Expectancy in melody: tests of children and adults

Melodic expectancies among children and adults were examined. In Experiment 1, adults, 11-year-olds, and 8-year-olds rated how well individual test tones continued fragments of melodies. In Experiment 2, 11-, 8-, and 5-year-olds sang continuations to 2-tone stimuli. Response patterns were analyzed using 2 models of melodic expectancy. Despite having fewer predictor variables, the 2-factor model (E. G. Schellenberg, 1997) equaled or surpassed the implication-realization model (E. Narmour, 1990) in predictive accuracy. Listeners of all ages expected the next tone in a melody to be proximate in pitch to the tone heard most recently. Older listeners also expected reversals of pitch direction, specifically for tones that changed direction after a disruption of proximity and for tones that formed symmetric patterns.     

Implicit motor learning through observational training in adults and children

Although evidence of implicit motor learning on the basis of observation alone has been reported, there is some data to suggest that the phenomenon could be contaminated by the intentional exploitation of explicit knowledge. In the present experiment, a special procedure was adapted to study observational learning in a situation involving the acquisition of a new drawing behavior. The participants consisted of adults and children 6-10 years of age. The results provide support for the view that overt motor practice is not strictly necessary for implicit motor learning. They demonstrate that children display capacities similar to those of adults in this form of learning. Some suggestions are made to account for the contradictory results present in this area of research.     

The use of exploratory procedures by blind and sighted adults and children

The study examined exploratory procedures (EPs) of congenitally blind and sighted children and adults on a haptic match-to-sample task. The aim was to examine the influence of age, visual status, and familiarity on the use of EPs when people haptically examine the object properties of weight, size, exact shape, and texture. EPs in the first and last of four series of trials were compared. The results showed that all four groups chose the same dominant EP for examining the four different object properties, all of them in agreement with the ones found by Lederman and Klatzky (Cognitive Psychology 19:342–368, 1987). Children were found to use more EPs, rather than using only the most efficient EP, for the dimension under study. Overall, performance was affected more by age than by visual status, and repeating the task led to increased efficiency in all groups. To describe exploratory behaviors in more detail, actions were introduced. Actions are single or sequential hand movements occurring in parallel with the EPs or apart from the EPs. The use of actions explained, in part, individual variation among the participants.     

Navigational place learning in children and young adults as assessed with a standardized locomotor search task

Spatial behaviour was investigated using a spatial learning task based on the Radial Arm Maze, the Morris Water Maze, and open‐field search‐task procedures. Ninety‐six healthy children from six age groups (3, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 12 years) with no history of CNS disorders were studied with respect to the emergence of position‐, cue‐ and place responses. Participants were to detect x out of n hidden locations, frames of reference could be varied systematically, and three spatial memory errors and speed of navigation were recorded automatically. Task difficulties were equivalent for each age group. Results showed that navigational place learning was fully developed by the age of 10, whereas participants relied on cue orientation up to age 7. Even in the youngest group, the task could be achieved without relying on egocentric orientation, provided that proximal cues were presented. Most of the errors were of the reference memory type, whereas working memory errors were extremely rare. Speed of navigation markedly improved between age 5 and 7. An additional experiment showed that navigational place‐learning behaviour was clearly dependent on distal cues. A third study showed that in young adults, learning of the spatial layout improved, but performance on the place task did not improve any further. No sex differences were observed.     

Statistical learning is related to reading ability in children and adults

There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4-12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18-34) were assessed. In children, SL was significantly related to reading ability. Importantly, this relationship was independent of grade and also age. The adult data, too, revealed that SL was significantly related to reading ability. A regression analysis of the combined child and adult data revealed that SL accounted for a unique amount of variance in reading ability, after age and attention had been taken into consideration. For the first time, this study provides empirical evidence that a capacity for more effective SL is related to higher reading ability in the general population.     

An experimental investigation of a putative linguistic universal: Marking and the indirect object

Two experiments investigated how children acquire knowledge of the direct and the indirect object in terms of linguistic marking. This was done in order to test experimentally the psychological validity of a putative linguistic universal which holds that children should expect a marked linguistic form to be the indirect object. In the two experiments, an artificial language which marked these forms was used. This language eliminated the preposition “to” as well as word order as cues in learning the experimental forms. One group heard the indirect object as the marked form in the artificial language, and another group heard the direct object as the marked form. The linguistic theory would predict that the former group would be superior in learning the artificial language. However, using error scores, no difference was found between the two groups. This negative result was also independent of whether a child had achieved mastery of the normal English constructions involving direct and indirect object relationships. Reasons for the failure to find any evidence for this universal are discussed.     

