Developing a plan for solving a problem: A representational shift

Research analyzing transitions from lower to higher levels of problem solving has focused either on quantitative increments in processing demands (Case, 1984; Klahr & Robinson, 1981) or on qualitative shifts in the organization of representations (Fischer & Pipp, 1984; Piaget, 1976). This study is concerned with distinguishing the value of these two approaches to problem solving through a microgenetic analysis of children's initial attempts to solve the Tower of Hanoi problem. As suggested by Siegler and Crowley (1991), a microgenetic approach is particularly useful in determining the process of cognitive change. One-hundred and thirty-six children, ages 6 through 8 years, were presented with the standard three-disc problem and allowed 3 minutes to complete it. The quality of the children's performance was analyzed by noting the positioning of the first move, the number and location of illegal moves, and the frequency and location of optimal moves. The results indicate that qualitative shifts in children's representation of the problem space are a crucial aspect of successful performance.     

Constructing a New Theory From Old Ideas and New Evidence

A central tenet of constructivist models of conceptual development is that children's initial conceptual level constrains how they make sense of new evidence and thus whether exposure to evidence will prompt conceptual change. Yet little experimental evidence directly examines this claim for the case of sustained, fundamental conceptual achievements. The present study combined scaling and experimental microgenetic methods to examine the processes underlying conceptual change in the context of an important conceptual achievement of early childhood—the development of a representational theory of mind. Results from 47 children (M age = 3.7 years) indicate that only children who were conceptually close to understanding false belief at the beginning of the study, and who were experimentally exposed to evidence of people acting on false beliefs, reliably developed representational theories of minds. Combined scaling and microgenetic data revealed how prior conceptual level interacts with experience, thereby providing critical experimental evidence for how conceptual change results from the interplay between conceptions and evidence.     

The influence of context‐specific and dispositional achievement goals on children's paired collaborative interaction

Background . Research has demonstrated that working collaboratively can have positive effects on children's learning. While key factors have been identified which influence the quality of these interactions, little research has addressed the influence of children's achievement goals on collaborative behaviour. Aims . This paper investigates the influence of mastery and performance goals on the nature of children's collaborative participation while playing a problem‐solving computer game with a peer. Sample . Forty‐eight primary schoolchildren aged 8–10 years were divided into two groups: those displaying strong personal goal preferences (dispositional group: N = 14) and those whose goal preferences were context‐dependent, displaying no consistent bias for either mastery or performance goals (context‐dependent: N = 34). Children were paired on the basis of same gender, year group, and goal orientation. Method . Context‐dependent pairs were assigned to either a mastery or a performance condition in which they received goal‐focused instructions. Dispositional pairs received only the instructions to collaborate given to all groups. Collaborative sessions were videotaped and interactions coded. Results . Children who were assigned mastery goals engaged in significantly more elaborated problem‐solving discussion whilst children who were assigned performance goals engaged in more executive help seeking and displayed lower levels of metacognitive control. Dispositional pairs shared some similar patterns, according to goal orientation, as context‐dependent pairs. Conclusions . Goal‐focused instructions can be used to influence the nature and quality of children's paired interactions. Instructing children towards mastery goals appears to promote a more collaborative style of interaction.     

Older children's misunderstanding of uncertain belief after passing the false belief test

A four-location belief task was designed to examine children's understanding of another's uncertain belief after passing a false belief (FB) task. In Experiment 1, after passing the FB task, participants were asked what a puppet would do after he failed to find his toy at the falsely believed location. Most 4-year-olds and half of 6-year-olds children who passed the FB test showed difficulty in handling uncertain belief; answering that the puppet would then look for his toy at the current (moved-to) location. Eight-year-old children and adults all recognized that the puppet would look for the toy everywhere, or at random. In Experiment 2, 4- and 6-year-olds were presented two other search tasks; it was shown that preschoolers could use search strategies to solve a similar search problem when FB was not involved. This new aspect of post-FB understanding can be interpreted in terms of limited understanding of uncertainty in a less-knowledgeable individual and of limited ability to infer the consequences of belief-disconfirmation.     

