Children's understanding of nonverbal expressions of pride

To chart the developmental path of children's attribution of pride to others, we presented children (4 years 0 month to 11 years 11 months of age, N=108) with video clips of head-and-face, body posture, and multi-cue (both head-and-face and body posture simultaneously) expressions that adults consider to convey pride. Across age groups, 4- and 5-year-olds did not attribute pride to any expression presented, 6- and 7-year-olds attributed pride only to the multi-cue expression, and 8- to 11-year-olds attributed pride to both the head-and-face and multi-cue expressions. Children of all ages viewed the postural expression as anger rather than pride. Developmentally, pride is first attributed only when several cues are present and only later when a single cue (head-and-face) is present.     

The Construction of Symmetry in Children and Adults

The development of the concept of symmetry is important to an overall understanding of cognitive development in children and to spatial cognition in particular. Age differences in the construction of the 3 types of symmetry (bilateral, translational, and radial) were investigated in children and adults engaged in block construction. Children 2–4.5 years old produced bilateral symmetry in low frequencies independent of their precise vertical alignment of blocks. Children 4–12 years old and adults produced all 3 types of symmetry. The hypothesis predicting the sequence and frequency of the 3 types of symmetry based on an analysis of spatial complexity was partially supported. Bilateral symmetry was produced at significantly higher frequencies than the other 2 types across all age groups. Children 5–12 years old produced adult levels of bilateral symmetry while children 9–12 years old reached adult levels of construction of translational and radial symmetry.     

Reflexive orienting in response to short- and long-duration gaze cues in young,young-old,and old-old adults

Shifting visual focus on the basis of the perceived gaze direction of another person is one form of joint attention. In the present study, we investigated whether this socially relevant form of orienting is reflexive and whether it is influenced by age. Green and Woldorff (Cognition 122:96–101, 2012) argued that rapid cueing effects (i.e., faster responses to validly than to invalidly cued targets) were limited to conditions in which a cue overlapped in time with a target. They attributed slower responses following invalid cues to the time needed to resolve the incongruent spatial information provided by the concurrently presented cue and target. In the present study, we examined the orienting responses of young (18–31 years), young-old (60–74 years), and old-old (75–91 years) adults following uninformative central gaze cues that overlapped in time with the target (Exp. 1) or that were removed prior to target presentation (Exp. 2). When the cue and target overlapped, all three groups localized validly cued targets more quickly than invalidly cued targets, and validity effects emerged earlier for the two younger groups (at 100 ms post-cue-onset) than for the old-old group (at 300 ms post-cue-onset). With a short-duration cue (Exp. 2), validity effects developed rapidly (by 100 ms) for all three groups, suggesting that validity effects resulted from reflexive orienting based on the gaze cue information rather than from cue–target conflict. Thus, although old-old adults may be slow to disengage from persistent gaze cues, attention continues to be reflexively guided by gaze cues late in life.     

Timing of reflexive visuospatial orienting in young, young-old, and old-old adults

This study examined adult age differences in reflexive orienting to two types of uninformative spatial cues: central arrows and peripheral onsets. In two experiments using a Posner cuing task, young adults (ages 18–28 years), young-old adults (60–74 years), and old-old adults (75–92 years) responded to targets that were preceded 100–1,000 ms earlier by a central arrow or a peripheral abrupt onset. In Experiment 1, the cue remained present upon target onset. Facilitation effects at short cue–target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were prolonged in duration for the two older groups relative to the young adults. At longer cue–target SOAs, inhibition of return (IOR) that was initiated by peripheral onset cues was observed in the performance of young adults but not in that of the two older groups. In Experiment 2, the cue was presented briefly and removed prior to target onset. The change in cue duration minimized age differences (particularly for young-old adults) in facilitation effects and led to IOR for all three age groups. The findings are consistent with the idea that attentional control settings change with age, with higher settings for older adults leading to delayed disengagement from spatial cues.     

Opening the cuebox: The information children and young adults generate and rely on when making inferences from memory

We used a cue‐generation and a cue‐selection paradigm to investigate the cues children (9‐ to 12‐year‐olds) and young adults (17‐year‐olds) generate and select for a range of inferences from memory. We found that children generated more cues than young adults, who, when asked why they did not generate some particular cues, responded that they did not consider them relevant for the task at hand. On average, the cues generated by children were more perceptual but as informative as the cues generated by young adults. When asked to select the most informative of two cues, both children and young adults tended to choose a hidden (i.e., not perceptual) cue. Our results suggest a developmental change in the cuebox (i.e., the set of cues used to make inferences from memory): New cues are added to the cuebox as more cues are learned, and some old, perceptual cues, although informative, are replaced with hidden cues, which, by both children and young adults, are generally assumed to be more informative than perceptual cues.     

