Individual differences among children in spelling and reading styles

Previous studies have found differences among children in their relative reliance on spelling-sound rules and word-specific associations in reading words. Children at one end of the continuum ("Phoenicians") rely heavily on spelling-sound rules; children at the other end ("Chinese") are more likely to use specific associations. This study found evidence for a Phoenician-Chinese continuum in spelling as well as in reading. Ability to spell nonsense word (e.g., "prunt") correlated more highly with ability to spell regular words (e.g., "grunt") than with ability to spell exception words (e.g., "front"). Children who were skilled at rules tended to overgeneralize them to exception words. In addition, a measure of rule use in spelling correlated with measures of rule use in reading.     

Classical conditioning and retention of the infant's eyelid response: effects of age and interstimulus interval

Independent groups of 10-,20-, and 30-day-old infants were subjected to a classical eyelid conditioning procedure involving either a 500- or a 1500-msec interstimulus interval (ISI). Ten days later, all received a second conditioning session. A reliable increase in conditioned responding was observed at all ages but only by infants receiving the 1500-msec ISI. Although age was not a significant factor in any conditioning measure except final performance level, which was greater for the oldest than for the youngest group, it did influence long-term retention. A reliable memory component was observed in the Session 2 performance of infants initially trained at 20 and 30 days but not at 10 days. These data demonstrate the importance of temporal parameters in the formation of conditioned associations very early in infancy and provide evidence for the long-term behavioral consequences of those associations.     

Storage and processing constraints on integrating story information in children and adults

In two experiments, this study examined the effects of integration complexity on the ability of child and adult listeners to integrate information from different sentences in a story. First and third graders and college adults were read stories containing incongruent event information and succeeding resolution information that explained the incongruency, and asked questions that probed incongruency recognition and resolution. Information storage complexity was manipulated by separating the event and resolution information and foregrounding or backgrounding the focal story characters. Processing complexity was manipulated by varying the inferential complexity of relating the resolution to the incongruent information, and the coreferential cues linking the event and resolution information. The results showed that increases in complexity adversely affected resolution integration, and more for the children than for the adults. The children's integration performance, in particular, was affected by theme discontinuity and coreferential complexity.     

Operant theory and methodology in infant vocal conditioning

The numerous mechanisms of behavior change in infant development are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Although it is agreed that elicitation and reinforcement both influence infant learning, the distinction between these two learning mechanisms was clarified in response to K. Bloom's (1984, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 93-102) commentary. The theoretical and methodological assumptions of an functional analysis of infant behavior were made explicit in the context of the C. L. Poulson study (1983, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 471-489). The rationale for the use of DRO schedules to control for elicitation effects of continuous reinforcement and the inadequacy of noncontingent schedules for this purpose were also discussed.     

The development of anticipatory hand orientation during infancy

The development of infants' prehensile adjustments regarding the orientation of objects was investigated. Five- and nine-month-olds (N = 16 per group) were presented with horizontally and vertically oriented dowels to determine at what point during the reach, hand orientation approximated that of the dowel. Nine-month-olds rotated their hands appropriately, early in the course of the reach, i.e., before tactual contact of the dowel, whereas five-month-olds did so mostly after tactual contact. Analyses of the effects of trials within the experimental session indicated that this age difference was not associated with practice or fatigue effects. The results are discussed in relation to the development of visual control of prehensile behavior.     

Sources of visual field interference in children and adults

Subjects at three grade levels, third, sixth, and college (8, 11, and 20 years of age, respectively), were asked to identify briefly presented words accompanied by either words or letter strings in the same or opposite hemifield. Results indicated two sources of visual field interference, one relating to the presence of alphanumeric information elsewhere in the visual field and the second concerning the meaningfulness (lexical identity) of that information. The former showed a decrease in importance with age, and the latter an increase. Results were discussed in terms of the development of selective attention and hemispheric interaction.     

Biasing evaluations to appear unbiased: A self-presentational paradox

Subjects interviewed a confederate posing as a job applicant. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, half the subjects were insulted by the confederate at the end of the interview and half were not insulted. Half the subjects were observed by the experimenter during the final phase of the interview and evaluated the confederate publicly. The remaining subjects were unobserved during the interview and evaluated the confederate anonymously. As predicted, subjects who were publicly insulted were more favorable toward the confederate than were subjects who were privately insulted. Within the public/insult condition, subjects scoring high on Snyder's (1974, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537) self-monitoring scale were more favorable toward the confederate than were subjects scoring low on this scale. The positivity bias occurred only on highly subjective ratings, which are most prone to the appearance of bias. The results are discussed in terms of the subjects' desire to avoid the appearance of bias by biasing their evaluations.     

The effect of instruction with relational and item-specific elaborative strategies on young children's organization and free recall

One hundred and sixty second-grade children were assigned on the basis of a free recall pretest to four instruction conditions and were given a series of lists of pictures for free recall. For three groups, the instructions were directed at encoding either (a) list organizational information, (b) item-specific semantic information, or (c) organizational and individual item information, while the fourth group constituted a “No-training” control with standard free recall instructions. The subjects received either related or unrelated lists during the training phase and related or unrelated lists during two post-tests, immediately following and 1 week after training. For both types of lists, instructions emphasizing list organization were more effective than those emphasizing item-specific elaboration. Subjects given individual item elaborative instructions showed levels of recall which were comparable to those of the control subjects. While the combined effect of organizational and individual item processing did not exceed the performance produced by organizational instructions alone, the degree of generalization was greater for subjects processing both kinds of information, especially when subjects received related lists during training.     

Distinguishing between social reinforcement and social elicitation

The theoretical, procedural, analytic, and interpretive components of Poulson's (1983, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 36, 471–489) study were considered in an effort to clarify the distinction between social reinforcement and social elicitation. Contrary to Poulson's contention, DRO was not, and cannot by definition be, a control for reinforcement. More importantly, the speciestypical, social nature of the infant probably reflects the collaborative influence of elicitation and reinforcement. By carefully unravelling these two interacting processes, future conditioning studies might specially enhance our knowledge of early social development.     

Effects of hierarchical organization on children's judgments of distance and direction

The impact of the hierarchical organization of a space on judgments of direction and distance was assessed in two studies using two-dimensional models analogous to those used by A. Stevens and P. Coupe (1978, Cognitive Psychology, 10, 422–437). In each study the models contained two stars and were divided into two parts by a curved boundary line. In the Homogeneous condition the stars were located in the same subsection. In the Congruent condition the leftmost star was in the left subsection and the rightmost star was in the right subsection. In the Incongruent condition the rightmost star was in the left subsection and the leftmost star was in the right subsection. In Experiment 1 first graders, third graders, and college students were required to remember the location of the stars. Results indicated that the first and third graders tended to use the relationship between the subsections as a clue to the relationship between the sites within them, thus extending the results of Stevens and Coupe (1978) to children. In Experiment 2 preschoolers, first, and third graders were asked to judge with the materials directly in front of them, which of the two stars was closer to a site located in one of the subsections. Results indicated that the Incongruent condition led to errors among the preschoolers and first graders but not the third graders, thus indicating that these groups tended to judge as closer the site within the same subsection even though it was really farther away. The results of both studies are discussed as indicative of a tendency among young children to impose organization on information encoded in memory and in relation to increases in metric accuracy, decentration, and efficient scanning which enable them to more accurately evaluate when such organization is and is not appropriate. Implications for behavior in large-scale environments are also discussed, with particular reference to the effect of barriers on perceptions of distance and direction.