How do young children deal with hybrids of living and non‐living things: The case of humanoid robots

In this experiment, we tested children's intuitions about entities that bridge the contrast between living and non‐living things. Three‐ and four‐year‐olds were asked to attribute a range of properties associated with living things and machines to novel category‐defying complex artifacts (humanoid robots), a familiar living thing (a girl), and a familiar complex artifact (a camera). Results demonstrated that 4‐year‐olds tended to treat the category‐defying entities like members of the inanimate group, while 3‐year‐olds showed more variability in their responding. This finding suggests that preschoolers' ability to classify complex artifacts that cross the living–non‐living divide becomes more stable between the ages of 3 and 4 and that children at both ages draw on a range of properties when classifying such entities.     

Audience-contingent variation in action demonstrations for humans and computers

People may exhibit two kinds of modifications when demonstrating action for others: modifications to facilitate bottom-up, or sensory-based processing; and modifications to facilitate top-down, or knowledge-based processing. The current study examined actors' production of such modifications in action demonstrations for audiences that differed in their capacity for intentional reasoning. Actors' demonstrations of complex actions for a non-anthropomorphic computer system and for people (adult and toddler) were compared. Evidence was found for greater highlighting of top-down modifications in the demonstrations for the human audiences versus the computer audience. Conversely, participants highlighted simple perceptual modifications for the computer audience, producing more punctuated and wider ranging motions. This study suggests that people consider differences in their audiences when demonstrating action.     

Prepubertal social gender transitions: What we know; what we can learn—A view from a gender affirmative lens

ABSTRACT

?Background: This article provides a review and commentary on social transition of gender-expansive prepubertal youth, analyzing risks, and benefits based on a synthesis of research and clinical observation, highlighting controversies, and setting forth recommendations, including the importance of continued clinical research.

Methods: This article involved: (1) a review and critique of the WPATH Standards of Care 7th edition guidelines on social transition; (2) a review and synthesis of empirical research on social transition in prepubertal children; (3) a discussion of clinical practice observations; (4) a discussion of continuing controversies and complexities involving early social transition; (5) a discussion of risks and benefits of social transition; and (6) conclusions and recommendations based upon the above.

Results: Results suggest that at this point research is limited and that some of the earliest research on young gender-expansive youth is methodologically questionable and has not been replicated. Newer research suggests that socially transitioned prepubertal children are often well adjusted, a finding consistent with clinical practice observations. Analysis of both emerging research and clinical reports reveal evidence of a stable transgender identity surfacing in early childhood.

Discussion: The authors make recommendations to support social transitions in prepubertal gender-expansive children, when appropriate, as a facilitator of gender health, defined as a child's opportunity to live in the gender that feels most authentic, acknowledging that there are limitations to our knowledge, and ongoing research is essential.     

Twelve- and 16-month-old infants recognize properties of mentioned absent things

Absent reference comprehension is a critical achievement of early development, yet little is known about its emergence. In the current study, 12- and 16-month-old infants' recognition of properties of mentioned absent things was used as an index of absent reference comprehension. Infants were presented with displays matching the color and prior spatial location of a mentioned absent object and displays matching the color and prior spatial location of a non-mentioned absent object. Infants could reveal their comprehension of absent reference by directing more looking and gesturing at the display matching the mentioned absent object than at the display matching the non-mentioned absent object. Infants at both ages revealed some tendency to do so, but infants at 16 months revealed more advanced understanding--infants at 16 months, but not at 12 months, coordinated their attention to the display matching properties of the mentioned absent thing with looks to the speaker. Implications for the infants' understanding of communicative intentions are discussed.     

