Conforming to coordinate: Children use majority information for peer coordination

Humans are constantly required to coordinate their behaviour with others. As this often relies on everyone's convergence on the same strategy (e.g., driving on the left side of the road), a common solution is to conform to majority behaviour. In this study, we presented 5‐year‐old children with a coordination problem: To retrieve some rewards, they had to choose the same of four options as a peer partner – in reality a stooge – whose decision they were unable to see. Before making a choice, they watched a video showing how other children from their partner's peer group had behaved; a majority chose the same option and a minority chose a different one. In a control condition, children watched the same video but could then retrieve the reward irrespective of their partner's choice (i.e., no coordination was necessary). Children followed the majority more often when coordination was required. Moreover, conformers mostly justified their choices by referring to the majority from the video demonstration. This study is the first to show that young children are able to strategically coordinate decisions with peers by conforming to the majority.     

Children on the autism spectrum update their behaviour in response to a volatile environment

Typical adults can track reward probabilities across trials to estimate the volatility of the environment and use this information to modify their learning rate (Behrens et al., 2007). In a stable environment, it is advantageous to take account of outcomes over many trials, whereas in a volatile environment, recent experience should be more strongly weighted than distant experience. Recent predictive coding accounts of autism propose that autistic individuals will demonstrate atypical updating of their behaviour in response to the statistics of the reward environment. To rigorously test this hypothesis, we administered a developmentally appropriate version of Behrens et al.'s (2007) task to 34 cognitively able children on the autism spectrum aged between 6 and 14 years, 32 age‐ and ability‐matched typically developing children and 19 typical adults. Participants were required to choose between a green and a blue pirate chest, each associated with a randomly determined reward value between 0 and 100 points, with a combined total of 100 points. On each trial, the reward was given for one stimulus only. In the stable condition, the ratio of the blue or green response being rewarded was fixed at 75:25. In the volatile condition, the ratio alternated between 80:20 and 20:80 every 20 trials. We estimated the learning rate for each participant by fitting a delta rule model and compared this rate across conditions and groups. All groups increased their learning rate in the volatile condition compared to the stable condition. Unexpectedly, there was no effect of group and no interaction between group and condition. Thus, autistic children used information about the statistics of the reward environment to guide their decisions to a similar extent as typically developing children and adults. These results help constrain predictive coding accounts of autism by demonstrating that autism is not characterized by uniform differences in the weighting of prediction error.     

Learning through observing: Effects of modeling truth‐ and lie‐telling on children’s honesty

The current study examined the influence of observing another's lie‐ or truth‐telling – and its consequences – on children's own honesty about a transgression. Children (N = 224, 5–8 years of age) observed an experimenter (E) tell the truth or lie about a minor transgression in one of five conditions: (a) Truth‐Positive Outcome – E told the truth with a positive outcome; (b) Truth‐Negative Outcome – E told the truth with a negative outcome; (c) Lie‐Positive Outcome – E lied with a positive outcome; (d) Lie‐Negative Outcome – E lied with a negative outcome; (e) Control – E did not tell a lie or tell the truth. Later, to examine children's truth‐ or lie‐telling behavior, children participated in a temptation resistance paradigm where they were told not to peek at a trivia question answer. They either peeked or not, and subsequently lied or told the truth about that behavior. Additionally, children were asked to give moral evaluations of different truth‐ and lie‐telling vignettes. Overall, 85% of children lied. Children were less likely to lie about their own transgression in the TRP when they had previously witnessed the experimenter tell the truth with a positive outcome or tell a lie with a negative outcome.     

Why do alternative ways of responding improve children's performance on tests of strategic reasoning?

Changing the way in which children respond significantly improves performance across a variety of cognitive domains. However, the basis for this response‐mode effect is unknown. To address this issue, the current study tested 78 preschool children on a measure of executive functioning (the windows task: Hala & Russell, 2001 ). The task requires children to point to an empty box to receive a box with a treat in it. There were four versions of the task, differing only in the way in which children made their responses. Children in the baseline condition, who pointed with their finger, performed poorly. However, children in three alternative response‐mode conditions won the treat significantly more often. Strikingly, even children who pretended to be pointing with an arrow – but were in reality pointing with their finger – performed significantly better than baseline. We suggest that non‐standard response modes encourage children to reflect on their actions and that this reduces the number of unreflective errors they make. The findings demonstrate that response‐mode effects do not depend on the presence of a physical means of responding (such as an arrow), but can be achieved via a purely cognitive means (such as engaging in pretence).     