A story superiority effect for disgust,fear, embarrassment,and pride

Past studies found that, for preschoolers, a story specifying a situational cause and behavioural consequence is a better cue to fear and disgust than is the facial expression of those two emotions, but the facial expressions used were static. Two studies (Study 1: N = 68, 36–68 months; Study 2: N = 72, 49–90 months) tested whether this effect could be reversed when the expressions were dynamic and included facial, postural, and vocal cues. Children freely labelled emotions in three conditions: story, still face, and dynamic expression. Story remained a better cue than still face or dynamic expression for fear and disgust and also for the later emerging emotions of embarrassment and pride.     

Fearful faces drive gaze‐cueing and threat bias effects in children on the lookout for danger

Most developmental studies of face emotion processing show faces in isolation, in the absence of any broader context. Here we investigate two types of interactions between expression and threat contexts. First, in adults, following of another person's direction of social attention is increased when that person shows fear and the context requires vigilance for danger. We investigate whether this also occurs in children. Using a Posner‐style eye‐gaze cueing paradigm, we tested whether children would show greater gaze‐cueing from fearful than happy expressions when the task was to be vigilant for possible dangerous animals. Testing across the 8–12‐year‐old age range, we found this fear priority effect was absent in the youngest children but developed to reach adult levels in the oldest children. However, even the oldest children were unable to sustain fear‐prioritization when the onset of the target was delayed. Second, we addressed the development of ‘threat bias’ – namely faster identification of dangerous animals than safe animals – in the social context provided by expressive faces. In our non‐anxious samples (i.e. with typical‐population levels of anxiety), adults showed a threat bias regardless of the expression or looking direction of the just‐seen cue face whereas 8–12‐year‐olds only showed a threat bias when the just‐seen cue face displayed fear. Overall, the results argue that some, but not all, aspects of expression–context interactions are mature by 12 years of age.     

Pragmatic Language Development in Language Impaired and Typically Developing Children: Incorrect Answers in Context

This study focussed on young children’s incorrect answers to pragmatically demanding questions. Children with specific language impairment (SLI), including a subgroup with pragmatic language difficulties (PLD) and typically developing children answered questions targeting implicatures, based on a storybook and short verbal scenarios. Ninety-seven children participated in this study: 30 children with SLI of whom 12 had PLD, 32 typically developing children aged 5–6 years and 35 aged 7–11 years. The incorrect answers produced by the children with SLI were similar in their use of context to those of the 5–6 year old, suggesting developmental delay. The children with PLD produced significantly more irrelevant answers than both the language impaired children without PLD and the typically developing groups and had most difficulty when the context was presented solely verbally. Results are discussed in relation to a cognitive theory of communication and the clinical implications.     

What God has Joined Together: Family Formation and Religion among Young Adults

This study considers how family transitions influence future religiosity among young adults and demonstrates that both marriage and parenthood can serve to reinforce religious commitment among those who are religiously engaged. Drawing on data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we look at religious change between Wave 3 (18–24 years old) and Wave 4 (23–28 years old) and how this varies across six family statuses: Married with Children, Married without Children, Cohabiting with Children, Cohabiting without Children, Single with Children and Single without Children. We find greater future religious engagement among married individuals compared to those who are single or cohabiting, regardless of the presence of children. Among single and cohabiting parents, however, the presence of children is associated with greater religious salience, though not with attendance at religious services. The findings demonstrate a continued link between the institutions of family and religion at a time when ties to both institutions are loosening.     

3～5岁儿童基于声音线索的情绪知觉

研究从言语的韵律和语义两条线索出发,试图探讨学前儿童基于声音线索情绪知觉的发展特点.实验一中,124名3～5岁儿童对男、女性用5种不同情绪(高兴、生气、害怕、难过和中性)的声音表达的中性语义句子进行了情绪类型上的判断.3～5岁儿童基于声音韵律线索情绪知觉能力随着年龄的增长不断提高,主要表现在生气、害怕和中性情绪上.不同情绪类型识别的发展轨迹不完全相同,总体来说,高兴的声音韵律最容易识别,而害怕是最难识别的.当韵律和语义线索冲突时,学前儿童更多地依赖韵律线索来判断说话者的情绪状态.被试对女性用声音表达的情绪更敏感.     

