Favourite objects of autistic children

Favourite objects (FOs) of autistic children were compared with the FOs of healthy preschool and school children as well as mentally handicapped children. Three clusters of objects were obtained for normal children (comprising primary transitional objects and their forerunners, secondary transitional objects, and non-cuddly toys). When autistic children and mentally handicapped children were included, a fourth cluster of deviant objects was found. Frequency distributions of the two handicapped groups in the clusters were similar. Similarities between the two handicapped groups were also found within each cluster. The occurrence of secondary transitional objects was rare in the handicapped groups. The characteristics of "autistic" FOs reported in earlier case studies (e.g. being hard, often having an exciting effect, not being used in their adequate functions) were typical only of objects in the fourth cluster.     

Prevalence of transitional objects in young children in Tokyo and New York

This study compared the prevalence of children's transitional object attachment in the two groups of young children in Tokyo and New York. The subjects (mothers of a child who was between two and four years of age) were 50 Caucasian women who resided in New York and 50 Japanese women who resided in Tokyo. Families of all subjects were within middle and upper socioeconomic status. There was a higher prevalence of transitional object attachment in American children (62%) than in Japanese children (38%). Japanese children more often slept in the same bed or same room with mothers than American children. The two groups did not differ regarding the hours of mother's availability. The results lend support to Gaddini and Gaddini's suggestion that children whose mothers are continuously available, especially at night, are not likely to develop attachment to transitional objects. The results from this survey research were discussed in terms of significance of transitional object attachment on child development. ©2003 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Children's use of inanimate transitional objects in coping with hassles.

This study examined children's use of inanimate transitional objects when coping with daily hassles. Mothers of 50 preschoolers rated their children on frequency of hassles, intensity of reaction to daily hassles, coping effectiveness, and frequency of object use. No significant differences were found between those children with an inanimate transitional object and those without such an object. Among those children with an object, a significant object effect on frequency of hassles (p less than .05) and a significant object effect on coping effectiveness were found. A significant age effect was also found, indicating that older children used their inanimate transitional objects more often than younger children. Among those children with an inanimate transitional object, significant positive relationships were found between frequency of hassles, intensity of reaction to hassles, coping effectiveness, and frequency of object use. The results indicated that children who used their thumb as an inanimate transitional object experienced fewer hassles than children who used a soft object. The results also suggested that an increase in the number of hassles experienced was related to more intense reactions to hassles, less effective coping, and an increase in object use. The nature of the object and the developmental issue of separation-individuation are considered as well.     

Object identification in preschool children and adults

We introduce computer-based methodologies for investigating object identification in 3- to 5-year-old children. In two experiments, preschool children and adults indicated when they could identify degraded pictures of common objects as those pictures either gradually improved or degraded in clarity. Clarity transformations were implemented in four ways: blurring, decreasing the picture's physical size, decreasing the pixel signal-to-noise ratio, and cropping. In Experiment 1, all age groups correctly identified objects at a more degraded state when those objects began moderately, as opposed to very, degraded and then clarified. This finding supports the notion that previous perceptual hypotheses interfere with object identification (i.e. the perceptual interference effect). In Experiment 2, children, but not adults, overestimated their ability to recognize objects in a degraded state when the object's identity was given to them beforehand. This suggests that for young children knowledge of the object's true identity cannot be ignored when evaluating their current perceptions. This is the first demonstration of the perceptual interference effect in children. We discuss both methodological and theoretical implications of the findings for research on object perception and theory of mind.     

Goal-directed access to mental objects in working memory: The role of task-specific feature retrieval

In the present study, we examined the hypothesis of task-specific access to mental objects from verbal working memory. It is currently assumed that a mental object is brought into the focus of attention in working memory by a process of object selection, which provides this object for any upcoming mental operation (Oberauer, 2002). We argue that this view must be extended, since the selection of information for processing is always guided by current intentions and task goals. In our experiments, it was required that two kinds of comparison tasks be executed on digits selected from a set of three digits held in working memory. The tasks differed in regard to the object features the comparison was based on. Access to a new mental object (object switch) took consistently longer on the semantic comparison task than on the recognition task. This difference is not attributable to object selection difficulty and cannot be fully accounted for by task difficulty or differences in rehearsal processes. The results support our assumptions that (1) mental objects are selected for a given specific task and, so, are accessed with their specific task-relevant object features; (2) verbal mental objects outside the focus of attention are usually not maintained at a full feature level but are refreshed phonologically by subvocal rehearsal; and (3) if more than phonological information is required, access to mental objects involves feature retrieval processes in addition to object selection.     