Linguistic Mediation of Children's Performance in a New Symbolic Understanding Task

The effects of language on symbolic functioning were examined using the boxes task, a new symbolic understanding task based on DeLoache's model task. Children (N = 32; ages 2;4–3;8) observed an object being hidden in a stack of four boxes and were then asked to retrieve a similar object in the same location from a set of four target boxes. Each box was identified with a different object sitting on a small ledge in front of it. Language use was manipulated by providing linguistic scaffolding (naming vs. standard) and by using objects to identify the boxes whose names were either known or unknown to the children (familiar vs. language control). Home language environment (monolingual vs. bilingual) and verbal age (measured via the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition) were also examined. Main effects were found for type of object (with familiar objects yielding better performance), home linguistic environment (with bilingualism resulting in better performance), and verbal age. There was also a verbal age × linguistic scaffolds interaction: Verbal age was related to correct retrievals only in the naming condition. These results provide further evidence that language mediates children's symbolic development and indicate that the new boxes task is an effective way of evaluating young children's symbolic competencies.     

The development of ordinal numerical competence in young children

Two experiments assessed ordinal numerical knowledge in 2- and 3-year-old children and investigated the relationship between ordinal and verbal numerical knowledge. Children were trained on a 1 vs 2 comparison and then tested with novel numerosities. Stimuli consisted of two trays, each containing a different number of boxes. In Experiment 1, box size was held constant. In Experiment 2, box size was varied such that cumulative surface area was unrelated to number. Results show children as young as 2 years of age make purely numerical discriminations and represent ordinal relations between numerosities as large as 6. Children who lacked any verbal numerical knowledge could not make ordinal judgments. However, once children possessed minimal verbal numerical competence, further knowledge was entirely unrelated to ordinal competence. Number may become a salient dimension as children begin to learn to count. An analog magnitude representation of number may underlie success on the ordinal task.     

Daily Time-Place Learning in Young Children

Abstract

Pre-school children find it difficult to correctly report if it is morning or afternoon. The present study tested whether children could learn a non-verbal Time-Place Learning (TPL) task that depended on time of day. Twenty-five 4-year-olds were repeatedly asked to find a toy in one of two boxes. Children in the Cued condition were told the toy was in one box in the morning and in another box in the afternoon. Children in the Not Cued condition were told the toy was sometimes in one box and sometimes in the other box. After 80 trials, children were asked if it was morning or afternoon. About 65% of the children learned the TPL task, and about three-quarters of the children verbally identified if it was morning or afternoon. However, the children who learned the TPL task were not necessarily the children who correctly answered whether it was morning or afternoon, and those in the Cued condition were no more likely to solve the task than those in the Not Cued condition. The implication is that children have a sense of time that can be used to solve spatio-temporal contingencies, but does not depend on the verbal understanding of time of day.     

Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit‐based tasks when they learn to count

Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to their merit (merit‐based distributions). Here, we propose that the acquisition of numerical concepts influences how we reason about fairness. We explore this possibility in the Tsimane’, a farming‐foraging group who live in the Bolivian rainforest. The Tsimane’ learn to count in the same way children from industrialized countries do, but at a delayed and more variable timeline, allowing us to de‐confound number knowledge from age and years in school. We find that Tsimane’ children who can count produce merit‐based distributions, while children who cannot count produce both merit‐based and egalitarian distributions. Our findings establish that the ability to count – a non‐universal, language‐dependent, cultural invention – can influence social cognition.     

What would Batman do? Self‐distancing improves executive function in young children

This experimental research assessed the influence of graded levels of self‐distancing – psychological distancing from one's egocentric perspective – on executive function (EF) in young children. Three‐ (n = 48) and 5‐year‐old (n = 48) children were randomly assigned to one of four manipulations of distance from the self (from proximal to distal: self‐immersed, control, third person, and exemplar) on a comprehensive measure of EF. Performance increased as a function of self‐distancing across age groups. Follow‐up analyses indicated that 5‐year‐olds were driving this effect. They showed significant improvements in EF with increased distance from the self, outperforming controls both when taking a third person perspective on the self and when taking the perspective of an exemplar other (e.g., Batman) through role play. Three‐year‐olds, however, did not show increased EF performance as a function of greater distance from the self. Preliminary results suggest that developments in theory of mind might contribute to these age‐related differences in efficacy. These findings speak to the importance of psychological distancing in the expression of conscious control over thought and action from a young age and suggest a promising new avenue for early EF intervention.     