The role of landmarks and boundaries in the development of spatial memory

It has been suggested that learning an object's location relative to (1) intramaze landmarks and (2) local boundaries is supported by parallel striatal and hippocampal systems, both of which rely upon input from a third system for orientation. However, little is known about the developmental trajectories of these systems' contributions to spatial learning. The present study tested 5- and 7-year-old children and adults on a water maze-like task in which all three types of cue were available. Participants had to remember the location of an object hidden in a circular bounded environment containing a moveable intramaze landmark and surrounded by distal cues. Children performed less accurately than adults, and showed a different pattern of error. While adults relied most on the stable cue provided by the boundary, children relied on both landmark and boundary cues similarly, suggesting a developmental increase in the weighting given to boundary cues. Further, adults were most accurate in coding angular information (dependent on distal cues), whereas children were most accurate in coding distance, suggesting a developing ability to use distal cues to orient. These results indicate that children as young as 5 years use boundary, intramaze landmark, and distal visual cues in parallel, but that the basic accuracy and relative weighting of these cues changes during subsequent development.     

Facial expression recognition in peripheral versus central vision: role of the eyes and the mouth

This study investigated facial expression recognition in peripheral relative to central vision, and the factors accounting for the recognition advantage of some expressions in the visual periphery. Whole faces or only the eyes or the mouth regions were presented for 150 ms, either at fixation or extrafoveally (2.5° or 6°), followed by a backward mask and a probe word. Results indicated that (a) all the basic expressions were recognized above chance level, although performance in peripheral vision was less impaired for happy than for non-happy expressions, (b) the happy face advantage remained when only the mouth region was presented, and (c) the smiling mouth was the most visually salient and most distinctive facial feature of all expressions. This suggests that the saliency and the diagnostic value of the smile account for the advantage in happy face recognition in peripheral vision. Because of saliency, the smiling mouth accrues sensory gain and becomes resistant to visual degradation due to stimulus eccentricity, thus remaining accessible extrafoveally. Because of diagnostic value, the smile provides a distinctive single cue of facial happiness, thus bypassing integration of face parts and reducing susceptibility to breakdown of configural processing in peripheral vision.     

线索有效性对儿童返回抑制的影响

采用通常的线索—靶子实验,来考察不同的线索有效性对儿童返回抑制的影响。所用的外源性线索分高有效性、低有效性和非信息性三类。儿童被试在实验中的任务为觉察圆形光点后即按键反应,记录反应时。结果表明,7岁、9岁和11岁儿童在高有效性和非信息性线索条件下均出现返回抑制;但7岁和9岁儿童在低有效性线索条件未出现返回抑制,而11岁儿童则出现。这些儿童的实验结果有别于成人。结果提示,7岁、9岁和11岁儿童的返回抑制是在外源性线索的作用下自动出现的,具有反射性质;但7岁和9岁儿童的返回抑制仍受线索有效性的制约,而11岁儿童返回抑制的发展已不受线索有效性的影响。     

Concurrent and prospective associations between facial affect recognition accuracy and childhood antisocial behavior

This study examined the concurrent and prospective associations between children's ability to accurately recognize facial affect at age 8.5 and antisocial behavior at age 8.5 and 10.5 years in a sub sample of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children cohort (5,396 children; 2,644, 49% males). All observed effects were small. It was found that at age 8.5 years, in contrast to nonantisocial children; antisocial children were less accurate at decoding happy and sad expressions when presented at low intensity. In addition, concurrent antisocial behavior was associated with misidentifying expressions of fear as expressions of sadness. In longitudinal analyses, children who misidentified fear as anger exhibited a decreased risk of antisocial behavior 2 years later. The study suggests that concurrent rather than future antisocial behavior is associated with facial affect recognition accuracy. Aggr. Behav. 36:305–314, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Sad and happy emotion discrimination in music by children with cochlear implants

Children using cochlear implants (CIs) develop speech perception but have difficulty perceiving complex acoustic signals. Mode and tempo are the two components used to recognize emotion in music. Based on CI limitations, we hypothesized children using CIs would have impaired perception of mode cues relative to their normal hearing peers and would rely more heavily on tempo cues to distinguish happy from sad music. Study participants were children with 13 right CIs and 3 left CIs (M = 12.7, SD = 2.6 years) and 16 normal hearing peers. Participants judged 96 brief piano excerpts from the classical genre as happy or sad in a forced-choice task. Music was randomly presented with alterations of transposed mode, tempo, or both. When music was presented in original form, children using CIs discriminated between happy and sad music with accuracy well above chance levels (87.5%) but significantly below those with normal hearing (98%). The CI group primarily used tempo cues, whereas normal hearing children relied more on mode cues. Transposing both mode and tempo cues in the same musical excerpt obliterated cues to emotion for both groups. Children using CIs showed significantly slower response times across all conditions. Children using CIs use tempo cues to discriminate happy versus sad music reflecting a very different hearing strategy than their normal hearing peers. Slower reaction times by children using CIs indicate that they found the task more difficult and support the possibility that they require different strategies to process emotion in music than normal.     