自闭症幼儿自主性共同注意的实验研究

为探索和发现自闭症幼儿的自主性共同注意的特征,以6名自闭症幼儿,以及在心理年龄与之匹配的弱智和正常儿童各6名作为研究对象,以实验和准实验的方法,进行此研究。同时还以秒为单位对实验过程与结果进行编码分析。结果表明,自闭症幼儿的自主性视觉方向所及目标物多于人,而人的目标中叉更多地锁定同伴而非教师。自闭症幼儿在唤起他人共同注意时多以“拉”和“抱”来替代指点行为。自主性共同注意的发生率与情绪有密切关系。     

The psychoanalytic assumption of the primary process: extrapsychoanalytic evidence and findings

No evidence for an assumption of a theory can be gained by data derived from methods dependent on that theory. Three experiments, using methods independent of psychoanalysis, test the psychoanalytic posit that primary process exists as a formal mental mode distinct from secondary process. The three experiments, using a nonpsychoanalytic index for primary process, test for a preponderance of primary process organization in three areas in which Freud observed primary process: (1) in unconscious mental states and during implicit tasks; (2) in the mental productions of preschool children; and (3) in anxiety states, as these are typically associated with unconscious conflict. All three experiments show significant results in favor of the primary process. Further, the three experiments taken together, because they account for seemingly disparate data, lend further credence to the original assumption. These positive results suggest that primary process may be more important than even Freud suspected. Perhaps it is the basic mental organization in many nonhuman mammals and some birds. Primary process organization may also underlie aspects of such basic psychological operations as generalizations in conditioning and assessments-in-action, as opposed to judgments proper, about how one would act. Finally, primary process may play a key role in drive activity. Three types of experiments are proposed to test these far-reaching applications of the primary process concept.     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Object-related knowledge and the production of gestures with imagined objects by preschool children

Previous research suggests that the gestural representation of preschool age children has a symbolic quality in the absence of real objects. It has shown a developmental progression from use of concrete body parts to more abstract imaginary-object gestural representations during the preschool years. The present study examined whether object-related knowledge is involved in the production of imaginary-object gestures. 35 children (12 3-, 11 4-, and 12 5-yr.-olds) performed gestural tasks in which they were asked to pretend to use common objects, e.g., "pretend to brush your teeth with a toothbrush." In addition, they were asked to describe the relationship between the performed gesture and object when they were pretending. Analysis indicated that, when an imaginary-object gesture was performed, it was through an evoked prior knowledge of the function and context of the use of objects. This may suggest that object-related knowledge is a key factor involved in developmental changes from body part to imaginary-object gestures and that it is involved in freeing preschool children from object substitution, which is prescribed by perceptual support.     

Transitional object use,attachment, and help‐seeking behaviour in Taiwanese adolescents

Transitional object use is psychologically beneficial for young children, but research has suggested that maintaining transitional object use into middle childhood may be associated with negative behaviour. Little is known about the continuation of transitional object use into adolescence, and few studies have been conducted with non‐Western populations. To examine differences in attachment and attitudes to help seeking in adolescents who did and did not use a transitional object, 723 adolescents from Taiwan (M age = 14 years) were asked about their current and past use of transitional objects. Measures of attachment were obtained using the Revised Adult Attachment Scale, and attitude toward help was measured using the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale. In total, 37% of the sample continued transitional object use in adolescence. Current use of a transitional object differentiated the sample on the measures of attachment and help seeking. Transitional object users were less likely to have secure attachments and less likely to express positive attitudes toward seeking help. Transitional object use is prevalent in Taiwanese adolescents, and we suggest that continued use of a transitional object acts as an indicator of potential withdrawal from support offered in schools.     