Heterogeneity impairs numerical matching but not numerical ordering in preschool children

Do preschool children appreciate numerical value as an abstract property of a set of objects? We tested the influence of stimulus features such as size, shape, and color on preschool children's developing nonverbal numerical abilities. Children between 3 and 5 years of age were tested on their ability to estimate number when the sizes, shapes, and colors of the elements in an array were varied (heterogeneous condition) versus when they did not vary (homogeneous condition). One group of children was tested on an ordinal task in which the goal was to select the smaller of two arrays while another group of children was tested on a match‐to‐sample task in which the goal was to choose one of two visual arrays that matched the sample in number. Children performed above chance on both homogeneous and heterogeneous stimuli in both tasks. However, while children showed no impairment on heterogeneous relative to homogeneous arrays in the ordering task, performance was impaired by heterogeneity in the matching task. We suggest that nonverbal numerical abstraction occurs early in development, but specific task objectives may prevent children from engaging in numerical abstraction.     

Thinking about multiple identities boosts children’s flexible thinking

Studies of children's developing social identification often focus on individual forms of identity. Yet, everyone has multiple potential identities. Here we investigated whether making children aware of their multifaceted identities—effectively seeing themselves from multiple angles—would promote their flexible thinking. In Experiment 1, 6‐ to 7‐year‐old children (N = 48) were assigned to either a Multiple‐Identities condition where they were led to consider their multiple identities (e.g. friend, neighbor) or to a Physical‐Traits condition where they considered their multiple physical attributes (e.g. legs, arms). Children in the Multiple‐Identity condition subsequently expressed greater flexibility at problem‐solving and categorization than children in the Physical‐Traits condition. Experiment 2 (N = 72) replicated these findings with a new sample of 6‐ to 7‐year‐old children and demonstrated that a Multiple‐Identity mindset must be self‐relevant. Children who were led to think about another child's multiple identities did not express as much subsequent creative thinking as did children who thought about their own multiple identities. Experiment 3 (N = 76) showed that a Mmultiple‐Identity framework may be particularly effective when the identities are presented via generic language suggesting that they are enduring traits (in this case, identities depicted as noun phrases rather than verbal phrases). These findings illustrate that something as simple as thinking about one's identity from multiple angles could serve as a tool to help reduce rigid thinking, which might increase open‐mindedness in a society that is becoming increasingly diverse.     

Investigating the influence of an effort–reward interaction on cognitive fatigue in individuals with multiple sclerosis

This study examined whether an alteration in the effort–reward relationship, a theoretical framework based on cognitive neuroscience, could explain cognitive fatigue. Forty persons with MS and 40 healthy age- and education-matched cognitively healthy controls (HC) participated in a computerized switching task with orthogonal high- and low-demand (effort) and reward manipulations. We used the Visual Analog Scale of Fatigue (VAS-F) to assess subjective state fatigue before and after each condition during the task. We used mixed-effects models to estimate the association and interaction between effort and reward and their relationship to subjective fatigue and task performance. We found the high-demand condition was associated with increased VAS-F scores (p < .001), longer response times (RT) (p < .001) and lower accuracy (p < .001). The high-reward condition was associated with faster RT (p = .006) and higher accuracy (p = .03). There was no interaction effect between effort and reward on VAS-F scores or performance. Participants with MS reported higher VAS-F scores (p = .02). Across all conditions, participants with MS were slower (p < .001) and slower as a function of condition demand compared with HC (p < .001). This behavioural study did not find evidence that an effort–reward interaction is associated with cognitive fatigue. However, our findings support the role of effort in subjective cognitive fatigue and both effort and reward on task performance. In future studies, more salient reward manipulations could be necessary to identify effort–reward interactions on subjective cognitive fatigue.     

