Latent inhibition and learned helplessness in children: Similarities and differences

Four experiments used a common set of procedures to investigate the occurrence and the generalization of learned helplessness (LH) and latent inhibition (LI) in 10- to 11-year-old children. In Experiment 1, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired performance (i.e., LH) on two subsequent tests: The first was similar to the preexposure situation, the second was not. Moreover, LH occurred whether preexposure involved positive or negative feedback. On the other hand, noncontingent stimulus preexposure did not impair subsequent performance, i.e., LI was not obtained in the first experiment. Experiment 2 replicated the LH findings of Experiment 1: LH occurred following preexposure to response-independent feedback, regardless of whether that feedback was positive or negative, and LH generalized to a situation that was different from the preexposure situation. In addition, the stimulus preexposure procedures of Experiment 2 were embedded in a “masking” task and, under these conditions, LI was obtained. Nevertheless, LI did not generalize to a testing situation that was different from the preexposure situation. Experiment 3 demonstrated that noncontingent stimulus preexposure impairs performance relative to a nonpreexposed control group, that the effect is dependent upon masking, that masking alone produces no performance decrement, and that LI is, indeed, stimulus specific. In Experiment 4, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired subsequent performance on similar and dissimilar tests whether feedback was consistently positive, consistently negative, or randomly positive and negative over trials. In addition, stimulus preexposure produced LI only under conditions of masking and even then, LI was not evident in novel test situations. The results are discussed in terms of common and different mechanisms underlying the LI and LH phenomena.     

Constraints on the visual accuracy of drawings produced by young children

Errors made by young children when they are asked to draw a model were investigated in two studies. In the first study, the experimenter asked 5- and 8-year-old children to draw a cup that had a flower decal (transfer) attached to its outside surface, attached to its inside surface or positioned beside it. The 8-year-old children in all conditions produced visually accurate drawings. The 5-year-old children produced visually accurate drawings when the flower decal was positioned beside the cup and when the flower decal was attached to the inside surface of the cup but not when the flower decal was attached to the cup's outside surface. In the second study, 5- and 8-year-old children were asked to draw a cup that had either an intact or a broken handle. The handle area of the cup was either in view or not in view. The 5- and 8-year-old children performed comparably in this experiment. The children had difficulty producing accurate copies of the model only when the cup had a handle and the handle was not in view. Taken together, these studies indicate that 5-year-old children are more likely to produce visually accurate drawings than has previously been supposed. Difficulty in producing accurate drawings occurred when drawing rules and drawing conventions interfered with the task.     

The development of spatial understanding in infancy

This paper examines the development of spatial understanding between 8 and 24 months. In particular, it examines whether young infants code changes in the position of an object or themselves in geographic or egocentric terms. The infants sat in a baby chair which was attached to a circular table in such a way that either the infant could be rotated around the edge of the table or the table-top itself could be rotated. Rotation of infant or table could be performed independently or simultaneously. Infants were shown an object which was then hidden under one of either two or three identical cups sitting on the table. Before the infant was allowed to search for the toy, either the table, the infant, or both were rotated, a procedure which resulted in an invisible displacement of the object in terms of geographical and/or egocentric spatial position. Rotations of 60, 90, 120, and 180° were used. Three groups of infants were tested, one cross-sectional (12–24 months), one longitudinal (12–24 months), and one consisting of a group of infants already known to be accelerated in object concept development (8–20 months). The cross-sectional results indicated that egocentric responding continues well into the second half of the second year of life. Even with fortnightly exposure to the tasks, egocentric responding was still evident in some longitudinal babies as late as 19 months. The results of the accelerated group suggest that acceleration through the sequence of object concept development facilitates development of spatial understanding in a wider sense, that is, in the sense of understanding the interrelation of positions in space. The implications of these results for competing theories of the source of object concept errors are discussed.     

The effects of instructional variables on young children's organization and free recall

The relationship between verbal instruction and children's free recall was examined. Sixty first-grade children (mean age 84 months) were trained to categorize pictures of common objects. Half were given organizational instructions emphasizing categorization, and half were given instructions emphasizing the individual objects. Similarly, half were given detailed verbal instructions and encouraged to listen, and half were taught using a question type format that encouraged participation. Immediately and after a 2- to 3-week delay, children who were shown an organizational strategy categorized the materials during study and attained higher recall scores than children who were shown a specific strategy. After the 2- to 3-week delay, children in the explanation groups out-performed children in the question-asking groups. The child's competence as measured by intelligence and performance in school did not contribute to amount recalled when subjects were given instructions emphasizing the general strategy. However, children of high competence benefited more from specific training by recalling more items than did children of low competence. These findings point to the importance of instructional variables in studying changes in children's processing capabilities.     

The effects of semantic integration training on memory for pictograph sentences

The effectiveness of training a semantic integration strategy for recall of pictograph sequences, and the generalization of the strategy to a related oral sentence task were examined in 60 kindergarten prereaders. Semantic integration training consisted of three individual sessions in which the child was instructed to treat the sequence as a sentence and to act out the pictograph sentences using toys in order to facilitate recall. Repetition and no-practice control groups were included. Pictograph sentence memory post-tests immediately following and 2 weeks after training indicated that semantic integration training substantially improved recall for pictograph sequences, an improvement that was unrelated to the child's initial memory performance or subsequent post-training awareness of the strategy. In addition, the training resulted in better performance on a generalization test of oral sentence synthesis. These findings support a strategy-based conceptualization of individual differences in the semantic processing of written materials.     

Developmental differences in the role of detail in picture recognition memory

Two experiments assess the effect of the amount of physical detail in pictures on picture recognition memory. Children and adults were presented simple and complex line drawings. A “same-different” recognition test followed in which the distractor items were original pictures from the presentation phase with the amount of physical detail altered. For second- and fourth-grade subjects, recognition sensitivity, measured in terms of d′, was similar for pictures in the simple and complex presentation conditions. For adults, however, recognition sensitivity was greater for pictures in the simple than complex presentation condition. This finding with adults was replicated in Experiment 2. Interpretations of this age difference in picture memory processing are discussed, as well as the constraints imposed by various dependent measures used in picture memory studies.     

Lateralization effects in the perception of Hebrew and English words

A series of four experiments was conducted on Israelis with a good knowledge of English, Anglo-Saxons with a good knowledge of Hebrew, and full Bilinguals of the two languages. In all experiments words were presented vertically and measurements of both accuracy and response times were taken. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the perception of Hebrew words in unilateral and bilateral conditions, respectively; Experiments 3 and 4 examined the perception of both Hebrew and English words in these two conditions. The results revealed right visual field advantage in the perception of words in both languages and in all groups. A reversal between the two conditions was not found. The data support the hypothesis whereby nonnative languages are less lateralized than native ones, but they indicate that full bilinguals are more, not less, lateralized than monolinguals. Various hypothesis regarding the relationship between lateralization and bilingualism are discussed.     

Word frequency and children's stuttering: The relationship to sentence structure

This study investigated the relationship between word-frequency level and stuttering within the context of four slected sentence types. Fifteen stuttering children, aged 8–12, read 48 sentences of four different transformational types, and three word-frequency levels 12 simple active-affirmative-declarative (SAAD), 12 negative, 12 passive and 12 negative-passive. All sentences were identical in terms of underlying swings and variations of the SAAD sentences. Results agreed with Ronson's study with adults (1976) in that when the group rating was severe and the sentence type was negative, stuttering increased significantly as word-frequency level decreased. It appears that children's stuttering in relationship to word-frequency level is a different response that is subject to variables of sentence type and the severity rating of stuttering.