Covariation and temporal contiguity as principles of causal inference in young children

Four- to seven-year-old children observed a simple physical effect which could be attributed to either a consistent but noncontiguous covariate or a contiguous but inconsistent covariate. When there was a physical rationale for the temporal delay between covariate and effect, children attributed the effect to the consistent but noncontiguous covariate. In the absence of such a rationale, they attributed the effect to the contiguous but inconsistent covariate. It was concluded that neither consistent covariation nor strict temporal contiguity were essential aspects of causal inference for these children.     

Decision-making in healthy children, adolescents and adults explained by the use of increasingly complex proportional reasoning rules

In the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), participants have to choose repeatedly from four options. Each option is characterized by a constant gain, and by the frequency and amount of a probabilistic loss. Crone and van der Molen (2004) reported that school-aged children and even adolescents show marked deficits in IGT performance. In this study, we have re-analyzed the data with a multivariate normal mixture analysis to show that these developmental changes can be explained by a shift from unidimensional to multidimensional proportional reasoning (Siegler, 1981; Jansen & van der Maas, 2002). More specifically, the results show a gradual shift with increasing age from (a) guessing with a slight tendency to consider frequency of loss to (b) focusing on frequency of loss, to (c) considering both frequency and amount of probabilistic loss. In the latter case, participants only considered options with low-frequency loss and then chose the option with the lowest amount of loss. Performance improved in a reversed task, in which punishment was placed up front and gain was delivered unexpectedly. In this reversed task, young children are guessing with already a slight tendency to consider both the frequency and amount of gain; this strategy becomes more pronounced with age. We argue that these findings have important implications for the interpretation of IGT performance, as well as for methods to analyze this performance.     

Perceptual and linguistic interactions in speeded classification: tests of the semantic coding hypothesis

We tested the semantic coding hypothesis, which states that cross-modal interactions observed in speeded classification tasks arise after perceptual information is recoded into an abstract format common to perceptual and linguistic systems. Using a speeded classification task, we first confirmed the presence of congruence interactions between auditory pitch and visual lightness and observed Garner-type interference with nonlinguistic (perceptual) stimuli (low-frequency and high-frequency tones, black and white squares). Subsequently, we found that modifying the visual stimuli by (a) making them lexical (related words) or (b) reducing their compactness or figural 'goodness' altered congruence effects and Garner interference. The results are consistent with the semantic coding hypothesis, but only in part, and suggest the need for additional assumptions regarding the role of perceptual organization in cross-modal dimensional interactions.     

Audiovisual integration in noise by children and adults

The aim of this study was to investigate the development of multisensory facilitation in primary school-age children under conditions of auditory noise. Motor reaction times and accuracy were recorded from 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults during auditory, visual, and audiovisual detection tasks. Auditory signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 30-, 22-, 12-, and 9-dB across the different age groups were compared. Multisensory facilitation was greater in adults than in children, although performance for all age groups was affected by the presence of background noise. It is posited that changes in multisensory facilitation with increased auditory noise may be due to changes in attention bias.     

Recognition and recall by children and adults as a function of variations in memory encoding instructions

In four experiments Ss were instructed to learn a set of 40 words by producing implicit associative responses to each item (association instructions), by repeating items over and over (repetition instruction), or by using their own devices (neutral instructions). Experiment I showed that recognition memory (RM) accuracy was greatest under association instructions for adults and children and least under repetition instructions for children. The implications of these results for a frequency theory analysis for RM were discussed. Experiments II, III, and IV examined free recall (FR) as a function of encoding instructions at short (1 min) and long (either 90 min or 24 h) retention intervals. FR was worst under repetition instructions, with little overall difference between the association and neutral conditions. However, in Experiments III and IV, using school children, the neutral condition exceeded the others in FR after 90 min but not after 1 min.     

Recognition of emotions in music by children and adults

32 children 5 to 6 yr. old, 32 9 to 11 yr. old, and 32 adults linked musical fragments to emotions in a similar manner, older subjects being more accurate. Some emotions were more difficult than others; anger and fear were often confused. Older subjects gave better justifications for their choices.     