Improving the quality of parental interaction with very low birth weight children: A longitudinal study using a Mediated Learning Experience model

Cognitive performance of 3-year-old, very low birth weight children (N = 42) was found to be more significantly related to the quality of parent-child interaction than to early measures of cognitive performance or measures of developmental risk such as birth weight and APGAR. The subjects were randomly divided into an intervention and a control group. The intervention group was visited at home, infrequently, by a mediator who identified basic criteria of quality of parent-child interaction and provided the parents with feedback on the quality of interaction with their own children. The intervention procedure continued for 7 months. The extent of a family's participation in the intervention varied depending upon the initial quality of parent-child interaction and the amount of time it took a family to reach criteria. Quality of parent-child interaction and children's cognitive performance were pretested and reassessed 3 years after the intervention. The sample was reduced to 29 due to attrition over time. Parental behavior following the intervention had changed significantly with respect to all criteria. Parents who had received intervention, as compared to the control group parents, provided their children with more behaviors related to focusing attention, exciting and rewarding, expanding children's understanding of the world around them, preplanning and regulating behavior. Three years after the relatively unintensive intervention, parents continued to show significant gains in quality of mediation. Differences were found between parents of Small for Gestational Age (SGA) and Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA) children in favor of the SGA group. In children's cognitive performance, scores of the intervention group on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were significantly higher than those of the control group. On other cognitive measures, a consistent trend in favor of the intervention group was noted. More children in the control as compared to the experimental group were rated by their parents as having difficulties with language, fine motor, and sociability skills 3 years after the intervention.     

Adult Detection of Children's Selfish and Polite Lies: Experience Matters

Five groups of participants (N = 150) with differing amounts of experience working with children were assessed on their ability to detect children's lying or truth telling. Children's lies were told for antisocial reasons (i.e., self‐serving lies) and for prosocial reasons (i.e., to benefit others). Overall, adults were more accurate at identifying children's dishonest statements than their true statements, and children's antisocial lies were detected more accurately than were their prosocial lies. While adults without experience were poor at detecting child lie tellers and truth tellers, adults with extensive child experience were better at distinguishing children's lies and truths.     

Challenging gender stereotypes: Theory of mind and peer group dynamics

To investigate the social cognitive skills related to challenging gender stereotypes, children (N = 61, 3–6 years) evaluated a peer who challenged gender stereotypic norms held by the peer's group. Participants with false belief theory of mind (FB ToM) competence were more likely than participants who did not have FB ToM to expect a peer to challenge the group's stereotypes and propose that the group engage in a non‐stereotypic activity. Further, participants with FB ToM rated challenging the peer group more positively. Participants without FB ToM did not differentiate between their own and the group's evaluation of challenges to the group's stereotypic norms, but those with ToM competence asserted that they would be more supportive of challenging the group norm than would the peer group. Results reveal the importance of social‐cognitive competencies for recognizing the legitimacy of challenging stereotypes, and for understanding one's own and other group perspectives.     

Individual Differences in Children's Understanding of Guilt: Links with Theory of Mind

The author examined the relation between individual differences in children's understanding of guilt and theory of mind (ToM) ability. Two hundred and eighteen 8- to 10-year-old children were asked to define what guilt is and report a personal experience in which they felt this emotion. ToM was assessed with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Children's version; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) and with the Strange Stories test (Happè, 1994). There were marked differences in children's understanding of guilt even after controlling for age. Moreover, high levels of understanding of guilt were associated with high levels of performance on both ToM tests. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Mothers', fathers' and children's perceptions of parents' expectations about children's family obligations in nine countries

Children's family obligations involve assistance and respect that children are expected to provide to immediate and extended family members and reflect beliefs related to family life that may differ across cultural groups. Mothers, fathers and children (N = 1432 families) in 13 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and United States) reported on their expectations regarding children's family obligations and parenting attitudes and behaviours. Within families, mothers and fathers had more concordant expectations regarding children's family obligations than did parents and children. Parenting behaviours that were warmer, less neglectful and more controlling as well as parenting attitudes that were more authoritarian were related to higher expectations regarding children's family obligations between families within cultures as well as between cultures. These international findings advance understanding of children's family obligations by contextualising them both within families and across a number of diverse cultural groups in 9 countries.     

How do generic statements impact performance? Evidence for entity beliefs

Generic statements about the abilities of children's social groups (e.g. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) negatively impact children's performance – even if the statements are favorable towards children's own social groups. We explored the mechanism by which generic language impairs children's performance. Across three studies, our findings suggest that generic statements influence children's performance by creating an entity belief (i.e. a belief that a fixed ability determines performance). Children who were exposed to a generic statement about their social group's ability performed worse than children in control conditions. This effect hurt children's performance even when the person who made the generic statement was no longer present and a new person not privy to the statement replaced them. However, when children heard a generic statement paired with an effort explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they try really hard when they draw’) they performed better than children who heard the generic statement with no explanation (i.e. just ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) and children who heard the generic statement paired with a trait explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they are smart and really good at drawing’). This work uncovers when and how generic statements that refer to the ability of one's social group hinder performance, informing the development of practices to improve student motivation and learning.     