Confidence–accuracy resolution in the misinformation paradigm is influenced by the availability of source cues

After witnessing an event, people often report having seen details that were merely suggested to them. Evidence is mixed regarding how well participants can use confidence judgments to discriminate between their correct and misled memory reports. We tested the prediction that the confidence–accuracy relationship for misled details depends upon the availability of source cues at retrieval. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 77) viewed a videotaped staged crime before reading a misleading narrative. After seven minutes or one week, the participants completed a cued recall test for the details of the original event. Prior to completing the test, all participants were warned that the narrative contained misleading details to encourage source monitoring. The results showed that the strength of the confidence–accuracy relationship declined significantly over the delay. We interpret our results in the source monitoring framework. After an extended delay, fewer diagnostic source details were available to participants, increasing reliance on retrieval fluency as a basis for memory and metamemory decisions. We tested this interpretation in a second experiment, in which participants (N = 42) completed a source monitoring test instead of a cued recall test. We observed a large effect of retention interval on source monitoring, and no significant effect on item memory. This research emphasizes the importance of securing eyewitness statements as soon as possible after an event, when witnesses are most able to discriminate between information that was personally seen and information obtained from secondary sources.     

Revisiting absolute and relative judgments in the WITNESS model

The WITNESS model (Clark in Applied Cognitive Psychology 17:629–654, 2003) provides a theoretical framework with which to investigate the factors that contribute to eyewitness identification decisions. One key factor involves the contributions of absolute versus relative judgments. An absolute contribution is determined by the degree of match between an individual lineup member and memory for the perpetrator; a relative contribution involves the degree to which the best-matching lineup member is a better match to memory than the remaining lineup members. In WITNESS, the proportional contributions of relative versus absolute judgments are governed by the values of the decision weight parameters. We conducted an exploration of the WITNESS model’s parameter space to determine the identifiability of these relative/absolute decision weight parameters, and compared the results to a restricted version of the model that does not vary the decision weight parameters. This exploration revealed that the decision weights in WITNESS are difficult to identify: Data often can be fit equally well by setting the decision weights to nearly any value and compensating with a criterion adjustment. Clark, Erickson, and Breneman (Law and Human Behavior 35:364–380, 2011) claimed to demonstrate a theoretical basis for the superiority of lineup decisions that are based on absolute contributions, but the relationship between the decision weights and the criterion weakens this claim. These findings necessitate reconsidering the role of the relative/absolute judgment distinction in eyewitness decision making.     

Social audiences can disrupt learning by teaching

To investigate the effect of a social audience on learning-by-teaching, we examined participants' solutions of the 4-ring Tower of Hanoi problem after they demonstrated the 3-ring problem to a social agent (a person) or a non-social agent (a computer). In Introduction, Discussion participants produced less optimal solutions of the 4-ring problem after demonstrating the 3-ring problem to a social agent. An analysis of pointing behavior demonstrated that social highlighting contributed substantially to this effect. Together, these findings indicate that more social highlighting may produce a cost, rather than a benefit, on how deeply the demonstrator encodes the problem solution. Experiment 3 clarified that these results were not simply caused by the disruptions inherent to social highlighting. Taken together, the results suggest that social highlighting does not come for free — producing the highlighting may lead to more shallow encoding of demonstrated actions.     

Taking the Red Pill: Using The Matrix to Explore Transgender Identity Development

This article presents a plot analysis of The Matrix and comparisons to a transgender identity development model. Major scenes throughout the movie are discussed through the lens of Devor’s transgender identity development model. The main character’s evolution from Mr. Anderson to Neo is presented, as well as how his experiences align with multiple stages in transgender identity development. Stages of transgender identity development are discussed and emphasized, including identity confusion, discovery of transgenderism, identity acceptance, transition, and transgender pride. These stages and others are discussed and related to uses in counseling sessions with transgender individuals and their family members.     

Learning from explaining: does it matter if mom is listening?

The goal of the current study was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, 4- and 5-year-olds (N=54) solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback, and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to explain the correct solutions to themselves, or to repeat the solutions. Generating explanations (to selves or moms) improved problem-solving accuracy at posttest, and explaining to mom led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. The study indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfer in children as young as 5 years and reveals that it matters if mom is listening.