Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17- to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning.     

Collaborative partner or social tool? New evidence for young children’s understanding of joint intentions in collaborative activities

Some children’s social activities are structured by joint goals. In previous research, the criterion used to determine this was relatively weak: if the partner stopped interacting, did the child attempt to re‐engage her? But re‐engagement attempts could easily result from the child simply realizing that she needs the partner to reach her own goal in the activity (social tool explanation). In two experiments, 21‐ and 27‐month‐old children interacted with an adult in games in which they either did or did not physically need the partner to reach a concrete goal. Moreover, when the partner stopped interacting, she did so because she was either unwilling to continue (breaking off from the joint goal) or unable to continue (presumably still maintaining the joint goal). Children of both age groups encouraged the recalcitrant partner equally often whether she was or was not physically needed for goal attainment. In addition, they did so more often when the partner was unable to continue than when she was unwilling to continue. These findings suggest that young children do not just view their collaborative partners as mindless social tools, but rather as intentional, cooperative agents with whom they must coordinate intentional states.     

Origins of the human pointing gesture: a training study

Despite its importance in the development of children’s skills of social cognition and communication, very little is known about the ontogenetic origins of the pointing gesture. We report a training study in which mothers gave children one month of extra daily experience with pointing as compared with a control group who had extra experience with musical activities. One hundred and two infants of 9, 10, or 11 months of age were seen at the beginning, middle, and end of this one‐month period and tested for declarative pointing and gaze following. Infants’ability to point with the index finger at the end of the study was not affected by the training but was instead predicted by infants’ prior ability to follow the gaze direction of an adult. The frequency with which infants pointed indexically was also affected by infant gaze following ability and, in addition, by maternal pointing frequency in free play, but not by training. In contrast, infants’ ability to monitor their partner’s gaze when pointing, and the frequency with which they did so, was affected by both training and maternal pointing frequency in free play. These results suggest that prior social cognitive advances, rather than adult socialization of pointing per se, determine the developmental onset of indexical pointing, but socialization processes such as imitation and adult shaping subsequently affect both infants’ ability to monitor their interlocutor’s gaze while they point and how frequently infants choose to point.     

Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations

It has been repeatedly shown that, when people have experiences that are inconsistent with their expectations, they engage in a variety of compensatory efforts. Although there have been many superficially different accounts for these behaviors, a potentially unifying inconsistency compensation perspective is currently coalescing. Following from a common prediction error/conflict monitoring mechanism, any given inconsistency is understood as evoking a common syndrome of aversive arousal. In turn, this aversive arousal is understood to motivate palliative efforts, which manifest as the analogous compensation behaviors reported within different psychological literatures. Based on this perspective, compensation efforts following both 'high-level' (e.g., attitudinal dissonance) and 'low-level' (e.g., Stroop task color/word mismatches) inconsistencies can now be understood in terms of a common motivational account.     

Neural correlates of establishing, maintaining, and switching brain states

Although the study of brain states is an old one in neuroscience, there has been growing interest in brain state specification owing to MRI studies tracing brain connectivity at rest. In this review, we summarize recent research on three relatively well-described brain states: the resting, alert, and meditation states. We explore the neural correlates of maintaining a state or switching between states, and argue that the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum play a critical role in state maintenance, whereas the insula has a major role in switching between states. Brain state may serve as a predictor of performance in a variety of perceptual, memory, and problem solving tasks. Thus, understanding brain states is critical for understanding human performance.     

Text messaging amongst New Zealand drivers: Prevalence and risk perception

Recent work suggests that text messaging impairs simulated and actual driving performance and that this impairment exceeds that of conversing on a cell phone while driving. Additionally, research has shown that text messaging is common in several countries, and despite drivers acknowledging the high risk involved in doing so, drivers continue to engage in this behaviour – regardless of legislation banning it. A nationwide online survey in New Zealand, of 1057 respondents, collected anonymous self-report data regarding the frequency of cell phone use (conversing and text messaging) while driving, beliefs concerning the safety of conversing or text messaging while driving. This article presents part of the results of that study – focusing on text messaging behaviour and risk perception regarding text messaging while driving. Over half of respondents surveyed reported sending or reading between 1 and 5 text messages while driving in a typical week. Despite this, 89% of participants agreed that text messaging while driving in general impairs driving performance. There were no gender differences between the number of text messages read and sent. Age was found to be an important indicator of participant’s willingness to engage in text messaging while driving, with younger drivers more likely to engage in this behaviour. The implications of these findings for future research and countermeasure development are discussed.     

