Understanding of speaker certainty and false‐belief reasoning: a comparison of Japanese and German preschoolers

It has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, English‐speaking 3‐year‐olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In the present studies, we tested 3‐year‐old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same‐aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts. Japanese children profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty in a way that German children did not – presumably because Japanese but not German children must process such marking routinely in their daily discourse. These results are discussed in the broader context of linguistic and theory of mind development.     

Adjustments to local friction in multifinger prehension

The authors studied the effects of surface friction at the digit-object interface on digit forces and moments when 12 participants statically held an object in a 5-digit grasp. The authors changed low-friction contact (LFC) with rayon and high-friction contact (HFC) with sandpaper independently for each digit in all 32 possible combinations. Normal forces of the thumb and virtual finger (VF), an imagined finger with a mechanical effect equal to that of the 4 fingers, increased with the thumb at LFC or with an increase in the number of fingers at LFC. When the thumb was at LFC, the thumb tangential force decreased. The VF tangential force decreased when the number of fingers at LFC increased. The interaction of the local responses to friction and the synergic responses necessary to maintain the equilibrium explain the coordination of individual digit forces.     

Language-specific and universal influences in children's syntactic packaging of Manner and Path: a comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish

Different languages map semantic elements of spatial relations onto different lexical and syntactic units. These crosslinguistic differences raise important questions for language development in terms of how this variation is learned by children. We investigated how Turkish-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children (mean age 3;8) package the semantic elements of Manner and Path onto syntactic units when both the Manner and the Path of the moving Figure occur simultaneously and are salient in the event depicted. Both universal and language-specific patterns were evident in our data. Children used the semantic-syntactic mappings preferred by adult speakers of their own languages, and even expressed subtle syntactic differences that encode different relations between Manner and Path in the same way as their adult counterparts (i.e., Manner causing vs. incidental to Path). However, not all types of semantics-syntax mappings were easy for children to learn (e.g., expressing Manner and Path elements in two verbal clauses). In such cases, Turkish- and Japanese-speaking children frequently used syntactic patterns that were not typical in the target language but were similar to patterns used by English-speaking children, suggesting some universal influence. Thus, both language-specific and universal tendencies guide the development of complex spatial expressions.     

Gravity bias in young and adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): tests with a modified opaque-tubes task

Young human children at around 2 years of age fail to predict the correct location of an object when it is dropped from the top of an S-shape opaque tube. They search in the location just below the releasing point (Hood, 1995). This type of error, called a 'gravity bias', has recently been reported in dogs and monkeys. In the present study, we investigated whether young and adult chimpanzees also show such a gravity bias in a modified version of the original opaque-tube task. The original task by Hood and colleagues required the subject to search in a location after the object had fallen, while in the task reported here, subjects were required to predict the location before the object was dropped. Thus the present procedure does not involve explicit invisible displacement operations, one of the important components of the original procedure. In Experiment 1 both young (1.5-2.5-year-old) and adult chimpanzees predicted the location of falling food items below the releasing point even when crossed tubes were used. These gravity errors remained after the extensive experience of using the tubes themselves. Experiment 2 further tested adult and 4-year-old chimpanzees under the set-up in which the straight and crossed tubes were simultaneously presented. The results were the same as those in the previous test, suggesting that developmental changes and learning effect do not affect the gravity bias in chimpanzees.     

Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction

Although multiple neuroimaging studies suggest that affect labeling (i.e., putting feelings into words) can dampen affect-related responses in the amygdala, the consequences of affect labeling have not been examined in other channels of emotional responding. We conducted four studies examining the effect of affect labeling on self-reported emotional experience. In study one, self-reported distress was lower during affect labeling, compared to passive watching, of negative emotional pictures. Studies two and three added reappraisal and distraction conditions, respectively. Affect labeling showed similar effects on self-reported distress as both of these intentional emotion regulation strategies. In each of the first three studies, however, participant predictions about the effects of affect labeling suggest that unlike reappraisal and distraction, people do not believe affect labeling to be an effective emotion regulation strategy. Even after having the experience of affect labels leading to lower distress, participants still predicted that affect labeling would increase distress in the future. Thus, affect labeling is best described as an incidental emotion regulation process. Finally, study four employed positive emotional pictures and here, affect labeling was associated with diminished self-reported pleasure, relative to passive watching. This suggests that affect labeling tends to dampen affective responses in general, rather than specifically alleviating negative affect.     