Should all stationary objects move when hit? Developments in infants’ causal and statistical expectations about collision events

Four experiments examined 8- and 9-month-old infants’ expectations about collision events. The infants saw test events in which a small cylinder rolled down a ramp and hit one of several different boxes. These boxes varied in width and height and always remained stationary when hit. The results revealed two separate developments. The first involved infants’ knowledge of the variables relevant to collision events. At 8 months, the infants expected all of the boxes to move when hit, regardless of their sizes; at 9 months, the infants began to take into account the size of the boxes to predict whether they should move when hit. The second development concerned infants’ ability to generate explanations for outcomes that violated their collision knowledge. At both ages, upon observing that a box with a salient vertical dimension did not move when hit, the infants apparently concluded that the box must be one of those objects we term pillars—vertical objects that are attached at one or both ends to adjacent surfaces. At 8 months, the infants considered any vertical box as a potential pillar; at 9 months, the infants considered only boxes that were both vertical and narrow as potential pillars. The development of infants’ knowledge about collision events is thus one that is complex and protracted and weaves together many separate developments.     

Number gestures predict learning of number words

When asked to explain their solutions to a problem, children often gesture and, at times, these gestures convey information that is different from the information conveyed in speech. Children who produce these gesture‐speech “mismatches” on a particular task have been found to profit from instruction on that task. We have recently found that some children produce gesture‐speech mismatches when identifying numbers at the cusp of their knowledge, for example, a child incorrectly labels a set of two objects with the word “three” and simultaneously holds up two fingers. These mismatches differ from previously studied mismatches (where the information conveyed in gesture has the potential to be integrated with the information conveyed in speech) in that the gestured response contradicts the spoken response. Here, we ask whether these contradictory number mismatches predict which learners will profit from number‐word instruction. We used the Give‐a‐Number task to measure number knowledge in 47 children (M_age = 4.1 years, SD = 0.58), and used the What's on this Card task to assess whether children produced gesture‐speech mismatches above their knower level. Children who were early in their number learning trajectories (“one‐knowers” and “two‐knowers”) were then randomly assigned, within knower level, to one of two training conditions: a Counting condition in which children practiced counting objects; or an Enriched Number Talk condition containing counting, labeling set sizes, spatial alignment of neighboring sets, and comparison of these sets. Controlling for counting ability, we found that children were more likely to learn the meaning of new number words in the Enriched Number Talk condition than in the Counting condition, but only if they had produced gesture‐speech mismatches at pretest. The findings suggest that numerical gesture‐speech mismatches are a reliable signal that a child is ready to profit from rich number instruction and provide evidence, for the first time, that cardinal number gestures have a role to play in number‐learning.     

Under what conditions do young children have difficulty inhibiting manual actions?

Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behavior. The authors investigated the conditions under which manual actions became prepotent in a go/no-go task. Children had to open boxes that contained stickers on go trials and leave shut boxes that were empty on no-go trials. In Experiment 1 (n = 40, mean age = 3.6 years), the authors obtained evidence consistent with this task requiring inhibitory control. Results of Experiment 2 (n = 40, mean age = 3.7 years) suggested that box opening was prepotent because (a) opening is the habitual action associated with boxes and (b) children planned to open boxes on go trials of the task. Experiment 3 (n = 96, mean age = 3.5 years) showed that even empty boxes elicited the same errors and that delaying responding reduced errors even though the delay occurred before the cue that indicated the correct response (contrary to a rule reflection account). Because the delay occurred after box presentation, performance was consistent with a transient activation account. Delay training might benefit children with weak inhibition.     

Hot executive function following moderate‐to‐late preterm birth: altered delay discounting at 4 years of age