The role of situational goals and audience on self‐reported emotion experience and expression: Dutch and South Korean children compared

Previous research demonstrates that cultural concerns affect emotional lives. However, the question remains to what extent salient cultural concerns influence emotion experience and expression. In the present study, the role of (i) individualistic versus collectivistic goals and (ii) presence of an authority figure (father) versus an equal status figure (peer), were systematically investigated in 24 Dutch and 23 South Korean children's (a) negative emotion experience and (b) emotion expression and motives using hypothetical conflict situations. The results reveal that for children from both cultures emotion experience did not vary between situational goals and the audience present, however their emotion expression did. More specifically, cultural differences in how negative emotions would be expressed appeared in ‘father’ situations and not in ‘peer’ situations. Cultural differences in children's motives for emotion expression were revealed in situations with a collectivistic goal and not when an individualistic goal was presented. Moreover, within group analyses indicate that Dutch children's emotion expressions were more context‐sensitive than those of South Korean children. These results indicate that some situational features corresponding to cultural concerns partly explained cultural differences, whereas other features did not, helping to improve our understanding about variation in the emotional lives of different cultural groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are belief‐based justifications associated with metalinguistic awareness? A cross‐sectional study in school‐age children

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that false‐belief (FB) understanding correlates with and predicts metalinguistic ability in preschoolers. Surprisingly, however, there is scant evidence on the question of whether this relation persists at later ages. The present cross‐sectional study sought to fill this gap by examining the association between FB understanding, belief‐based justifications and metalinguistic awareness. A sample of 150 children primary‐school children between 8 and 11 years of age were administered a test of receptive language, a second‐order theory‐of‐mind task and a comprehensive metalinguistic battery. The results of correlational and regression analyses showed that explicit metalinguistic awareness (in particular, performance in the Ambiguity and Phonemic Segmentation subtests) was significantly predicted by children's belief‐based responses to the justification question in the theory of mind task but only for children with small receptive vocabularies; in contrast, FB understanding made no independent contribution (either alone or in interaction with other measures). These findings complement and advance existing data by showing that, in school‐age children, the association between the 2 domains involves more mature, verbally explicit levels of FB understanding and metalinguistic awareness.

Highlights

• We examined the relation between metalinguistic awareness and theory‐of‐mind in primary‐school children.
• Metalinguistic awareness was associated to belief‐based justifications, but only for children with small vocabulary.
• In school‐age children the ability to provide verbal justifications plays a key role in the relation between theory‐of‐mind and metalinguistic awareness.

     

From fancy to reason: Scaling deaf and hearing children's understanding of theory of mind and pretence

We examined deaf and hearing children's progression of steps in theory of mind (ToM) development including their understanding of social pretending. Ninety‐three children (33 deaf; 60 hearing) aged 3–13 years were tested on a set of six closely matched ToM tasks. Results showed that deaf children were delayed substantially behind hearing children in understanding pretending, false belief (FB) and other ToM concepts, in line with their delayed uptake of social pretend (SP) play. By using a scaling methodology, we confirmed previous evidence of a consistent five‐step developmental progression for both groups. Moreover, by including social pretence understanding, both deaf and hearing children's ToM sequences were shown to extend reliably to six sequential developmental steps. Finally and focally, even though both groups' sequences were six steps long, the placement of pretence relative to other ToM milestones varied with hearing status. Deaf children understood social pretending at an earlier step in the ToM sequence than hearing children, albeit at a later chronological age. Theoretically, the findings are relevant to questions about how universal developmental progressions come together along with culturally distinctive inputs and biological factors (such as hearing loss) to set the pace for ToM development.     

Naming Facilitates Young Children's Understanding of Scale Models: Language and the Development of Symbolic Understanding

Two studies examined language and understanding of scale models. First, children (N = 16; ages 2;4 to 3;5) received either the standard DeLoache model task or a naming version (in which children are asked to name the hiding location before retrieving a hidden object). Language ability positively correlated with performance on the model task, and children had significantly more errorless retrievals in the naming condition. Study 2 examined naming and transfer effects by giving children (N = 18; ages 2;5–3;1) both versions of the model task. Language ability correlated significantly only with performance in the naming condition. Both prior experience and naming condition significantly improved performance, with the effects being additive. Language and children's development of symbolic understanding are discussed.     