Comparison Facilitates Children's Learning of Names for Parts

Learning names for parts of objects can be challenging for children, as it requires overcoming their tendency to name whole objects. We test whether comparing items can facilitate learning names for their parts. Applying the structure-mapping theory of comparison leads to two predictions: (a) young children will find it easier to identify a common part between two very similar items than between two dissimilar items (because the similar pair is easier to align); (b) close alignments potentiate far alignments: children will be better able to extend a novel part name to a dissimilar object after having extended it to a similar object. In three studies, 227 preschool children mapped novel part terms to new animals or objects. Both predictions were confirmed. Children more accurately extended novel part terms to objects that were similar to the standard than to objects that were dissimilar (Experiments 1 and 2), and children more accurately extended novel part names to dissimilar objects after having extended them to similar objects (Experiment 3). We conclude that structure-mapping processes can support part learning.     

How special are objects? Children's reasoning about objects, parts, and holes

Discrete physical objects have a special status in cognitive and linguistic development. Infants track and enumerate objects, young children are biased to construe novel words as referring to objects, and, when asked to count an array of items, preschool children tend to count the discrete objects, even if explicitly asked to do otherwise. We address here the question of whether discrete physical objects are the only entities that have this special status, or whether other individuals are salient as well. In two experiments, we found that 3-year-olds are just as good at identifying, tracking, and counting certain nonobject entities (holes in Experiment 1; holes and parts in Experiment 2) as they are with objects. These results are discussed in light of different theories of the nature and development of children's object bias.     

Young children's ability to solve spatial problems involving a choice

When do young children become able to make an adequate choice between two alternatives based on spatial information? Children of 20, 30, and 40 months of age were either presented with two objects with different cross-sections and one aperture, or one object and two different apertures. In each trial there was one object – aperture match and the task was to find that match and insert the object. All the children understood the task and tried to solve the problems but the 20-month-olds performed randomly and not even the 40-month-olds chose all the correct correspondences consistently. The results also showed that it is easier to choose between apertures than objects. This contrasts with the ability to solve the insertion problem once the choice was made. When choosing the correct object or aperture, the 40-month-olds inserted the triangle successfully in 85% of the cases. The boys and girls were equally good at solving the task, but the boys did it faster. The results show that making a choice adds significantly to the difficulty of solving spatial problems. It requires systematic examination of the objects and apertures involved, a working memory that can handle at least three items at a time, and an ability to inhibit an incorrect choice. Such executive functions are typically found in older preschool children but the present task shows that with an appropriate setup their development can be traced from a much earlier age.     

False recognition of static and dynamic object properties by preschool children

A false recognition task was used to compare preschool children's use of static and dynamic properties of objects in semantic processing. Four, five, and six year old children heard a list of object names, and then were tested for recognition of these words with a recognition test list that included distractor words that were static or dynamic properties of the objects on the first list. False recognition scores of dynamic properties were higher than those for static, for 4 and 5 year old children, with no differences for 6 year old children. The results argue for a functional basis for the encoding of referential terms in memory, and are discussed in terms of two models of semantic development.This research was partially supported by Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Research Service Award HD 07066 and U.S. Public Health Service Grant HD 00870 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Kansas Center for Mental Retardation and Human Development.     

Young children's discovery of spatial classification

Around the age of 18 months, children begin to classify objects spatially by kind, placing objects of the same kind close together in space and placing unlike objects apart. This behavior may be symbolic in the sense that children use spatial proximity to represent similarity. We examined the possibility that spatial classification is discovered during play—that the external products of play lead children to use space to represent similarity. Experiment 1 was a longitudinal study of four children's classification behaviors, observed from the age of 16 to 21 months. Results suggest that play with one kind of object to the exclusion of another kind leads to the discovery of spatial classification. Experiment 2 examined how children's tendencies to interact with one category might promote spatial classification of multiple categories. Twenty-four 18-month-old children who did not yet spatially classify objects by kind participated. Children who were given the experience of playing with two kinds of objects in a context that promoted interaction with only one kind were more likely to demonstrate spontaneous spatial classification of multiple kinds in a subsequent test period. Children who played equally with both kinds did not show heightened spontaneous classification. The results further suggest that comparison of different kinds during play is critical to the spontaneous occurrence of spatial classification.     

Preschoolers' interpretations of gesture: label or action associate?

