Children's understanding that ambiguous figures have multiple interpretations

In three experiments we compared 5- and 6-year-old children's understanding of multiple interpretations arising from an ambiguous figure (e.g., the duck/rabbit) and other ambiguous partial input. Children found it equally easy to switch between alternative interpretations of ambiguous figures and partial views (Experiment 1, N = 19) and more difficult to accept two characters' conflicting interpretations of ambiguous figures, than partial views (Experiment 2, N = 29). Children found it more difficult to accept explicitly that one stimulus could simultaneously give rise to two interpretations, than to switch between them (Experiment 3, N = 40). Children's handling of multiple interpretations was not primarily affected by the type of input, but results suggest that there are two distinct stages in children's handling of multiple interpretations.     

Simultaneous perception of both interpretations of ambiguous figures

When viewing ambiguous figures like the classic duck/rabbit, people alternately perceive one interpretation and then the other, but not both interpretations at once. When two identical ambiguous figures appear together, the majority of observers perceive them as identical, and they typically alternate in unison. Just as most observers cannot see a single figure as both a duck and a rabbit, most cannot see one figure in a pair as a duck and the other as a rabbit even though the two figures and their features are spatially distinct. Is this inability to see both interpretations an inherent limitation of the visual system or is it just due to differences in top-down processing? We show that a simple prompt immediately allows people to see both interpretations, to their own surprise.     

Justice‐sensitive interpretations of ambiguous situations

The accessibility of concepts related to justice and injustice is proposed as a basic cognitive mechanism underlying the personality trait of justice sensitivity. To provide evidence for this assertion, the manner in which justice sensitivity shapes the interpretation of an ambiguous situation was investigated. It was found that, without priming, and after injustice is primed, persons high in justice sensitivity tend to perceive greater injustice in an ambiguous situation than persons low in justice sensitivity. If the restoration of justice is primed, however, persons high in justice sensitivity tend to interpret the ambiguous situation as more just when compared to persons low in justice sensitivity. Results are discussed with regard to a process‐oriented explanation of emotional and behavioural effects of justice sensitivity.     

Semantic constraints and judged preference for interpretations of ambiguous sentences

It is proposed that the degree of sensibleness of sentences is determined by semantic constraints which may be more or less satisfied. Such continuous semantic constraints were examined in two experiments in which subjects judged the likelihood of obtaining each of the interpretations of ambiguous sentences. The sentences were factorially generated by independently varying the degree to which semantic constraints for each interpretation were satisfied. In one experiment, the semantic constraints were manipulated by varying critical words within the ambiguous sentence; in the other experiment, a preceding context sentence was used. The results of both experiments supported the hypotheses that the judged likelihood was a direct function of the relative sensibleness of the interpretations, that semantic constraints determined the degree of sensibleness of each interpretation, and that these semantic constraints are continuous restrictions which are independent of each other and stable from sentence to sentence in which they occur.     

Children's social competence, academic competence, and aggressiveness as related to ability to make judgments of fairness.

The relationship of 102 fifth and sixth graders' judgments of fairness with their academic and social competence and aggressiveness was studied. Children were given self-report and peer-nomination inventories measuring academic competence, social competence, and aggressiveness at a single point in time at the public school they attended. These measures were related to children's prediction of fairness on a distributive justice measure. Children who saw themselves as academically and socially competent scored higher on the distributive justice measure. Children whose peers saw them as less academically competent and more aggressive scored lower on the distributive justice measure. Analyses showed an association between children's academic competence, social competence, and aggressiveness scores and their scores on judgments of fairness.     

Children's understanding of ambiguous idioms and conversational perspective-taking

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that conversational perspective-taking is a determinant of unfamiliar ambiguous idiom comprehension. We investigated two types of ambiguous idiom, decomposable and nondecomposable expressions, which differ in the degree to which the literal meanings of the individual words contribute to the overall idiomatic meaning. We designed an experiment to assess the relationship between the acquisition of figurative comprehension and conversational perspective-taking. Our sample of children aged 5-7 years performed three conversational perspective-taking tasks (language acts, shared/unshared information, and conversational maxims). They then listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions presented in context before performing a multiple-choice task (figurative, literal, and contextual responses). Results indicated that decomposable idiom comprehension was predicted by conversational perspective-taking scores and language skills, whereas nondecomposable idiom comprehension was predicted solely by language skills. We discuss our findings with respect to verbal and pragmatic skills.     

Children's uncertainty about the interpretation of ambiguous messages

Three investigations were made into relationships between children's uncertainty about the correctness of their interpretation of an ambiguous message, and their judgment of the quality of that message. In the first two investigations, we compared one condition under which 5-to 6-year-olds made a single interpretation of an ambiguous message, with another condition under which they could make both possible interpretations. It was found that making both interpretations had no effect on children's confidence about the correctness of a particular one of the interpretations. Children who made both interpretations were often confident about the correctness of one of them. In the second investigation, we found that children who were uncertain about the correctness of one particular interpretation, did not necessarily realize that they could not tell which of the two possible interpretations was correct. They did not necessarily recognize the ambiguity in the message. In the third investigation, we identified children who correctly identified messages as ambiguous after they knew that they had made the wrong interpretation, but who were confident of the correctness of their interpretation of ambiguous messages before they knew the outcome. Hence awareness of uncertainty when making an interpretation may not be necessary for the development of understanding ambiguity. The results are discussed in terms of the significance of the child's awareness of uncertainty for development of understanding about message ambiguity.     

