Private Speech in Illiterate Adults: Cognitive Functions, Task Difficulty, and Literacy

Children’s private speech has been widely studied among children, but it is clear that adults use private speech as well. In this study, illiterate adults’ private speech during a “school-like” task was explored as a function of literacy level and task difficulty in a sample of 126 adults enrolled in a public literacy program. A main effect for literacy level was found—private speech was more internalized and less externalized among adults with higher literacy levels. Externalized private speech was more frequently observed among illiterate adults engaged in the most difficult task. Private speech served cognitive functions as indicated by the proportion of self-regulatory private speech and the proportion of private speech preceding actions being higher in the advanced literacy group and among illiterate adults doing the easier task. Internalized private speech, self-regulatory private speech, and private speech preceding action were each positively correlated with performance and negatively correlated with time to complete the task. The use of private speech in illiterate adults appears to be linked to the mastery of cultural experiences, such as literacy, similar to the self-talk of children.     

不同编码对听写困难儿童字形记忆的促进效应

听写困难是一种发生率较高的儿童学习障碍现象。实验考察笔画语音编码和动作编码对听写困难儿童字形记忆水平的影响。结果发现, 笔画语音编码对听写困难儿童的字形记忆成绩没有明显影响, 但却明显促进了正常儿童的字形记忆成绩; 与之相对, 动作编码对正常儿童的字形记忆成绩没有明显影响, 但却明显促进了听写困难儿童的字形记忆成绩。上述现象, 既可能源于编码加工阶段, 也可能源于字形表征的提取阶段。     

Differentiating between verbal and spatial encoding using eye-movement recordings

Visual information processing is guided by an active mechanism generating saccadic eye movements to salient stimuli. Here we investigate the specific contribution of saccades to memory encoding of verbal and spatial properties in a serial recall task. In the first experiment, participants moved their eyes freely without specific instruction. We demonstrate the existence of qualitative differences in eye-movement strategies during verbal and spatial memory encoding. While verbal memory encoding was characterized by shifting the gaze to the to-be-encoded stimuli, saccadic activity was suppressed during spatial encoding. In the second experiment, participants were required to suppress saccades by fixating centrally during encoding or to make precise saccades onto the memory items. Active suppression of saccades had no effect on memory performance, but tracking the upcoming stimuli decreased memory performance dramatically in both tasks, indicating a resource bottleneck between display-controlled saccadic control and memory encoding. We conclude that optimized encoding strategies for verbal and spatial features are underlying memory performance in serial recall, but such strategies work on an involuntary level only and do not support memory encoding when they are explicitly required by the task.     

Evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory

The experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children, encoded words using the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential. In the second experiment, both 7- and 11-year-olds demonstrated the ability to encode words according to taxonomic categories. These findings were related to other recent work on the development of encoding in memory.     

Encoding Strategies in Primary School Children: Insights From an Eye-Tracking Approach and the Role of Individual Differences in Attentional Control

The authors explored different aspects of encoding strategy use in primary school children by including (a) an encoding strategy task in which children's encoding strategy use was recorded through a remote eye-tracking device and, later, free recall and recognition for target items was assessed; and (b) tasks measuring resistance to interference (flanker task) and inhibition of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli (distractibility). Results revealed that the ability to inhibit distraction and resist interference undergoes developmental changes between the ages of 7–10 years. At the same time, children's capability to strategically focus on task-relevant aspects also continues to improve in primary school years. Although there were substantial relationships between encoding strategies and later recognition, encoding strategies appeared to be unrelated to basic aspects of attentional control.     

Asymmetry between encoding and retrieval processes: Evidence from divided attention and a calibration analysis

Two experiments provide further information on the effects of divided attention (DA) on encoding and retrieval processes. The first experiment examined the effects of decision and motor difficulty of a concurrent reaction time task. A calibration analysis was used in the second experiment to test the hypothesis that shifting attentional emphasis away from encoding to the secondary task reduces the level of processing the to-be-remembered items receive. Overall, the results confirm and extend the conclusions of Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Benjamin, and Anderson (1996) and Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Guez, and Dori (1998), by pointing to clear differences between encoding and retrieval processes: Encoding is affected by simultaneous task demands, especially those associated with "central" resources involved in conscious decision making, whereas retrieval is obligatory in that it is largely immune to the effects of simultaneous demands. The results of the calibration analysis suggest that one reason for the poorer memory performance as a result of DA at encoding is a qualitative shift to less deep, elaborative strategies.     

