Three- and four-year-olds’ perceptual confusions for spoken words

Although infants have the ability to discriminate a variety of speech contrasts, young children cannot always use this ability in the service of spoken-word recognition. The research reported here asked whether the reason young children sometimes fail to discriminate minimal word pairs is that they are less efficient at word recognition than adults, or whether it is that they employ different lexical representations. In particular, the research evaluated the proposal that young children’s lexical representations are more “holistic” than those of adults, and are based on overall acoustic-phonetic properties, as opposed to phonetic segments. Three- and four-year-olds were exposed initially to an invariant target word and were subsequently asked to determine whether a series of auditory stimuli matched or did not match the target. The critical test stimuli were nonwords that varied in their degree of phonetic featural overlap with the target, as well as in terms of the position(s) within the stimuli at which they differed from the target, and whether they differed from the target on one or two segments. Data from four experiments demonstrated that the frequency with which children mistook a nonword stimulus for the target was influenced by extent of featural overlap, but not by word position. The data also showed that, contrary to the predictions of the holistic hypothesis, stimuli differing from the target by two features on a single segment were confused with the target more often than were stimuli differing by a single feature on each of two segments. This finding suggests that children use both phonetic features and segments in accessing their mental lexicons, and that they are therefore much more similar to adults than is suggested by the holistic hypothesis.     

Young children’s talk about learning events

In order to understand children’s conception of knowledge acquisition better, everyday uses of the terms “learn” and “teach” were examined. Longitudinal data obtained from CHILDES (MacWhinney & Snow, 1990) included 329 target term uses and related references by children (N=5, aged 2;4–7;3) and 431 by adults talking with them. Each reference was coded for mention of what was learned, when, how, and where learning occurred, who learned, and who taught/told, among other topics. Children and adults referred most frequently to what was learned and who learned/taught, and less frequently to when, how, and where learning occurred, a pattern that did not change as children aged. Consistent with earlier experimental reports, children talked mostly about their own learning, rarely mentioning sources of knowledge besides other people (e.g., teachers). Behavior learning was mentioned more than fact learning. Implications for characterizations of children’s developing conceptions of knowledge acquisition, for past and future experimental research, and for education were discussed.     

Children’s emotional norms for 600 French words

The present study provides a French child database containing a large corpus of words (N=600) that were rated on emotional valence (positive, neutral, and negative) by French children differing in both age (5, 7, and 9 years old) and sex (girls and boys). Good response reliability was observed in each of the three age groups. The results showed some age differences in the children’s ratings. With increasing age, the percentage of words rated positive decreased, whereas the percentage of neutral words increased and the percentage of negative words remained stable. Our study did not reveal marked differences across sex groups. The database compiled here should become a useful tool for experimental studies in which verbal material is used with children. It would be worthwhile in future research to study how children process emotional words and also to control the emotional variable in the same way as other linguistic variables in the experimental design. The norms from this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

African parents’ estimates of their own and their children’s multiple intelligences

A total of 421 parents from four Southern African countries (Nambia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) estimated their own and their children’s multiple intelligences. There were consistent country and sex differences in self-estimates. Nambians tended to give lowest self-estimates and Zambians highest self-estimates. Contrary to previous findings from other continents females gave higher self-estimates than males on all seven multiple intelligences. These results were mirrored in the estimation of children: females gave higher scores than males and Zambians gave highest estimates and Nambians lowest. Reasons for these findings are discussed.     

God counts for children’s spiritual well-being

Over the last three decades, qualitative studies of children’s spirituality have variously mentioned God. During this time, nearly 300 quantitative measures of spirituality and well-being have been developed and employed with youth and adults. However, very little similar work has been done with children. An article in this journal reported development of a purported spiritual sensitivity scale. That paper is critiqued here on the basis of its statistical methods as well as its failure to mention God in a study with Australian Catholic school students. In this paper, spiritual well-being (SWB) is taken as being reflected in the quality of relationships that people have with themselves, with others, with the environment and/or with God. Empirical evidence derived from extensive studies with primary school children in State, Catholic, Christian community and other independent schools in Australia reveals that an instrument called Feeling Good, Living Life is a statistically sound spirituality measure for children. Of the four sets of relationships reflecting SWB, relationship with God explains greatest variance in SWB overall. In this respect, relationship with God is most important for SWB among primary school students, just as other studies have shown it to be among youth and adults.     