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.     

A lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution in young children: Relationships with linguistic ability and mothers' mental‐state language

This study examines the contribution of children's linguistic ability and mothers' use of mental‐state language to young children's understanding of false belief and their subsequent ability to make belief‐based emotion attributions. In Experiment 1, children (N = 51) were given three belief‐based emotion‐attribution tasks. A standard task in which the protagonist was a story character and the emotional outcomes were imagined, and two videos in which the story protagonist was a real infant and the emotional outcomes were observable (high and low expressed emotion conditions). Children's verbal ability (semantic competence) was also measured. In Experiment 2, children (N = 75) were given two belief‐based emotion tasks: the standard story task and the high expressed emotion video. In addition, children's verbal ability (syntactic competence) and mothers' use of mental‐state attributes when describing their children were also measured. The results showed that: (1) the lag between understanding false belief and emotion attribution was a stable feature of children's reasoning across the three tests; and (2) children who were more linguistically advanced and whose mothers' described them in more mentalistic terms were more likely to understand the association between false belief and emotion. The findings underline the continuing importance of verbal ability and linguistic input for children's developing theory‐of‐mind understanding, even after they display an understanding of false belief.     

Naturalistic Experience and the Early Use of Symbolic Artifacts

Experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been proposed as a mechanism underlying symbolic development. In this study, the parents of 120 2-year-old children who participated in symbolic object retrieval tasks completed a questionnaire regarding their children's naturalistic experience with symbolic artifacts and activities. In separate regressions predicting children's use of video and pictures for information in experimental tasks, predictor variables such as children's exposure to live video and their emerging understanding of graphic representation were significant, even after accounting for the effects of children's vocabulary and birth order and parents' education and occupation. The results support the role of experience in children's early detection of symbolic relations.     

In‐group bias in children's intention to help can be overpowered by inducing empathy

An experimental vignette study was conducted among children (8–13 years) to examine whether inducing empathic understanding is an effective intervention to overpower peer group boundaries in children's helping. Children were induced or not induced to empathize with the recipient of help, who was or was not part of their (imagined) group of friends. Results showed that children intended to help in‐group peers more compared to outgroup peers when empathic understanding was not induced. However, when empathy was induced, they intended to help friends and non‐friends equally. Inducing empathic understanding was effective independent of the recipient's level of need, and children's advanced social perspective‐taking ability. Encouraging children to imagine how a recipient of help feels might thus be a useful strategy to prevent peer group‐based biases in children's helping behaviour.     

Do social norms,false belief understanding,and metacognitive vocabulary influence irony comprehension? A study of five- and seven-year-old children

This study explores the effects of violating socially shared versus situationally defined norms on the understanding of ironic statements in 70 Italian-speaking five- and seven-year-old children. We also considered the possible relationships between irony understanding, receptive and metacognitive vocabulary, and false belief understanding. The results showed that violating socially shared norms does not benefit younger children's understanding of irony, although it does help older children's understanding. Ironic utterances that violate situationally defined norms were understood similarly across the two age groups. First- and second-order false belief understanding did not predict children's ability to interpret irony, although metacognitive vocabulary did predict interpretation for the seven-year-old group in instances of violating a situationally defined norm.     

The role of maltreatment experience in children's understanding of the antecedents of emotion

The ability to understand the causes and likely triggers of emotions has important consequences for children's adaptation to their social environment. Yet, little is currently known about the processes that contribute to the development of emotion understanding. To assess how well children understood the antecedents of emotional reactions in others, we presented children with a variety of emotional situations that varied in outcome and equivocality. Children were told the emotional outcome and asked to rate whether a situation was a likely cause of such an outcome. We tested the effects of maltreatment experience on children's ability to map emotions to their eliciting events and their understanding of emotion–situation pairings. The present data suggest that typically developing children are able to distinguish between common elicitors of negative and positive events. In contrast, children who develop within maltreating contexts, where emotions are extreme and inconsistent, interpret positive, equivocal, and negative events as being equally plausible causes of sadness and anger. This difference in maltreated children's reasoning about emotions suggests a critical role of experience in aiding children's mastery of the structure of interpersonal discourse.