series of discrete events. Further, the underlying processes of integration and inference are stable across ages.     

Negative transfer in children's recall of categorized materials

A negative transfer paradigm was used to assess kindergarten, third-, and sixth-grade (approximately 5, 9, and 12 years old) children's use of category relations in lists presented for recall. Negative transfer effects increased with age, with kindergarten children showing no evidence of interference relative to a control group.     

Sex-role aspects in the development of children's vocational knowledge

Recent research suggests important age and sex differences in the sex-typing of children's vocational interests. The present study adds to this area by examining several dimensions of job choices in children of four age groups (early and late preschool, second and fourth grade). The 120 children interviewed were asked three fixed-choice questions regarding nine jobs, along with open-ended job choice items. Analysis of age effects on several predetermined dimensions showed that older children were more selective in personal job choice, especially in regard to jobs attributed to the opposite sex. Avoidance of choices associated with the other sex was stronger in boys, but other sex differences were dependent on mode of inquiry rather than on sex. Girls were less limited than boys in job interests when asked about specific jobs but expressed more restricted choices on open-ended items. Implications of these findings both for further research and educational practices are considered.     

Mediation and production deficiencies in children's judgments of morality

This study investigated the influence of intentions and consequences on moral judgments. Children's and adults' production of inferences about an actor's intentions was assessed separately from their use of intentions as mediators of moral judgments. Two hundred and sixteen kindergarten, fourth grade and adult subjects viewed one of four videotaped episodes in which an actor either intentionally or accidentally produced a positive or negative result. Participants received one of two prompts to produce inferences about the actor's intentions or received no prompt. Each subject rated the actor's intent and the good-ness-badness of the actor. Results supported a mediational deficiency explanation for children's objective moral judgments. Both 6- and 10-year-old children made reliable, adult-like inferences of intentions. However, children's moral evaluations were based primarily on objective consequences while adults' evaluations were based primarily on the intentions of the actor. Young children did have intentionality information available, yet even with prompting this information did not mediate their judgments in an adult-like way; suggesting that there may be a period in development during which the child understands and produces subjective inferences but does not use this information as a basis for moral judgments.     

The role of overt activity in children's sentence production

Nursery schooler's abilityto associate pairs of toys was assessed under four experimental conditions: (1) control, (2) S manipulating the toys, (3) S generating a sentence, and (4) S generating a sentence while manipulating the toys. All three S-involvement conditions produced significantly better recognition performance than the control but contrary to initial predictions, the difference between the sentence-only and sentence-plus-manipulation conditions was not significant. In contrast to previous research, Ss in the sentence-only conditions had little difficulty producing sentences when asked. Of interest was the finding that the quality of sentence production was poorer in the sentence-plus-manipulation condition than in the sentence-only condition. Results are discussed in terms of the possible “conflict” produced when the child is required to engage in more than one overt activity simultaneously.     

Repetition of cues in children's oddity learning and transfer

The hypothesis that repetition of specific cues interferes with oddity learning was directly tested by comparing two groups of preschool (3 to 5 years of age) children, one with repeated cues and the other with new cues on every trial. Repetition of cues retarded oddity learning confirming previous speculation based on error analyses. Performance on postsolution transfer trials with repeated cues was not affected by conditions of acquisition. Significant age effects were found in oddity acquisition, while there was only weak evidence for agerelated performance differences on transfer trials. Transfer performance on trials with repetition of cues was not related to whether or not the children were informed of such repetition. The results were related to theories of oddity acquisition and transfer.