Boys will be boys: a pre‐line‐up gameplay has beneficial effects on boys' but not girls' identification performance

Fifty children, aged between 4 and 7 years, underwent a sequential photo line‐up procedure in order to identify a man they had met the previous day. Half of the participants engaged in a pre‐procedure gameplay with the female interviewer. It was hypothesised that the game would stimulate rapport building and would ultimately result in an increased performance during the line‐up procedure. The beneficial effect was indeed observed, but only for the male participants. This finding suggests that gameplay may be a fruitful strategy to decrease child witness discomfort and to increase participation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Variability in the initiation of articulatory movements in the speech of stutterers and normal speakers

This study was designed to investigate the differences between stutterers and normal speakers in phonatory and articulatory timing during the initiation of fluent utterances of monosyllabic words. Electromyographic recordings of four articulatory muscles and recordings of glottal vibrations were made of repetitive utterances of a series of monosyllabic words by 15 stutterers and 17 nonstutterers. These data were analyzed in terms of average interval times between voice onset and onset of EMG activity and between onset of EMG activity in each articulator and in terms of the intrasubject variability of these durational measures. Results showed that there were no significant differences between stutterers and nonstutterers in average interval times and that stutterers, in general, were significantly more variable in their speech onset timing. Findings are discussed in terms of recent hypotheses concerning the role of timing disturbances as the main source of speech disruption in stutterers.     

Children's interpretive understanding,moral judgments,and emotion attributions: Relations to social behaviour

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5‐year‐old, 123 7‐year‐old, and 130 9‐year‐old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were measured using two moral rule transgressions. Social behaviour was assessed using teachers' ratings of aggressive and prosocial behaviour. Aggressive behaviour was positively related to interpretive understanding and negatively related to moral reasoning. Prosocial behaviour was positively associated with attribution of fear. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were related, depending on age. Interpretive understanding was unrelated to moral judgments and emotion attributions. The findings are discussed in regard to the role of interpretive understanding and moral and affective knowledge in understanding children's social behaviour.     

On Hannah Arendt: The Worldly In-Between of Human Beings and its Ethical Consequences

Abstract

In this paper, I show how a concept of ethics can be derived from Hannah Arendt’s theory of action in The Human Condition, which contains from her call for action. When she looks at the ‘political actor’, as well as at the concept of ‘political situation’, her ethical claim is first of all the need to take initiative, to act. Hence, ‘political situations’ as she defines them are discussed as common responsibilities. But common responsibility is rooted in the in-between of human beings, rather than in individual human nature and is determined by Arendt’s principle of humanity. Therefore, at the centre of an implicit Arendtian ethics stands the world and the in-between of human beings.     

Age-related differences in brain electrical activity during extended continuous face recognition in younger children, older children and adults

To examine the development of recognition memory in primary-school children, 36 healthy younger children (8-9 years old) and 36 healthy older children (11-12 years old) participated in an ERP study with an extended continuous face recognition task (Study 1). Each face of a series of 30 faces was shown randomly six times interspersed with distracter faces. The children were required to make old vs. new decisions. Older children responded faster than younger children, but younger children exhibited a steeper decrease in latencies across the five repetitions. Older children exhibited better accuracy for new faces, but there were no age differences in recognition accuracy for repeated faces. For the N2, N400 and late positive complex (LPC), we analyzed the old/new effects (repetition 1 vs. new presentation) and the extended repetition effects (repetitions 1 through 5). Compared to older children, younger children exhibited larger frontocentral N2 and N400 old/new effects. For extended face repetitions, negativity of the N2 and N400 decreased in a linear fashion in both age groups. For the LPC, an ERP component thought to reflect recollection, no significant old/new or extended repetition effects were found. Employing the same face recognition paradigm in 20 adults (Study 2), we found a significant N400 old/new effect at lateral frontal sites and a significant LPC repetition effect at parietal sites, with LPC amplitudes increasing linearly with the number of repetitions. This study clearly demonstrates differential developmental courses for the N400 and LPC pertaining to recognition memory for faces. It is concluded that face recognition in children is mediated by early and probably more automatic than conscious recognition processes. In adults, the LPC extended repetition effect indicates that adult face recognition memory is related to a conscious and graded recollection process rather than to an automatic recognition process.     

Switching between tasks and responses: a developmental study

Task switching requires the ability to flexibly switch between task rules and responses, and is sensitive to developmental change. We tested the hypothesis that developmental changes in task switch performance are associated with changes in the facilitating or interfering effect of the previously retrieved stimulus-response (S-R) association. Three age groups (7-8-year-olds, 10-12-year-olds and 20-25-year-olds) performed a two-choice reaction time (RT) task in which spatially compatible or incompatible responses were required. The RT costs associated with switching between tasks were larger when responses were repeated than when responses were alternated. Younger children showed a greater cost than adults when switching between tasks but repeating responses. This age difference decreased when the interval between the previous response and the upcoming stimulus increased. Switch costs were larger when switching to the compatible task than to the incompatible task, but this effect did not differ between age groups. These findings suggest that young children build up stronger transient associations between task sets and response sets, which interfere with their ability to switch to currently intended actions. A similar pattern has previously been observed for older adults (Mayr, 2001), suggesting a common contributor to task switching deficits across the life span.     

The development of creative cognition across adolescence: distinct trajectories for insight and divergent thinking

We examined developmental trajectories of creative cognition across adolescence. Participants (N = 98), divided into four age groups (12/13 yrs, 15/16 yrs, 18/19 yrs, and 25–30 yrs), were subjected to a battery of tasks gauging creative insight (visual; verbal) and divergent thinking (verbal; visuo‐spatial). The two older age groups outperformed the two younger age groups on insight tasks. The 25–30‐year‐olds outperformed the two youngest age groups on the originality measure of verbal divergent thinking. No age‐group differences were observed for verbal divergent thinking fluency and flexibility. On divergent thinking in the visuo‐spatial domain, however, only 15/16‐year‐olds outperformed 12/13‐year‐olds; a model with peak performance for 15/16‐years‐old showed the best fit. The results for the different creativity processes are discussed in relation to cognitive and related neurobiological models. We conclude that mid‐adolescence is a period of not only immaturities but also of creative potentials in the visuo‐spatial domain, possibly related to developing control functions and explorative behavior.     

Influence of Coaching on Integrity Test Performance and Unlikely Virtues Scale Scores

Little is known about how assessment center exercises might be designed to better elicit job-relevant behavior. This study uses trait activation theory as a theoretical lens for increasing the number of behaviors that can be observed in assessment centers. Two standardized exercise stimuli (specific exercise instructions and role-player prompts) are proposed, and their effects on the observability of candidate behavior are examined. Results showed a significant effect of role-player prompts in increasing both the general number of behavioral observations and the number of behavioral observations related to three out of four dimensions. Specific exercise instructions did not have effects on observability. Implications for trait activation theory and assessment center practice are discussed.