学习困难儿童的问题解决特点研究

本研究选取学习困难儿童和正常儿童各 3 2名 ,设置河内塔问题解决的情境 ,采用临床观察法 ,对学习困难儿童在问题解决中的特点作了初步的探究。研究发现 :1与正常儿童相比 ,学习困难儿童在发现和有效运用策略方面明显不足 ,但当学习困难儿童对问题情境比较熟悉后 ,有明显的进步 ;2一定的提示并不能帮助学习困难儿童最有效地应用策略。     

How do alternative ways of responding influence 3- and 4-year-olds’ performance on tests of executive function and theory of mind?

A total of 69 preschool children were tested on measures of false belief understanding (the Unexpected Transfer task), inhibitory control (the Grass/Snow task), and strategic reasoning (the Windows task). For each task, children indicated their response either by pointing with their index finger or by using a nonstandard response mode (pointing with a rotating arrow). The means of responding had no effect on children's performance on the Grass/Snow task or on the Unexpected Transfer task, although children performed better on the Unexpected Transfer task when the key object in the story was removed. In contrast, performance on the Windows task was significantly better when children pointed with the rotating arrow. A follow-up experiment with 79 preschoolers found that this improved performance on the Windows task was sustained even after the nonstandard response mode was removed and children again pointed with their finger. These findings together suggest that nonstandard response modes do not help children to inhibit prepotent pointing responses but may help them to formulate response strategies on reasoning tasks by discouraging unreflective impulsive responding.     

Children's face recognition in different contexts: the role of encoding strategies

In this study, the relationship between face recognition and different facial encoding strategies was investigated. Children (6-8 years, N= 134) participated in both a face recognition task and an encoding task. During the recognition task, they saw 7 target faces in an eyewitness context (video) or in a neutral context (static black and white slides) which they later had to recognize from a set of 21 faces. On the encoding task, the same children had to categorize new faces (schematic and photorealistic) into two categories. The construction of the categories allowed participants to encode the faces either analytically (by focusing on a single attribute) or holistically (in terms of overall similarity). The results showed that face recognition was better in the social than in the neutral context. In the neutral context, only holistic encoding was connected to better face recognition. In the social context, children seemed to use not only information about the faces but also information about the persons.     

Socio-cognitive conflict and structure of individual and collective performances

A previous experiment (Doise, Mugny and Perret-Clermont, 1975) has shown that pairs of subjects perform better on a spatial representation task than subjects alone. As a conclusion the hypothesis was put forward that conflicts of cognitive centrations, embedded in a social situation, lead children to coordinate their centrations. The present research was planned to verify several predictions following from this general hypothesis. Results show that indeed more progress takes place when children with different cognitive strategies work together than when children with the same strategies do so, and that not only the less advanced but also the more advanced child progresses when they interact with each other.     

Imagery effects and semantic similarity in sentence recognition memory

The idea that subjects often use imagery to discriminate semantically similar sentences was tested in three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects heard subject-verb-object sentences in the context of either a comprehension task or an image-generation task. Their memory for the sentences was tested using a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which different types of distractor sentence were used. A sentence semantically similar to the target sentence was one type; a sentence with the same subject and object nouns as the target sentence, but dissimilar in meaning, was another type; and a sentence similar in meaning to one of the stimulus sentences, but not to the target sentence, was a third type. The results showed that the image-generation instructions enhanced later recognition performance, but only for semantically similar test items. A second experiment showed that this finding only holds for high-imagery sentences containing concrete noun concepts. A third experiment demonstrated that the enhanced recognition performance could not be accounted for in terms of a semantic model of test-item discrimination. Collectively, the results were interpreted as providing evidence for the notion that subjects discriminate the semantically similar test items by elaborating the sentence encoding through image processing.     