Young children and spirituality: understanding children’s connectedness in a group music class

In a fast-paced materialistic world, it is important to create opportunities for spirituality in early childhood music education, a developmental element often neglected in the scholarly literature. The purpose of the present hermeneutic phenomenological study is to understand the meanings that children ascribe to their experiences of connectedness in a group music class for 15 children, aged 4–5 years, at a nursery school in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Data were collected by means of interviews, close observations, diaries and drawings. In a qualitative data analysis, the following themes emerged regarding the children’s experiences in the music class: Music is the best; My body dances; Music takes me places; We can play together; You and me; I feel better and You can have mine. Music group classes in early childhood education could be useful in creating opportunities for spiritual experiences, promoting connectedness and consequently fostering children’s spiritual well-being.     

Young children’s learning and generalization of teleological and mechanistic explanations

Young children often endorse explanations of the natural world that appeal to functions or purpose—for example, that rocks are pointy so animals can scratch on them. By contrast, most Western-educated adults reject such explanations. What accounts for this change? We investigated 4- to 5-year-old children’s ability to generalize the form of an explanation from examples by presenting them with novel teleological explanations, novel mechanistic explanations, or no explanations for 5 nonliving natural objects. We then asked children to explain novel instances of the same objects and novel kinds of objects. We found that children were able to learn and generalize explanations of both types, suggesting an ability to draw generalizations over the form of an explanation. We also found that teleological and mechanistic explanations were learned and generalized equally well, suggesting that if a domain-general teleological bias exists, it does not manifest as a bias in learning or generalization.     

Young children’s analogical reasoning across cultures: Similarities and differences

A cross-cultural comparison between U.S. and Hong Kong preschoolers examined factors responsible for young children’s analogical reasoning errors. On a scene analogy task, both groups had adequate prerequisite knowledge of the key relations, were the same age, and showed similar baseline performance, yet Chinese children outperformed U.S. children on more relationally complex problems. Children from both groups were highly susceptible to choosing a perceptual or semantic distractor during reasoning when one was present. Taken together, these similarities and differences suggest that (a) cultural differences can facilitate better knowledge representations by allowing more efficient processing of relationally complex problems and (b) inhibitory control is an important factor in explaining the development of children’s analogical reasoning.     

Taking a children’s rights perspective on children’s spirituality

Abstract

The right to spiritual development has had little attention in public educational policy. This is more challenging, considering the fact of increasing religious diversity and the focus on spirituality and religion in that context, as well as the way the spiritual is mentioned in documents on children’s rights. This article traces the development from the first documents on the rights of the child and responses to these documents. It is argued that educational policy and practice should pay more attention to the way children’s spirituality is included in the documents. This is an issue of general education as well as of moral philosophy. The article concludes with a claim: spiritual development is a matter of survival and flourishing as human beings, and considering this in the framework of children’s rights could mean exploring spiritual sources in one’s own faith as well as in other faiths.     

Do actions speak louder than words? Examining children’s ability to follow instructions

The ability to encode, retain, and implement instructions within working memory is central to many behaviours, including classroom activities which underpin learning. The three experiments presented here explored how action—planned, enacted, and observed—impacted 6- to 10-year-old’s ability to follow instructions. Experiment 1 (N = 81) found enacted recall was superior to verbal recall, but self-enactment at encoding had a negative effect on enacted recall and verbal recall. In contrast, observation of other-enactment (demonstration) at encoding facilitated both types of recall (Experiment 2a: N = 81). Further, reducing task demands through a reduced set of possible actions (Experiment 2b; N = 64) led to a positive effect of self-enactment at encoding for later recall (both verbal and enacted). Expecting to enact at recall may lead to the creation of an imaginal spatial-motoric plan at encoding that boosts later recall. However, children’s ability to use the additional spatial-motoric codes generated via self-enactment at encoding depends on the demands the task places on central executive resources. Demonstration at encoding appears to reduce executive demands and enable use of these additional forms of coding.     

Young children’s developing conception of knowledge and ignorance: work in progress

When do children acquire an understanding of knowledge and ignorance? We analyzed the early development of children’s spontaneous references to knowing and not knowing and conclude that 2-year-olds talk explicitly and cogently about their own knowledge as well as that of an interlocutor. Two-year-olds also admit their own ignorance. Moreover, consistent with their realization that an informant may know what they do not, 2-year-olds ask many information-seeking questions. Finally, we discuss children’s receptivity and skepticism, especially toward the counterintuitive claims of an adult. We conclude that children’s conception of knowledge and ignorance begins early but undergoes protracted refinement.     

