An investigation of preschoolers' misattributions of the properties of two‐dimensional images: understanding the relationship between a symbol and its referent

Previous studies have found that preschoolers are confused about the relationship between two‐dimensional (2D) symbols and their referents. Preschoolers report that 2D images (e.g. televised images and photographs) share some of the characteristics of the objects they are representing. A novel Comparison Task was created to test what might account for these misattributions of the properties of 2D images. Three‐and‐a‐half‐ and four‐and‐a‐half‐year olds made comparisons between items presented in two of three formats simultaneously, i.e. as a real object and as an object appearing on television (TV), as a real object and as a photo of that object, or as an object appearing on TV and in a photo. Presenting the televised object or the photo of the object along with the real object aided performance; children indicated that televised objects and photos of objects no longer shared the properties of the real objects. Children also performed better when presented with two 2D images of the same object (the photo of the object and the televised image of the object). Although dual‐representation might account for these misattributions of the properties of 2D images, because children also performed better when two 2D images of the same object were present, other possibilities such as children using pictures as communicative devices and disregarding the pragmatics of the task should be explored. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why do children lack the flexibility to innovate tools?

Despite being proficient tool users, young children have surprising difficulty in innovating tools (making novel tools to solve problems). Two experiments found that 4- to 7-year-olds had difficulty on two tool innovation problems and explored reasons for this inflexibility. Experiment 1 (N = 51) showed that children’s performance was unaffected by the need to switch away from previously correct strategies. Experiment 2 (N = 92) suggested that children’s difficulty could not easily be explained by task pragmatics or permission issues. Both experiments found evidence that some children perseverated on a single incorrect strategy, but such perseveration was insufficient to explain children’s tendency not to innovate tools. We suggest that children’s difficulty lies not with switching, task pragmatics, or behavioral perseveration but rather with solving the fundamentally “ill-structured” nature of tool innovation problems.     

儿童特质推理与情绪和效价线索理解的关系

本研究从情绪、效价两个角度探讨儿童特质理解与线索理解的关系。372名4、5、7岁儿童完成了贴标签和行为预测两类特质推理任务。实验一显示,所有年龄段儿童都能完成对情绪性特质害羞和胆小的推理,且特质和行为评定与情绪评定呈显著正相关;实验二显示,所有年龄段均能完成双重性质特质助人为乐和自私的推理,特质和行为评定与效价、情绪评定均呈显著正相关,回归分析则只有效价评定进入方程。结果说明,儿童完成情绪性特质推理任务时与情绪理解能力关系密切,而对双重性质特质推理时更多的与效价理解能力有关。     

I knew you'd understand: How gendered expectations of understanding affect stress

An experimental design was used to examine the effects of interviewer gender and (mis)understanding on physiological stress (i.e., cortisol). A total of 103 undergraduate students wrote about a recent social conflict and then discussed that conflict with either a male or a female interviewer. During these discussions, the interviewer displayed verbal and nonverbal cues of (mis)understanding toward the participants. Participants' cortisol was assessed four times throughout the study. Results from a 2 × 2 × 4 mixed‐model analysis of variance demonstrated an interaction between the gender of the interviewer, understanding condition, and time such that cortisol decreased the most over time when the interviewer used cues of understanding that matched stereotypical expectations for the interviewers' gender (i.e., when women were understanding and men were misunderstanding).     

Taking spiritual experiences seriously in the religious education classroom: a transrational approach

ABSTRACT

Spiritual experiences are common across religious and non-religious faiths, but schoolchildren are often afraid to share these because they fear ridicule from peers who are convinced religion is irrational. The need to speak about spirituality in religious education is increasingly recognised. Signposts suggests that intercultural understanding implies recognising religious students’ perception of reality and helping others understand it. Religious education in Norway now includes exploration of existential questions as a core element, and in England, making sense of religious, spiritual and mystical experiences has been suggested as a big idea. In this paper, we discuss how the dualistic paradigm of modern science makes it difficult to take spirituality seriously as lived experience and empirical phenomenon. Instead we suggest a transrational approach to explore our multidimensional reality in an intercultural dialogue where insiders and outsiders learn from each other. We also explore examples of transrational research on spiritual phenomena.     

Extending the metatheoretical framework of social/political influence to leadership: Political skill effects on situational appraisals,responses, and evaluations by others

Building off and extending the metatheoretical framework of political skill, we examined the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which the intrapsychic effects of political skill inform its interpersonal effects, and how these interpersonal effects ultimately are transmitted into desirable outcomes. Specifically, we argue that politically skilled leaders demonstrate better situational appraisals (i.e., understanding), and thus, more appropriate situational responses (e.g., consideration and initiating structure behaviors); the demonstration of appropriate situational responses is argued to positively affect subordinates’ evaluations of their leaders (i.e., instrumentality) and subordinates’ concomitant attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction) and behaviors (e.g., performance). Results provided mixed support for the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, leader understanding mediated the relationship between political skill and consideration but not the relationship between political skill and structuring behaviors. Moreover, consideration was positively related to subordinates’ group-level instrumentality perceptions, whereas initiating structure was not. Finally, subordinates’ individual (within-level) perceptions of leader instrumentality were positively related to job satisfaction and performance. The implications of these findings as they relate to theory and practice are discussed along with this investigation's strengths, limitations, and directions for future research.     

Overcoming cognitive obstacles in learning fractions: Equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole1

Abstract: The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that acquisition of the concepts of equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole, which constitute implicit knowledge in fractions, promotes understanding of fractions. To test the hypothesis an experimental program based on both the equal‐partitioning and equal‐whole was developed for three third‐grade classrooms in a Japanese elementary school. As a control, conventional teaching based on a Japanese textbook was provided in two third‐grade classrooms. The present study tested the hypothesis that students given such an intervention program would understand order and magnitude as central characteristics of fractions better than those who had been instructed using a traditional textbook. Students in the experimental group showed significantly better understanding of the equal‐partitioning of fractions and the representation of the sizes of fractions than did those in the textbook group. There were, moreover, no differences between the experimental and textbook groups in the performance of routine tasks frequently found in the textbook. These results are discussed in view of the important instructional aims of having students understand fractions.     

Reasoning Together: Temptations, Dangers, and Cautions

In the appropriate contexts reasoning is a powerful tool for producing intersubjective agreement about what counts as the best answer to a question that generates inquiry; sometimes employing arguments can lead to agreement about what is the right answer. In this paper we hope to show, however, that unabashed optimism about the power of argument is misplaced. Such optimism rests on an implausible picture of the power of articulation. Sentences cashed out as reasons to believe another sentence is true cannot bridge large gaps in substantive understanding. A failure to realize this fact, moreover, leads to an uncautious and unreflective optimism about the power of argument that ultimately threatens the very reasons-giving process. What is needed, then, is a much more modest sense of the role of argument.     

Individual differences in children's emotion understanding: effects of age and language

Over the last two decades, it has been established that children's emotion understanding changes as they develop. Recent studies have also begun to address individual differences in children's emotion understanding. The first goal of this study was to examine the development of these individual differences across a wide age range with a test assessing nine different components of emotion understanding. The second goal was to examine the relation between language ability and individual differences in emotion understanding. Eighty children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years were tested. Children displayed a clear improvement with age in both their emotion understanding and language ability. In each age group, there were clear individual differences in emotion understanding and language ability. Age and language ability together explained 72% of emotion understanding variance; 20% of this variance was explained by age alone and 27% by language ability alone. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.