Discovery and maintenance of the many‐to‐one counting strategy in 4‐year‐olds: A microgenetic study

This study investigated the development of the many‐to‐one counting strategy in 4‐ year‐old children. In the first experiment, 52 children participated. Their development with respect to two kinds of tasks, a hidden‐items task and a needed‐items task, was studied over four sessions. Children (n = 28) who accurately used the many‐to‐one strategy in Session 4 also participated in the second experiment. These children were presented with more difficult hidden‐ and needed‐items tasks. It was found that children often produced the strategy for the first time on tasks with relatively few items. Most children then kept producing it, even if they initially did not obtain much profit from its use because of counting errors. Increasing task difficulty resulted in children making more counting errors or reverting to invalid strategies depending on the nature of the new task.     

Factors affecting developmental changes in the speed of processing

Although many studies have found developmental changes in the speed of various processes, they have potentially confounded the subject's age with his knowledge of the task domain and use of strategies. In this study, the strategies used by the subject and his domain knowledge were independently assessed by a number of tasks. Subsequently, processing rate measures were obtained for a task (the “same/different” judgment task of simultaneously presented stimuli) in which domain knowledge was manipulated independently of age while controlling for strategy usage. It was found that the usual adult superiority in speed of processing could be markedly reduced if children possessed equivalent amounts of domain knowledge and this effect was domain specific. Further, it was found that differences in knowledge affected processing rates in both knowledgeable adults and children and to about the same extent. It was concluded that some part of the typical adult superiority in processing rate was due to knowledge differences.     

Exploring the visuo-spatial scratch pad

A series of four studies examines the relationship between the visuo-spatial scratch pad, the central executive and the articulatory loop. For this purpose a visuo-spatial memory task that does not have a large verbal component was developed. In Experiment 1 this task was used to demonstrate that the scratch pad, although functionally independent of the articulatory loop, is subject to interference from a tracking task. Experiment 2 examined the locus of interference of the tracking task with spatial memory. It was shown that interference is confined to the encoding phase; post presentation tracking does not disrupt visuo-spatial representation. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the tracking task employed requires some central executive resources. The final experiment examined the effect of a near-span consonant memory load on the spatial memory task. Disruption only occurred when the verbal load preceded, or was concurrent with, the spatial task. The results suggest that central executive resources are probably required to operate the scratch pad in most circumstances. However, minimal central capacity is required for maintenance rehersal.     

The development of attribute dominance in the knowledge base

Two cuing, free-recall studies were conducted to test Bach and Underwood's (1970) hypothesis that acoustic encoding is dominant among second graders and semantic encoding is dominant among sixth graders. When retrieval cues were presented with to-be-remembered items at both input and output (Experiment 1), and when cues were presented only at output (Experiment 2), semantic cues were more efficient in elevating recall than were acoustic cues for both second and sixth graders. When these and other results generally found using recognition, sorting, incidental learning, and free-recall experimental designs are compared, it seems plausible that item presentation and memory-testing formats interact with age, and that these factors account for the different patterns of attribute dominance found in the literature. The knowledge base cannot be understood by focusing on either subject or task analyses, but only by focusing on interactions between subject and task variables as they change over time. The educational implications for young grade-school children are discussed.     

The Development of Attribute Dominance in the Knowledge Base

Two cuing, free-recall studies were conducted to test Bach and Underwood's (1970) hypothesis that acoustic encoding is dominant among second graders and semantic encoding is dominant among sixth graders. When retrieval cues were presented with to-be-remembered items at both input and output (Experiment 1), and when cues were presented only at output (Experiment 2), semantic cues were more efficient in elevating recall than were acoustic cues for both second and sixth graders. When these and other results generally found using recognition, sorting, incidental learning, and free-recall experimental designs are compared, it seems plausible that item presentation and memory-testing formats interact with age, and that these factors account for the different patterns of attribute dominance found in the literature. The knowledge base cannot be understood by focusing on either subject or task analyses, but only by focusing on interactions between subject and task variables as they change over time. The educational implications for young grade-school children are discussed.     

Memory, acquisition, and category clustering in learning-disabled children.