Delineating potential mechanisms of implicit alcohol cognitions: drinking restraint, negative affect, and their relationship with approach alcohol associations

Problem drinkers may use alcohol to avoid negative mood states and may develop implicit cognitive associations between negative emotional states and reinforcing properties of drinking. It is paradoxical that attempts to control drinking, such as among those high in drinking restraint, may inadvertently increase desire to drink and subsequent alcohol consumption, and this may be exaggerated under times of emotional distress when urges to drink are high. We examined whether individuals who are high on drinking restraint would demonstrate stronger alcohol-related thoughts elicited by stimuli that represent the desire to use alcohol, in response to stronger versus weaker negative mood arousal. Seventy hazardous drinkers completed measurements of drinking restraint, alcohol consumption, and consequences of use. After being randomized to view negative or positive pictures sets, participants completed an Implicit Association Task (IAT) to test differences in the strength of the association between desire to approach or avoid alcohol or water cues, and then a measurement of subjective craving following the IAT. Regression analyses showed that trait restriction not temptation was positively related to IAT scores, after controlling for relevant covariates and explained 7% of the total variance. Trait temptation not IAT predicted subjective craving. Negative affect was unrelated to IAT scores, singly or in conjunction with measures of drinking restraint, contrary to predictions. In sum, implicit alcohol cognitions are related to attempts to restrict drinking not temptation to drink and are less strongly influenced by mood state.     

Young Children's Conception of the Biological World

ABSTRACT— What are the components of children's biological-knowledge system before systematic teaching at school? Can this knowledge system be called naive biology? We propose that young children's biological-knowledge system has at least two essential components—(a) the knowledge needed to identify biological entities and phenomena and (b) teleological and vitalistic causality—and that these components constitute a form of biology. We discuss how this naive biology serves as the basis for performance and learning in socially and culturally important practices, such as health practices and biology instruction.     

Young children''s naive theory of biology

This article aimed at investigating the nature of young children's naive theory of biology by reviewing a large number of studies conducted in our laboratories. More specifically, we tried to answer the following five critical questions. What components does young children's knowledge system for biological phenomena (or naive biology) have? What functions does it have in children's lives? How is it acquired in ontogenesis? How does its early version change as children grow older? Is it universal across cultures and through history? We propose that young children's biological knowledge system has at least three components, that is, knowledge needed to specify the target objects of biology, ways of inferring attributes or behaviors of biological kinds, and a non-intentional causal explanatory framework, and that these three constitute a form of biology, which is adaptive in children's lives. We also claim that the core of naive biology is acquired based on specific cognitive constraints as well as the general mechanism of personification and the resultant vitalistic causality, but it is differently instantiated and elaborated through activity-based experiences in the surrounding culture.     

Human gestures trigger different attentional shifts in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens)

Brain lateralization has been the matter of extensive research over the last centuries, but it remains an unsolved issue. While hand preferences have been extensively studied, very few studies have investigated laterality of eye use in non-human primates. We examined eye preference in 14 Campbell’s monkeys (Cercopithecus c. campbelli). We assessed eye preference to look at a seed placed inside a tube using monocular vision. Eye use was recorded for 100 independent and non-rewarded trials per individual. All of the 14 monkeys showed very strong preferences in the choice of the eye used to look inside the tube (mean preference: 97.6%). Eight subjects preferred the right eye and six subjects preferred the left eye. The results are discussed in light of previous data on eye preference in primates, and compared to data on hand preference from these subjects. Our findings would support the hypothesis for an early emergence of lateralization for perceptual processes compared to manual motor functions.     

Is there any "free" choice? Self and dissonance in two cultures

Four experiments provided support for the hypothesis that upon making a choice, individuals justify their choice in order to eliminate doubts about culturally sanctioned aspects of the self, namely, competence and efficacy in North America and positive appraisal by other people in Japan. Japanese participants justified their choice (by increasing liking for chosen items and decreasing liking for rejected items) in the standard free-choice dissonance paradigm only when self-relevant others were primed, either by questionnaires (Studies 1-3) or by incidental exposure to schematic faces (Study 4). In the absence of these social cues, Japanese participants showed no dissonance effect. In contrast, European Americans justified their choices regardless of the social-cue manipulations. Implications for cognitive dissonance theory are discussed.