This study explores a common assumption made in the cognitive development literature that children will treat gestures as labels for objects. Without doubt, researchers in these experiments intend to use gestures symbolically as labels. The present studies examine whether children interpret these gestures as labels. In Study 1 two-, three-, and four-year olds tested in a training paradigm learned gesture–object pairs for both iconic and arbitrary gestures. Iconic gestures became more accurate with age, while arbitrary gestures did not. Study 2 tested the willingness of children aged 40–60 months to fast map novel nouns, iconic gestures and arbitrary gestures to novel objects. Children used fast mapping to choose objects for novel nouns, but treated gesture as an action associate, looking for an object that could perform the action depicted by the gesture. They were successful with iconic gestures but chose objects randomly for arbitrary gestures and did not fast map. Study 3 tested whether this effect was a result of the framing of the request and found that results did not change regardless of whether the request was framed with a deictic phrase (“this one 〈gesture〉”) or an article (“a 〈gesture〉”). Implications for preschool children’s understanding of iconicity, and for their default interpretations of gesture are discussed.     

Attentional processes in young children with congenital visual impairment

The study investigated attentional processes of 32 preschool children with congenital visual impairment (VI). Children with profound visual impairment (PVI) and severe visual impairment (SVI) were compared to a group of typically developing sighted children in their ability to respond to adult directed attention in terms of establishing, maintaining, and shifting attention on toys. The measures of children's sensory‐motor understanding (SMU) and language ability were obtained using the Reynell‐Zinkin scales of mental development. The video‐recordings of these play‐based assessments were coded for three categories of behavioural responses (Establish, Maintain, and Shift). The three groups were matched on verbal comprehension (VC), but differed significantly in their SMU and their chronological age. The groups of children with PVI and SVI were found to be comparable in their ability to establish and maintain attention on objects. Despite a relatively good performance overall both groups scored significantly lower on those skills than children who were sighted. However, with regards to attention shifting, children with PVI showed significantly lower performance than both the children with SVI and the sighted children who were similar on this component. Ability to maintain and shift attention was significantly related to the cognitive ability of children with PVI; however the poorer attentional responses were not confined only to the children with low IQ. The results are discussed in relation to the role of vision, cognitive ability and executive function in attentional processes in children with congenital VI.     

Using the ADI-R to diagnose autism in preschool children

The use of an investigator-based interview (Autism Diagnostic Interview—Revised; ADI-R) in the diagnosis of 51 autistic and 43 nonautistic mentally handicapped preschool children of equivalent mental and chronological age is described. Significant differences occurred between the groups on every diagnostic subdomain from the DSM-IV/ICD-10 draft criteria, except specific aspects of stereotyped language, still relatively rare in these young children. All but one of the 51 children judged to be autistic by clinical observation and only two of the 30 nonautistic mentally handicapped children with mental ages of 18 months or higher met criteria for autism on an algorithm to DSM-IV/ICD-10 draft criteria. However, discrimination using domain totals between autistic and the 13 nonautistic, nonverbal mentally handicapped children with mental ages under 18 months was poor. Quality of social overtures to adults and peers, play, and unusual sensory behaviors and mannerisms continued to differentiate these two groups. The relevance of these findings to the diagnosis of autism in preschool children is discussed.     

Developmental changes in judgments of authentic objects

This study examined the development of an understanding of authenticity among 112 children (preschoolers, kindergarten, 1st graders, and 4th graders) and 119 college students. Participants were presented with pairs of photographs depicting authentic and non-authentic objects and asked to pick which one belongs in a museum and which one they would want to have. Results suggest that both children and adults recognize the special nature of authentic objects by reporting that they belong in a museum. However, this belief broadens with age, at first just for famous associations (preschool), then also for original creations (kindergarten), and finally for personal associations as well (4th grade). At all ages, an object's authentic nature is distinct from its desirability. Thus, from an early age, children appear to understand that the historical path of an authentic object affects its nature. This work demonstrates the importance of non-obvious properties in children's concepts. For preschool as well as older children, history (a non-visible property) adds meaning beyond the material or functional worth of an object.     

大班幼儿数学入学准备研究

研究从数与运算、量、几何空间及关系四个领域对江西省346名大班幼儿的数学入学准备的现状进行测查发现：幼儿在传递性推理、数的守恒概念、递增模式的认知等方面的发展相对较晚,在依据数量和大小进行双重排序、分类、加减运算等方面的发展相对较早;城市幼儿在各维度上的均分都显著高于农村幼儿;公办园幼儿学习结果优于民办园幼儿,小学附设幼儿最差。研究对了解公办与民办、城市与农村幼儿数学入学准备现状,分析幼儿数学学习影响因素,提高幼儿数学教育质量,进一步做好幼儿数学的入学准备具有重要的实现意义。