In Experiment 1, single trial, immediate-free recall of learning disabled and nondisabled children was compared. The primacy effect in learning-disabled children was lower, suggesting that rehearsal or other types of elaborative encoding may be deficient in these children. In Experiment 2, acquisition of randomly presented categorical lists in a multitrial-free recall task was compared in learning disabled and nondisabled children. One-half of each group was required to learn the same number of words (34 per list), whereas list length for the other half exceeded the primacy effect of each child in immediate-free recall to the same degree. When the same number of items was learned, acquisition was slower in learning disabled than nondisabled children. When the number of items varied according to the primacy effect of each child, acquisition of both groups was similar. Clustering was lower in learning disabled than nondisabled children. In Experiment 3, multitrial-free recall acquisition of categorical lists was examined in a subject-paced task. When the number of words learned exceeded the primacy effect of each child to the same degree, trials to criterion were similar in both groups but, when the children learned the same number of items, learning-disabled children required more trials to criterion. Presentation rates were faster in learning-disabled children. Presentation rates were negatively correlated with trials to criterion and positively correlated with clustering and primacy in immediate-free recall, suggesting that study time may be taken up by clustering, rehearsal, and/or other encoding strategies. Deficient elaborative encoding may be responsible for the slower acquisition of learning-disabled children.     

Violation of pure insertion during mental rotation is independent of stimulus type, task, and subjects' age

The experiment validated and extended the finding of Ilan and Miller (1994) [A violation of pure insertion: mental rotation and choice reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Psychophysics 20, 520-536] that the mental rotation process is not purely inserted into a mirror-normal discrimination task. In contrast to their work we used other experimental stimuli (drawings of animals instead of characters), a different task (same/different comparison) and investigated this effect under a developmental perspective. Adults and children between the age of 8 and 10 took significantly longer to respond to upright drawings of animals in conditions containing rotated stimuli than in conditions containing only upright stimuli, indicating a violation of pure insertion. In general, we found evidence that the violation of pure insertion during a mental rotation task itself can be generalised across stimulus type, task, and subject populations. However, for children this effect was independent of the format of the stimuli, while for adults the effect was larger for mirror-imaged than for identical objects. This suggests that the violation of pure insertion might occur at different processing stages as a function of age.     

Improving arithmetic performance with number sense training: An investigation of underlying mechanism

A nonverbal primitive number sense allows approximate estimation and mental manipulations on numerical quantities without the use of numerical symbols. In a recent randomized controlled intervention study in adults, we demonstrated that repeated training on a non-symbolic approximate arithmetic task resulted in improved exact symbolic arithmetic performance, suggesting a causal relationship between the primitive number sense and arithmetic competence. Here, we investigate the potential mechanisms underlying this causal relationship. We constructed multiple training conditions designed to isolate distinct cognitive components of the approximate arithmetic task. We then assessed the effectiveness of these training conditions in improving exact symbolic arithmetic in adults. We found that training on approximate arithmetic, but not on numerical comparison, numerical matching, or visuo-spatial short-term memory, improves symbolic arithmetic performance. In addition, a second experiment revealed that our approximate arithmetic task does not require verbal encoding of number, ruling out an alternative explanation that participants use exact symbolic strategies during approximate arithmetic training. Based on these results, we propose that nonverbal numerical quantity manipulation is one key factor that drives the link between the primitive number sense and symbolic arithmetic competence. Future work should investigate whether training young children on approximate arithmetic tasks even before they solidify their symbolic number understanding is fruitful for improving readiness for math education.     

Optimal learning strategies and their spontaneous use: The importance of task-appropriate processing

College students were given three verbal learning tasks to perform, with some subjects instructed to use a particular verbal or imaginal encoding strategy for all three tasks and other subjects not instructed to use any particular strategy. It was found that the relative effectiveness of the assigned encoding strategies varied as a function of the learning task. In addition, “uninstructed” subjects, for the most part, spontaneously employed strategies that produced recall comparable to that observed for subjects assigned the most effective strategy for a particular learning task. In Experiment 2, subjects were instructed to perform a different encoding strategy for each learning task. Subjects who were assigned the strategies in a “task-appropriate” fashion recalled more, in general, than subjects who were assigned the same strategies paired with the learning tasks in a haphazard fashion. Subjects not instructed to use a particular strategy again demonstrated relatively high recall and were found to vary processing across learning tasks. It was concluded that optimal learning for a range of tasks can require deployment of several semantic/elaborative strategies in a task-appropriate fashion. Furthermore, mature learners seem to spontaneously utilize semantic and imaginal strategies and do so task appropriately.