Interest in monitoring long‐term neurodevelopmental outcomes of children born moderate‐to‐late preterm (32–36 weeks gestation) is increasing. Moderate‐to‐late preterm birth has a negative impact on academic achievement, which may relate to differential development of executive function (EF). Prior studies reporting deficits in EF in preterm children have almost exclusively assessed EF in affectively neutral contexts in high‐risk preterm children (< 32 weeks gestation). Disrupted function in motivational or emotionally charged contexts (hot EF) following preterm birth remains uninvestigated, despite evidence that preterm children show differential development of neural circuitry subserving hot EF, including reduced orbitofrontal cortex volume. The present study is the first to examine whether low‐risk, healthy children born moderate‐to‐late preterm exhibit impairments in the development of hot EF. Preterm children at age 4.5 years were less likely to choose larger, delayed rewards across all levels of reward magnitude on a delay discounting task using tangible rewards, but performed more similarly to their full‐term peers on a delay aversion task involving abstract rewards and on measures of cool EF. The relationship between gestational age at birth and selection of delayed rewards extended across the entire gestational age range of the sample (32–42 weeks), and remained significant after controlling for intelligence and processing speed. Results imply that there is not a finite cut‐off point at which children are spared from potential long‐term neurodevelopmental effects of PT birth. Further investigation of reward processing and hot EF in individuals with a history of PT birth is warranted given the susceptibility of prefrontal cortex development to early environmental variations.     

Emulation and “overemulation” in the social learning of causally opaque versus causally transparent tool use by 23- and 30-month-olds

We explored whether a rising trend to blindly “overcopy” a model’s causally irrelevant actions between 3 and 5 years of age, found in previous studies, predicts a more circumspect disposition in much younger children. Children between 23 and 30 months of age observed a model use a tool to retrieve a reward from either a transparent or opaque puzzle box. Some of the tool actions were irrelevant to reward retrieval, whereas others were causally necessary. The causal relevance of the tool actions was highly visible in the transparent box condition, allowing the participants to potentially discriminate which actions were necessary. In contrast, the causal efficacy of the tool was hidden in the opaque box condition. When both the 23- and 30-month-olds were presented with either the transparent or opaque box, they were most commonly emulative rather than imitative, performing only the causally necessary actions. This strategy contrasts with the blanket imitation of both causally irrelevant and causally relevant actions witnessed at 3 and 5 years of age in our previous studies. The results challenge a current view of 1- and 2-year-olds as largely “blind imitators”; instead, they show that these young children have a variety of social learning processes available to them. More broadly the emerging patterns of results suggest, rather counterintuitively, that the human species becomes more imitative rather than less imitative with age, in some ways “mindlessly” so.     

Let's Make a Deal: Quality and availability of second-stage information as a catalyst for change

The Monty Hall Problem (MHP), a process of two-stage decision making, was presented in atypical form via a custom software game. Differing from the normal three-box MHP, the game added one additional box on-screen for each game—culminating on game 23 with 25 on-screen boxes to initially choose from. A total of 108 participants played 23 games (trials) in one of four conditions; (1) “Vanish” condition—all non-winning boxes totally removed from the screen; (2) “Empty” condition—all non-winning boxes remain on-screen, but with an “empty” label on them; (3) “Steroids” condition—all non-winning boxes removed from the screen, with initially chosen box becoming 25% larger; (4) “Steroids2” condition—all non-winning boxes removed from the screen, box not currently chosen becomes 25% larger. Results indicate second-stage on-screen presence of boxes influences switching; with their absence having the opposite effect. Size manipulation appears to elicit demand characteristics resulting in indeterminate influence.     

Does parochial cooperation exist in childhood and adolescence? A meta-analysis

Although previous meta-analytic evidence supports the existence of parochialism in cooperation among adults, the extent to which children and adolescents are more willing to incur a personal cost to benefit ingroups, compared to outgroups, is not yet clear. We provide the first meta-analysis on the existence and magnitude of parochialism in cooperation among pre-adults. Based on 20 experimental economics studies (k = 69, N = 5268, age = 3–19, 12 countries, published 2008–2019), a multilevel meta-analytic model revealed a small overall effect size indicating that children and adolescents were more cooperative towards ingroups (d = 0.22, 95% CI [0.07, 0.38]). A series of single-moderator analyses tested for the following conditions: participant age and sex; game type ([mini-]dictator game, prisoner's dilemma, public goods dilemma, trust game, ultimatum game); outcome interdependence; membership manipulation (between- vs. within-subjects); group type (natural vs. experimental); reward type (monetary vs. non-monetary); and country of the participant. Parochial cooperation did not vary with participants' age. Parochialism was larger in non-interdependent (dictator-type) compared to interdependent (bargaining and social dilemma) games. There were no moderating effects of group type, membership manipulation or reward type. To provide more data on how parochialism develops, primary studies should report age ranges more precisely and use more restricted age groups.