Six does not just mean a lot: preschoolers see number words as specific

This paper examines what children believe about unmapped number words - those number words whose exact meanings children have not yet learned. In Study 1, 31 children (ages 2-10 to 4-2) judged that the application of five and six changes when numerosity changes, although they did not know that equal sets must have the same number word. In Study 2, 15 children (ages 2-5 to 3-6) judged that six plus more is no longer six, but that a lot plus more is still a lot. Findings support the hypothesis that children treat number words as referring to specific, unique numerosities even before they know exactly which numerosity each word refers to.     

Commentaries on “Beyond statistical significance: Five principles for the new era of data analysis and reporting”

Three commentaries below provide different perspectives on data analysis and reporting. They generally focus on how the quality of the measures and manipulations determines the value of the analysis. Norbert Schwarz and Fritz Strack's comment is less on the right statistic and more on “sloppy reasoning, gaps between theoretical concepts and their operationalizations, and blissful ignorance of the situated nature of human thinking, feeling, and doing contribute more to the limited reproducibility of empirical findings than the choice of a particular test statistic.” They propose that particular effects are contextual and inappropriately labeled as true or false. Instead, our job is to focus on general constructs that make sense of the diversity of human experience and psychological reactions. Too often studies replicating psychological effects in the noisy and confounded conditions of the marketplace result in statistical uncertainty of garbage in, garbage out. Researchers instead need to look toward tests of specific interactions, which can clarify the influencing factors based on theoretical considerations. The second comment is by Andrew Gelman, an outstanding psychological statistician. He proposes that “once the data have been collected, the most important decisions have already been done.” He then provides four recommendations that enable the statistics to work appropriately. The first requirement of an effective study is to be sure that the measures address the construct of interest. Similar to the position of Schwarz and Strack, it is important to articulate the relevance of a statistically significant finding. The second recommendation seeks to curb large number of studies with inflated effect sizes built from narrow studies and unwarranted optimism. The third recommendation is to simulate data from a model and consider the distribution of possible results. That is often done to test a new analysis method, but it can be even more important in marketplace studies where novel characteristics of the sample and experimental conditions are included in the analysis. Finally, he recommends that one consider likely analyses needed before getting the data. Such foresight would encourage, for example, thinking about the kind of data needed to defend the equality of the control demographics against the treatment. The final commentary is by Stijn van Osselaer. He agrees that p-values reflect the detailed methods from a given study but do not focus on the problem of generalizability. Like Gelman, he sees designs focused on effect sizes may have generated too many studies that do not replicate. He contrasts broad explorations with narrowly defined existence tests that provide evidence that an effect exists somewhere but are mute on other contexts where they may apply. For theoretical problems relevant to applications, it is important to identify moderators through broad sampling across population characteristics, stimuli, and situations. He proposes that consumer psychologists should not try to do everything in one paper, but to build practically relevant, applicable knowledge across multiple articles. Different articles, authors, and research methods play various roles, with each article focusing on important stages in the process from generating hypotheses, providing existence proofs, and exploring their broad applicability. That pragmatic approach can integrate theoretical silos that seek to resolve complex human problems and has promise as a criterion for relevant publications.     

Variability signatures distinguish verbal from nonverbal counting for both large and small numbers

Humans appear to share with animals a nonverbal counting process. In a nonverbal counting condition, subjects pressed a key a numeral-specified number of times, while saying “the” at every press. The mean number of presses increased as a power function of the target number, with a constant coefficient of variation (c.v.), both within and beyond the proposed subitizing range (1–4 or 5), suggesting small numbers are represented on the same continuum as larger numbers and subject to the same noise process (scalar variability). By contrast, when subjects counted their presses out loud as fast as they could, the c.v. decreased as the inverse square root of the target value (binomial variability instead of scalar variability). The unexpected power-law relation between target value and mean number of presses in nonverbal counting suggests a new hypothesis about the development of the function relating number symbols to mental magnitudes.     

This cat has nine lives? Children's memory for genericity in language

Generic noun phrases ("Birds lay eggs") are important for expressing knowledge about abstract kinds. The authors hypothesized that genericity would be part of gist memory, such that young children would appropriately recall whether sentences were presented as generic or specific. In 4 experiments, preschoolers and college students (N = 280) heard a series of sentences in either generic form (e.g., "Bears climb trees") or specific form (e.g., "This bear climbs trees") and were asked to recall the sentences following a 4-min distractor task. Participants in all age groups correctly distinguished between generic and specific noun phrases (NPs) in their recall, even when forgetting the details of the NP form. Memory for predicate content (e.g., "climb trees") was largely unaffected by genericity, although memory for category labels (e.g., "bear") was at times better for those who heard sentences with generic wording. Overall, these results suggest that generic form is maintained in long-term memory even for young children and thus may serve as the foundation for constructing knowledge about kinds.     