Common phoneme and overall similarity relations among spoken syllables: Their use by children and adults

This paper contrasts two kinds of relations among spoken syllables. One relation is based on a single common phoneme; the second is based on overall similarity of whole syllables. On the basis of recent studies with multidimensional visual stimuli, we hypothesized that preliterate children respond primarily to overall similarity relations among syllables, whereas literate adults respond primarily to common phoneme relations. These hypotheses were tested in two experiments using spoken syllables. Experiment 1 investigated the classification of syllables by preliterate children (mean age: 4 years 4 months) and college students. Experiment 2 studied the memory confusions among syllables by children (mean age: 4 years 8 months) and college students. The results of both experiments suggest that overall similarity relations are primary for preliterate children, while common phoneme relations are primary for adults. Moreover, children's limited use of common phoneme relations is not confined to tasks that require explicit judgments about language. Implications for the learning of reading are discussed.The work reported here formed a portion of the first author's doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Pennsylvania. It was supported by Grant MH29453 to J. Baron and a Biomedical support grant through Indiana University to R. Treiman. We thank the children and teachers of the University of Pennsylvania Children's Center for their cooperation. Jonathan Baron, David Pisoni, Francis Ganong, Lila Gleitman, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Burton Rosner, Linda Smith, and Amanda Walley gave valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults

Previous research suggests that language learners can detect and use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to discover words in continuous speech (e.g. Aslin, R.N., Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., 1998. Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants. Psychological Science 9, 321-324; Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., Newport, E.L., 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J., R., Newport, E.L., Aslin, R.N., (1996). Word segmentation: the role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language 35, 606-621; Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., Aslin, R.N., Tunick, R.A., Barrueco, S., 1997. Incidental language learning: Listening (and learning) out of the corner of your ear. Psychological Science 8, 101-195). In the present research, we asked whether this statistical learning ability is uniquely tied to linguistic materials. Subjects were exposed to continuous non-linguistic auditory sequences whose elements were organized into 'tone words'. As in our previous studies, statistical information was the only word boundary cue available to learners. Both adults and 8-month-old infants succeeded at segmenting the tone stream, with performance indistinguishable from that obtained with syllable streams. These results suggest that a learning mechanism previously shown to be involved in word segmentation can also be used to segment sequences of non-linguistic stimuli.     

Category and perceptual interference in second-language phoneme learning: an examination of English /w/-/v/ learning by Sinhala, German, and Dutch speakers

The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural recordings, their degree of spoken accent, their relative use of place and manner cues, the assimilation of these phonemes into native-language categories, and their perceptual maps (i.e., multidimensional scaling solutions) for these phonemes. Most Sinhala speakers had near-chance identification accuracy, Germans ranged from chance to 100% correct, and Dutch speakers had uniformly high accuracy. The results suggest that these learning differences were caused more by perceptual interference than by category assimilation; Sinhala and German speakers both have a single native-language phoneme that is similar to English /w/ and /v/, but the auditory sensitivities of Sinhala speakers make it harder for them to discern the acoustic cues that are critical to /w/-/v/ categorization.     

Sentence contexts as facilitators of noun pair learning in children

Fifth graders were asked to learn noun pairs embedded in sentence contexts varied in terms of verb voice and grammatical relations. Also, their ability to reproduce sentence contexts for nouns was examined. Recall was prompted with both first- and final-position nouns. Results indicated that variations in deep structure grammatical relations but not surface structure complexity influenced noun pair retrieval. Subjects' incidental memory for the deep structure of sentences was substantial, suggesting that learners were noticing and making use of the meaningful relations aroused between nouns by the contexts. Various sentence generative strategies involving verb voice and noun prompt position were noted.     

Segmentation of spoken words into syllables by English-speaking children as compared to adults

Given the importance of syllables in the development of reading, spelling, and phonological awareness, information is needed about how children syllabify spoken words. To what extent is syllabification affected by knowledge of spelling, to what extent by phonology, and which phonological factors are influential? In Experiment 1, six- and seven-year-old children did not show effects of spelling on oral syllabification, performing similarly on words such as habit and rabbit. Spelling influenced the syllabification of older children and adults, with the results suggesting that knowledge of spelling must be well entrenched before it begins to affect oral syllabification. Experiment 2 revealed influences of phonological factors on syllabification that were similar across age groups. Young children, like older children and adults, showed differences between words with "short" and "long" vowels (e.g., lemon vs. demon) and words with sonorant and obstruent intervocalic consonants (e.g., melon vs. wagon).     

Recognition of tactile relief by children and adults

This study was designed to compare tactile sensitivity of children and adults on printed target stimuli covering a wide range of elevations and requiring different resolutions. A recognition-relief task using 9 digits at 6 levels of elevation from a surface (0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1, and 0.05 mm) was presented to 24 young adults and 24 children. As predicted, relief elevations as low as 0.05 mm were recognized above chance. As predicted, children performed significantly more poorly than the adults on recognition at all elevations, although the difference increased as elevation increased. Adults performed significantly better than children on high-resolution digit 8, but there was no reliable age difference on low-resolution digit 1. Recognition difference between the high- and low-resolution digits decreased nonlinearly as elevation increased, irrespective of age. Overall, the findings support previous research indicating greater tactile sensitivity in adults than in children, but the superiority was moderated by the elevation and resolution requirements of the stimuli.