Answering Questions and Explaining Answers: A Study of Finnish-Speaking Children

This research explores, within the framework of Relevance Theory, how children’s ability to answer questions and explain their answers develops between the ages of 3 and 9 years. Two hundred and ten normally developing Finnish-speaking children participated in this study. The children were asked questions requiring processing of inferential meanings and routines, and were asked to explain their correct answers to elicit understanding about their awareness of how they had derived the answers from the context. The results indicated that the number of correct answers increased rapidly between the ages of 3 years and 4–5 years. Familiarity of context had a significant effect on young children’s ability to answer questions. Becoming aware of the information used in inferencing developed gradually over time between the ages of 3 and 9. Analysis of the children’s incorrect answers and explanations showed that, as children develop, their unsophisticated answer strategies diminish and they increasingly utilize context even in incorrect answers and explanations.     

Factors in the fatigue of heavy vehicle drivers

This study assessed work-related and driver-related factors in fatigue among Finnish heavy vehicle drivers. 683 professional drivers responded to a questionnaire, 27.8% of whom reported often feeling fatigue during their work shifts. Of the respondents, 27.5% reported having momentarily fallen asleep at the wheel while driving during the past year. Almost half (46.8%) of the fatigued drivers estimated the reasons for momentarily falling asleep were work-related. Long working shifts and short sleeps significantly increased the risk of momentarily falling asleep at the wheel. The risk of fatigue was the highest for the drivers who were unable to choose the time of their breaks.     

Introduction: Developmental Processes in Adulthood—European Research Perspectives

The main objective of this Special European Issue is to investigate some topical aspects of recent research on adult development in Europe. More specifically, the issue offers a detailed discussion of questions involved in complex forms of adult cognition, scientific thinking, responses to the demands of everyday life, the effects of various life events on well-being, and the construction of an integrated model of the cognitive, social, and personality domains. Theo- retically, the articles are based on various viewpoints such as the neo-Piagetian perspectives on thinking, although others have connections with the Vygotskian approach to learning. In conclusion, we assert that the developmental processes of adulthood should always be viewed multidimensionally, contextually, and holistically, as the articles themselves clearly demonstrate.     

Young adults' achievement and attributional strategies in the transition from school to work: antecedents and consequences

This study focused on investigating the extent to which the achievement and attributional strategies individuals deploy influence their success in dealing with the transition from school to work, and whether their success or failure in this particular would have consequences for the kinds of strategy they deployed later in life. Two hundred and fifty young adults filled in the Cartoon‐Attribution‐Strategy Inventory, a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory, and a work status questionnaire at the beginning of the last spring term of their curriculum, four months after their graduation, and a year and a half after it. The results showed that the deployment of maladaptive strategies, such as passive avoidance, led to problems in dealing with the transition from school to work. In turn, young adults' problems in dealing with this transition decreased their use of self‐serving causal attributions, which was also found to lead to increased depressive symptomatology. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regulation of brain activity in the fusiform face and parahippocampal place areas in 7–11-year-old children

Developmental studies have demonstrated that cognitive processes such as attention, suppression of interference and memory develop throughout childhood and adolescence. However, little is currently known about the development of top-down control mechanisms and their influence on cognitive performance. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate modulation of activity in the ventral visual cortex in healthy 7–11-year-old children and young adults. The participants performed tasks that required attention to either face (Fs task) or scene (Sf task) images while trying to ignore distracting scene or face images, respectively. A face-selective area in the fusiform gyrus (fusiform face area, FFA) and an area responding preferentially to scene images in the parahippocampal gyrus (parahippocampal place area, PPA) were defined using functional localizers. Children responded slower and less accurately in the tasks than adults. In children, the right FFA was less selective to face images and regulation of activity between the Fs and Sf tasks was weaker compared to adults. In the PPA, selectivity to scenes and regulation of activity, there according to the task demands were comparable between children and adults. During the tasks, children activated prefrontal cortical areas including the middle (MFG) and superior (SFG) frontal gyrus more than adults. Functional connectivity between the right FFA and left MFG was stronger in adults than children in the Fs task. Children, on the other hand, had stronger functional connectivity than adults in the Sf task between the right FFA and right PPA and between right MFG and medial SFG. There were no group differences in the functional connectivity between the PPA and the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Together the results suggest that, in 7–11-year-old children, the FFA is still immature, whereas the selectivity to scenes and regulation of activity in the PPA is comparable to adults. The results also indicated functional immaturity of the PFC in children compared to adults and weaker connectivity between the PFC and the rFFA, explaining the weaker regulation of activity in the rFFA between the Fs and Sf tasks.     

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.     

Use of context in question answering by 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children

This study investigates, within the theory of relevance of Sperber & Wilson (1995), how 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children (n = 45) use context when answering questions. The children were required to answer questions that placed differing contextual and processing demands on them, as predicted by the theory. The results indicate that an increasing ability to use complex contextual information was related to age and was reflected in the children's ability to answer questions appropriately. A developmental pattern became evident in terms of how the children assigned referents, enriched semantic underdetermination, and recovered implicatures. It also became evident that even at the age of 5 years 6 months the children were in the process of becoming more skilled at integrating contextually complex inferences. It was further shown how children's selection of the appropriate context, given the focus of the question, depended on how relevance was achieved in that context.     

Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency

Is it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes are higher-order biological processes, albeit ones that exhibit emergent properties. Although consciousness, experience, and representation are emergent properties of higher-order biological organisms, the capacity for hierarchical regulation is a property of all living systems. Thus, while the capacity for consciousness transforms the process of hierarchical regulation, consciousness is not an autonomous center of control. Instead, consciousness functions as a system for coordinating novel representations of the most pressing demands placed on the organism at any given time. While it does not regulate action directly, consciousness orients and activates preconscious control systems that mediate the construction of genuinely novel action. Far from being an epiphenomenon, consciousness plays a central albeit non-autonomous role in psychological functioning.