Non-verbal numerical cognition: from reals to integers

Data on numerical processing by verbal (human) and non-verbal (animal and human) subjects are integrated by the hypothesis that a non-verbal counting process represents discrete (countable) quantities by means of magnitudes with scalar variability. These appear to be identical to the magnitudes that represent continuous (uncountable) quantities such as duration. The magnitudes representing countable quantity are generated by a discrete incrementing process, which defines next magnitudes and yields a discrete ordering. In the case of continuous quantities, the continuous accumulation process does not define next magnitudes, so the ordering is also continuous ('dense'). The magnitudes representing both countable and uncountable quantity are arithmetically combined in, for example, the computation of the income to be expected from a foraging patch. Thus, on the hypothesis presented here, the primitive machinery for arithmetic processing works with real numbers (magnitudes).     

A Slippery Myth: How Learning Style Beliefs Shape Reasoning about Multimodal Instruction and Related Scientific Evidence

The learning style myth is a commonly held myth that matching instruction to a student's “learning style” will result in improved learning, while providing mismatched instruction will result in suboptimal learning. The present study used a short online reasoning exercise about the efficacy of multimodal instruction to investigate the nature of learning styles beliefs. We aimed to: understand how learning style beliefs interact with beliefs about multimodal learning; characterize the potential complexity of learning style beliefs and understand how this short exercise might influence endorsements of learning styles. Many participants who believed in the learning style myth supported the efficacy of multimodal learning, and many were willing to revise their belief in the myth after the exercise. Personal experiences and worldviews were commonly cited as reasons for maintaining beliefs in learning styles. Findings reveal the complexity of learning style beliefs, and how they interact with evidence in previously undocumented ways.     

Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Childhood: Feelings about Spending Predict Children's Financial Decision Making

Adults differ in the extent to which they find spending money to be distressing; “tightwads” find spending money painful, and “spendthrifts” do not find spending painful enough. This affective dimension has been reliably measured in adults and predicts a variety of important financial behaviors and outcomes (e.g., saving behavior and credit scores). Although children's financial behavior has also received attention, feelings about spending have not been studied in children, as they have in adults. We measured the spendthrift–tightwad (ST–TW) construct in children for the first time, with a sample of 5‐ to 10‐year‐old children (N = 225). Children across the entire age range were able to reliably report on their affective responses to spending and saving, and children's ST–TW scores were related to parent reports of children's temperament and financial behavior. Further, children's ST–TW scores were predictive of whether they chose to save or spend money in the lab, even after controlling for age and how much they liked the offered items. Our novel findings—that children's feelings about spending and saving can be measured from an early age and relate to their behavior with money—are discussed with regard to theoretical and practical implications. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What “you” and “we” say about me: How small shifts in language reveal and empower fundamental shifts in perspective

One of the most fundamental, yet often overlooked, components of language is the personal pronoun system. Pronouns reveal and empower different perspectives, providing insight into and even altering how a person is conceptualizing the self. Here, we illustrate how the pronouns “I,” “you,” and “we” can enable shifts in perspective that bring a person further from, or closer to, others. We additionally highlight the implications of these pronoun shifts on the addressee(s). We review a growing body of research that focuses on how these words can function as both windows—providing insight into the thoughts and emotions of a speaker, and levers—that can subtly alter the speaker's and addressee(s)’ thoughts, emotions, and even behaviors, across a range of domains. We conclude by discussing possibilities for future research.     

Preschool-age children and adults flexibly shift their preferences for auditory versus visual modalities but do not exhibit auditory dominance

The goal of this study was to evaluate the claim that young children display preferences for auditory stimuli over visual stimuli. This study was motivated by concerns that the visual stimuli employed in prior studies were considerably more complex and less distinctive than the competing auditory stimuli, resulting in an illusory preference for auditory cues. Across three experiments, preschool-age children and adults were trained to use paired audio-visual cues to predict the location of a target. At test, the cues were switched so that auditory cues indicated one location and visual cues indicated the opposite location. In contrast to prior studies, preschool-age children did not exhibit auditory dominance. Instead, children and adults flexibly shifted their preferences as a function of the degree of contrast within each modality, with high contrast leading to greater use.