Young children's emerging ability to make false statements

This study examined the origins of children's ability to make consciously false statements, a necessary component of lying. Children 2 to 5 years of age were rewarded for claiming that they saw a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions ("Do you win/lose?"), recognition questions ("Do you have a bird/fish?"), and recall questions ("What do you have?"), which were hypothesized to vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions). The youngest children (2? to 3? years old) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was not until age 3? that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were capable of maintaining false claims across question types. Findings have implications for understanding the emergence of deception in young children.     

Children's ability to infer utterance veracity from speaker informedness

Children between the ages of 3 years 7 months and 6 years 5 months experienced a contradiction between what they knew or guessed to be inside a box and what they were told by an adult. The authors investigated whether children believed what they were told by asking them to make a final judgment about the box's content. Children tended to believe utterances from speakers who were better informed than they themselves were and to disbelieve those from less well-informed speakers, with no age-related differences. This behavior implies an understanding of the speaker's knowledge and suggests that children can learn from oral input while being appropriately skeptical of its truth. Children also gave explicit knowledge judgments on trials on which no utterances were given. Performance on knowledge trials was less accurate than, and unrelated to, performance on utterance trials. Research on children's developing explicit theory of mind needs to be broadened to include behavioral indexes of understanding the mind.     

Children's developing ability to depict emotions in their drawings

55 children aged 5 to 9 years were asked to draw pictures depicting happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear as well as pictures that did not express any emotion. These pictures were then scored by nonexpert adults for their overall emotional expressiveness, that is, how well they depicted the intended emotion. The results showed that drawings were generally regarded by adults as emotionally expressive. Happiness was the emotion most easily recognized in children's drawings, closely followed by sadness. The results also showed a linear increase in ratings of emotional expressiveness with age.     

Young Children's ability to Discriminate between Antisocial and Prosocial Teases

The present study was designed to (a) examine 5- to 8-year-old children's ability to discriminate between antisocial and prosocial teases and (b) determine whether their age and experiences within the home are associated with their ability to recognize these two types of teases. Results revealed that the 5- to 8-year-old children were able to discriminate between antisocial and prosocial teases. Although the children's parents or legal guardians indicated that the children had more frequent experience with prosocial than antisocial teases in the home, (a) the children were better able to correctly identify the intent of antisocial teasers than prosocial teasers and (b) the parents or legal guardians (correctly) indicated that their child would be better able to recognize an antisocial tease than a prosocial tease. Despite the finding that the children's comprehension of antisocial teasing tended to exceed their comprehension of prosocial teasing, the findings indicate that being relatively young (i.e., 5–6 years old vs. 7–8 years old) and having relatively frequent experience with antisocial teasing in the home may be associated with some children's difficulty in recognizing the intent behind antisocial teases.     

Children's evaluations of ambiguous provocation by relationally aggressive,physically aggressive and prosocial peers

The present study assessed children's evaluations of hypothetical peer provocation. Participants (N = 75, ages 8–11) were presented with hypothetical vignettes depicting relationally aggressive, physically aggressive and prosocial peers engaging in provocative behaviours directed at the participant, including (a) relational (not receiving a party invitation); (b) physical (having a beverage spilled on him/her); and (c) prosocial (being given stale snack food) provocations. Children rated the hostility of the peer's intentions and explained what they themselves would do if actually confronted with the situation. Children were more hostile in their attributions for the behaviour of relationally and physically aggressive peers as compared with the prosocial peers. Additionally, when children reported that they liked the peer, they were less likely to attribute hostility to that peer's behaviour. Results involving children's responses indicate the importance of considering peer reputation and provocation type when examining children's social problem solving. For example, very few children said that they would seek help from an adult when relationally provoked by an aggressive peer; however, in response to physical provocation from an aggressive peer, seeking the assistance of an adult was a common response.     

Children's ability to distinguish between enjoyment and non‐enjoyment smiles

Children's ability to distinguish between enjoyment and non‐enjoyment smiles was investigated by presenting participants with short video excerpts of smiles. Enjoyment smiles differed from non‐enjoyment smiles by greater symmetry and by appearance changes produced in the eye region by the Cheek Raiser action. The results indicate that 6‐ and 7‐year‐old children have the abilities to detect these differences and are able to interpret them with above chance‐level accuracy. Sensitivity was higher for the symmetry of the smiles than for the appearance changes produced in the eye region and improved in later childhood. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The power of representation and interpretation: Doubling statistical reasoning performance with icons and frequentist interpretations of ambiguous numbers

Abstract

Six highly familiar melodies were submitted to three transformations: reduction and two rhythmic group transformations. These three transformations offered the opportunity to compare the role of various means of melody recognition: melodic contour, harmonic structure, local surface cues. If melody recognition relies on melodic contour, an original melody would be easier to recognise after rhythmic group transformation than after reduction; the rhythmic group transformation, but not the reduction, preserves the melodic contour. If melody recognition depends on the harmonic structure, an original melody would be easier to recognise after reduction than after a rhythmic group transformation; the reduction, but not the rhythmic group transformation, respects the underlying harmonic structure. The results of two experiments, one with children and one with adults, showed that recognition was better for rhythmic group transformation but only when local surface cues were preserved, a result that could neither be predicted by the melodic contour hypothesis nor by the harmonic structure hypothesis. The results give support to the cue abstraction hypothesis, which suggests that melody recognition relies on the recognition of certain surface cues abstracted while hearing and which are then memorised. Recognition performances and speed of recognition served as dependent variables.