Longitudinal Outcomes of Shyness From Childhood to Emerging Adulthood

The primary goal of this study was to explore links between childhood shyness and socioemotional functioning in emerging adulthood. Participants were part of a large-scale Canadian population-based longitudinal sample. Data were available for 3,514 children (8–9 years old) at Time 1 and 1,447 emerging adults (20–21 years old) again at Time 2. Parents completed a brief rating of child shyness at Time 1 and young adults self-reported indices of their socioemotional functioning at Time 2. Among the results, childhood shyness was a significant predictor of both interpersonal and intrapersonal adjustment difficulties at 20–21 years old. Moreover, some gender differences also emerged, with shyness predicting intrapersonal adjustment difficulties more strongly among female than among male participants. Results are discussed in terms of the long term consequences of childhood shyness for emerging adults.     

Maturation of Spatial Navigation Strategies: Convergent Findings from Computerized Spatial Environments and Self-Report

Using 2 computerized spatial navigation tasks, we examined the development of cue and place learning in children ages 3 to 10 years, comparing their data to adults. We also examined relations between place learning in computerized and real space. Results showed children use the 2-dimensional space as if it were real space. Results also demonstrated that children ages 3 to 10 years cue learn (locating a visible target) but do not show evidence of mature place learning (locating an invisible target) until around age 10 years. Self-report data indicated an age-related increase in use of relations among distal cues during place learning. Children ages 3 to 4 years did not report using distal cues; most 9- to 10-year-old children reported using multiple distal cues to guide their search during place learning. Results suggest that, as maturation proceeds, children make increasing use of relations among multiple distal cues to guide a search for places in space.     

Age differences in using source-relevant cues.

Subjects heard words originating from 2 speakers and later decided which of the 2 speakers said the words. Older adults had difficulty with source monitoring when perceptual cues from 2 sources were similar (2 female speakers), but this difficulty was overcome when perceptual cues were distinctive (a male and a female speaker) and were the only salient cues to source. Older adults also benefited from distinctive spatial cues when these were the only salient cues to source. Older adults, however, experienced difficulties in using multiple cues (both perceptual and spatial) to source effectively, whereas younger adults were able to use multiple cues to enhance their source-monitoring performance. It is suggested that age differences in source monitoring result from differential cue utilization.     

Basic visual perceptual processes in children with typical development and cerebral palsy: The processing of surface,length, orientation,and position

The present study aims to assess how the processing of basic visual perceptual (VP) components (length, surface, orientation, and position) develops in typically developing (TD) children (n = 215, 4–14 years old) and adults (n = 20, 20–25 years old), and in children with cerebral palsy (CP) (n = 86, 5–14 years old) using the first four subtests of the Battery for the Evaluation of Visual Perceptual and Spatial processing in children. Experiment 1 showed that these four basic VP processes follow distinct developmental trajectories in typical development. Experiment 2 revealed that children with CP present global and persistent deficits for the processing of basic VP components when compared with TD children matched on chronological age and nonverbal reasoning abilities.     

Children's supernatural thinking as a signalling behaviour in early childhood

In this study, we analysed the reaction times of 137 college students when making decisions on pairs of hypothetical children verbalizing different types of vignettes and/or exhibiting different physical appearance (photographs of faces). Vignettes depicted immature and mature versions of both supernatural (e.g., ‘The sun's not out today because it's mad’ vs. ‘The sun's not out today because the clouds are blocking it’) and natural (‘I can remember all 20 cards!’ vs. ‘I can remember 6 or 7 cards’) explanations to ordinary phenomena. Photographs of children's faces were morphed with a physical appearance of approximately 4–7 years old or approximately 8–10 years old. In earlier research, immature supernatural thinking produced positive‐affect reactions from adults and older adolescents (14–18 years old) towards young children, with cognitive cues being more important than physical‐appearance cues in influencing adults’ judgements. Reaction times to make decisions varied for the Supernatural and Natural vignettes and for the immature and mature vignettes/faces, reflecting the differential cognitive effort adults used for making decisions about aspects of children's physical appearance and verbal expressions. The findings were interpreted in terms of the critical role that young children's immature supernatural thinking has on adults’ perception, analogous to the evolved role of immature physical features on adults’ perception of infants.