Are the spoken durations of rare words longer than those of common words?

The effects of word frequency, word length, and practice were examined in oral productions of subjects reading lists of 25 rare or common monosyllabic words. Articulation and pause durations, their ratio, and total reading durations were derived from recordings of subjects’ speech. Recorded speech was sampled at 10 kHz, and a criterion of eight times the mean noise level was used to classify productions as articulation or pause. Lists of high frequency words were read more quickly than lists of low-frequency words. No differences were observed in the articulation component. Pause duration was greater for rare than for common words. The ratio of pause to articulation varied with length and word type. No differences were found for high-frequency words, but the ratio of five-letter words was significantly greater than that of three- or four-letter rare words. Results were discussed in relation to the nature and locus of the word-frequency effect. Criteria for defining and measuring speech productions were also raised.     

The Importance of Community Context for Young Women’s Occupational Aspirations

The effects of community context on occupational aspirations are examined in a national sample of young women in high school in the USA in 1979 (n = 2,210). Multilevel statistical models indicate that young women living in counties with a lower divorce rate, a lower percentage of women working, and more people employed in the wholesale and retail industrial sector tended to be less likely to aspire to paid work than young women living in areas with a higher divorce rate, a higher percentage of women working, and fewer people employed in the wholesale and retail industrial sector. Community context does not affect the level of young women’s occupational aspirations as predicted by prior scholarship. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 Southern Sociological Society Annual Meetings. The author thanks John Reynolds, Patricia Yancey Martin, Irene Padavic, Robert Kunovich, Jennifer Keene, Mary Guy, and the editor and reviewers at Sex Roles for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

Fundamental British values? Possible implications for children’s spirituality

This article argues that the statement of fundamental British values, as introduced in England’s education system in the period 2012–2014, is problematic, not least in relation to children’s spirituality. The context of the introduction of fundamental British values is outlined. The values chosen are more contested than they may seem, being neither fundamental nor distinctively British. How the idea has been conceptualised and implemented has adverse consequences for children’s understanding of identity, especially for some already marginalised groups, and may encourage a limited, superficial view of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. This risks excluding some groups, especially Muslims, in the current political context, and discouraging open discussion in schools of controversial topics, when such discussion helps to reduce the danger of radicalisation. Consideration of the impact of statements of values, however apparently uncontroversial, must take account of the power of those formulating such statements and the wider context.     

Setting the stage for children’s participation in worship practices

How children participate in worship practices is largely determined by adults. Adults set the stage; they shape the physical environment and determine the subject matter. Adults design the format for children’s participation in various forms of worship and the roles adults perform influence the interactions with children. Many different intentions inform these design choices and roles: Intentions revolving around faith, liturgy, community, and experience. The way adults shape worship with children points to the significance of spirituality. When adults perform directing roles, children’s spirituality can find a point of reference in stories and traditions while adults themselves gain from the process of translation this involves. When adults facilitate exploration, this nourishes both children’s and adults’ spirituality. Finally, when adults and children participate in worship practices together, it may contribute to a sense of community in which faith can be lived and shared.     

Believing what you’re told: Young children’s trust in unexpected testimony about the physical world

How do children resolve conflicts between a self-generated belief and what they are told? Four studies investigated the circumstances under which toddlers would trust testimony that conflicted with their expectations about the physical world. Thirty-month-olds believed testimony that conflicted with a naive bias (Study 1), and they also repeatedly trusted testimony that conflicted with an event they had just seen (Study 2)—even when they had an incentive to ignore the testimony (Study 3). Children responded more skeptically if they could see that the testimony was wrong as it was being delivered (Study 3), or if they had the opportunity to accumulate evidence confirming their initial belief before hearing someone contradict it (Study 4). Together, these studies demonstrate that toddlers have a robust bias to trust even surprising testimony, but this trust can be influenced by how much confidence they have in their initial belief.     

Against faith schools: a philosophical argument for children’s rights

In spite of the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants parents the right to an education in conformity with their own religious convictions, this paper argues that parents should have no such rights. It also tries to demonstrate that religious and cultural minorities have no rights to establish faith schools and that it is a child’s right in trust, to autonomous well‐being, which trumps any such claims. Faith schools, it is argued, represent a real and serious threat to children’s autonomy, especially their emotional autonomy. As such, they are incompatible with the aims of education required by a liberal democracy.