Putting the elephant back in the herd: elephant relative quantity judgments match those of other species

The ability to discriminate between quantities has been observed in many species. Typically, when an animal is given a choice between two sets of food, accurate performance (i.e., choosing the larger amount) decreases as the ratio between two quantities increases. A recent study reported that elephants did not exhibit ratio effects, suggesting that elephants may process quantitative information in a qualitatively different way from all other nonhuman species that have been tested (Irie-Sugimoto et al. in Anim Cogn 12:193-199, 2009). However, the results of this study were confounded by several methodological issues. We tested two African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to more thoroughly investigate relative quantity judgment in this species. In contrast to the previous study, we found evidence of ratio effects for visible and nonvisible sequentially presented sets of food. Thus, elephants appear to represent and compare quantities in much the same way as other species, including humans when they are prevented from counting. Performance supports an accumulator model in which quantities are represented as analog magnitudes. Furthermore, we found no effect of absolute magnitude on performance, providing support against an object-file model explanation of quantity judgment.     

Rats distinguish between absence of events and lack of evidence in contingency learning

The goal of three experiments was to study whether rats are aware of the difference between absence of events and lack of evidence. We used a Pavlovian extinction paradigm in which lights consistently signaling sucrose were suddenly paired with the absence of sucrose. The crucial manipulation involved the absent outcomes in the extinction phase. Whereas in the Cover conditions, access to the drinking receptacle was blocked by a metal plate, in the No Cover conditions, the drinking receptacle was accessible. The Test phase showed that in the Cover conditions, the measured expectancies of sucrose were clearly at a higher level than in the No Cover conditions. We compare two competing theories potentially explaining the findings. A cognitive theory interprets the observed effect as evidence that the rats were able to understand that the cover blocked informational access to the outcome information, and therefore the changed learning input did not necessarily signify a change of the underlying contingency in the world. An alternative associationist account, renewal theory, might instead explain the relative sparing of extinction in the Cover condition as a consequence of context change. We discuss the merits of both theories as accounts of our data and conclude that the cognitive explanation is in this case preferred.     

Relationship between language competence and emotional competence in middle childhood

Research on children's emotional competence has received considerable attention in the last decade, including the role of language. Language competence (LC) and emotional competence (EC) comprise multiple components. These components and their specific interrelations have not been studied sufficiently. In our study, we examined relations between multiple components of LC and EC in a sample of 210 school-age children. Five measures represented LC: receptive vocabulary, verbal fluency, literacy, narrative structure, and the narrative use of evaluative devices. Four measures represented EC: expressive emotion vocabulary, declarative emotion knowledge, awareness of mixed emotions, and facial emotion recognition. Results showed strong positive correlations between LC and EC ranging between r = .12 and r = .45. In particular, receptive vocabulary and literacy were closely related to emotion knowledge and awareness of mixed emotions. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that there is a common general ability factor for LC and EC. We discuss why receptive vocabulary and literacy might be so strongly related to emotion knowledge in school-age children. Our findings have implications for developmental psychologists, educational research, and speech-language pathologists.     

Exploring the positive and negative implications of facial feedback

The facial feedback effect (e.g., Strack et al., 1988) is explored in three experiments. It was found that when someone lowers their eyebrows, following instructions, their mood becomes more negative. If, however, they are instructed to raise their eyebrows they become more surprised by facts. Finally, if people are instructed to wrinkle their noses, then odors are evaluated as more unpleasant. While providing further diverse evidence for facial feedback, the experiments are also considered in the context of facial muscular paralysis induced as part of cosmetic treatments using botulinum toxin. The research presented here supports the previously suggested idea that such treatments could reduce depression, but other possible psychological impacts of such treatments are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).