The cognitive profile of Chinese children with mathematics difficulties

This study examined how four domain-specific skills (arithmetic procedural skills, number fact retrieval, place value concept, and number sense) and two domain-general processing skills (working memory and processing speed) may account for Chinese children’s mathematics learning difficulties. Children with mathematics difficulties (MD) of two age groups (7-8 and 9-11 years) were compared with age-matched typically achieving children. For both age groups, children with MD performed significantly worse than their age-matched controls on all of the domain-specific and domain-general measures. Further analyses revealed that the MD children with literacy difficulties (MD/RD group) performed the worst on all of the measures, whereas the MD-only group was significantly outperformed by the controls on the four domain-specific measures and verbal working memory. Stepwise discriminant analyses showed that both number fact retrieval and place value concept were significant factors differentiating the MD and non-MD children. To conclude, deficits in domain-specific skills, especially those of number fact retrieval and place value understanding, characterize the profile of Chinese children with MD.     

“多少”概念发展的研究

采用数量判定任务,分别用2～30和5～100范围内点子图为刺激,研究个体“多”和“少”概念的发展。结果发现：在5～100点子条件下,随年龄的增长,个体“多”概念的判断值、“少”概念的判断值、“多”“少”概念的临界值均显著增大;7～9岁是个体“多少”概念发展的转折期;个体对“多少”概念的认知具有相对性;在本实验的两种条件下,随年龄增长,个体“多”概念的判断值、“少”概念的判断值、“多”“少”概念的临界值逐渐趋于刺激点子数最大值的2/3、1/3、1/2,“多”概念与“少”概念判断的不确定距离逐渐趋于刺激点子数最大变化范围的1/3或略小于1/3。     

Constructs,inferences, and mental measurement

The ‘construct’ concept occupies a significant place in psychology and, yet its role is misunderstood. Psychologists think that theorising in the area of psychological testing involves conjuring constructs, which are operationally defined and measured via psychometric tests. However, the ‘construct’ concept is unworkable and laden with confused philosophical baggage accrued under the hegemony of logical empiricism, and its real function in psychology is obscured. Via an analysis of its history and logic, I expose its flawed conception of the relation between theoretical and observable concepts and the way in which it serves the myth of mental measurement. Finally, it is shown how the actual logic of theorising in science, which entails that theories are best inferred from relevant phenomena, not imaginatively constructed, oppugns this myth and promises to coordinate theoretical concepts with the phenomena to be explained.     

Individual Differences in the Encoding Processes of Egocentric and Allocentric Survey Knowledge

This study examined how different components of working memory are involved in the acquisition of egocentric and allocentric survey knowledge by people with a good and poor sense of direction (SOD). We employed a dual‐task method and asked participants to learn routes from videos with verbal, visual, and spatial interference tasks and without any interference. Results showed that people with a good SOD encoded and integrated knowledge about landmarks and routes into egocentric survey knowledge in verbal and spatial working memory, which is then transformed into allocentric survey knowledge with the support of all three components, distances being processed in verbal and spatial working memory and directions in visual and spatial working memory. In contrast, people with a poor SOD relied on verbal working memory and lacked spatial processing, thus failing to acquire accurate survey knowledge. Based on the results, a possible model for explaining individual differences in spatial knowledge acquisition is proposed.     

Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events,Coping, and Self‐Concept in Early Childhood

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The 36th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: An associative analysis of spatial learning

The ability of animals to find important goals in their environment has been said to require a form of learning that is qualitatively different from that normally studied in the conditioning laboratory. Such spatial learning has been said to depend upon the construction of a global representation of the environment, and the acquisition of knowledge about the position of goals with reference to this representation is said to be unaffected by the presence of other cues or landmarks. To evaluate the first of these claims, experiments are described that investigated the extent to which the effects of training in one environment transfer to another. To evaluate the second claim, experiments are described that investigated whether cue competition effects normally found in conditioning studies can be found in spatial tasks. Overall, the results indicate that most of the phenomena of spatial learning can be explained by the principles of associative learning. The implications of the reported results for an understanding of the neural mechanisms of spatial learning are considered.     

Similarity is closeness: Metaphorical mapping in a conceptual task

The conceptual metaphor theory states that abstract concepts are represented by image schemas from concrete domains. In the present study we investigated the mapping for SIMILARITY IS CLOSENESS using tasks with nonlinguistic materials. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants decided whether two squares were similar or dissimilar in colour. The spatial distance between the squares was varied. Performance to similar colours was better at shorter distances, whereas performance to dissimilar colours was better at longer distances. In Experiments 3 and 4 participants made distance decisions to similar and dissimilar colours squares. Performance was not affected by similarity. These results show that metaphorical mappings can be found even beyond the context of linguistic metaphors and that the mapping between SIMILARITY and CLOSENESS is asymmetrical.     

Grounding Bayesian accounts of numerosity and variability effects in a similarity-based framework: the case of self-organising maps

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose self-organising maps as possible candidates to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying category generalisation. Self-organising maps are psychologically and biologically plausible neural network models that can learn after limited exposure to positive category examples, without any need of contrastive information. They reproduce human behaviour in category generalisation, in particular, the Numerosity and Variability effects, which are usually explained with Bayesian tools. Where category generalisation is concerned, self-organising maps deserve attention to bridge the gap between the computational level of analysis in Marr's hierarchy (where Bayesian models are often situated) and the algorithmic level of analysis in which plausible mechanisms are described.     

Reception of experimental pedagogy and psychology in Chile. Analysis of the intellectual influences of Wilhelm Mann, 1904–1915

This article provides a detailed analysis of the intellectual research project of Wilhelm Mann, one of the pioneers of experimental and educational psychology in Chile. Mann's work has been the object of so little analysis that his intellectual influences and networks are not clearly known. We analyzed 338 intratext citations from 22 works by Wilhelm Mann published during the period 1904–1915. As a result, we obtained a mapping of his cooperation networks and used a quantitative approach to study the authors who most influenced his career, among whom were William Stern, Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Wundt, Alfred Binet, and Ernst Meumann. Mann was closely connected to the international and contemporary advances and discussions of his time, despite the lack of infrastructure and difficulties in communication. Mann was the first psychologist to develop a long-term project in Chile that aimed to measure the individualities of Chilean students and their intellectual development.     

提取练习在记忆保持与迁移中的优势效应：基于认知负荷理论的解释

提取练习比建构概念图更有利于记忆保持和迁移的研究结果尚存在争议。依据认知负荷的3个成分,设计两个实验探究前期知识水平与策略复杂性对以上两种学习策略有效性的影响。结果表明：(1)前期知识水平的主效应不显著,但是与学习策略之间存在交互作用：在提取练习策略条件下,高前期知识水平的被试与低前期知识水平的被试在记忆保持和迁移上的正确率没有显著差异,但是在建构概念图策略条件下,高前期知识水平的被试在记忆保持和迁移上的正确率显著地高于低前期知识水平的被试;(2)当降低概念图的难度后,被试使用建构部分概念图策略产生的认知负荷与使用提取练习策略相比显著降低,并且其在学习阶段学习到的知识量显著地高于使用提取练习策略的结果,但是在最终测试上,其记忆保持与迁移的正确率与使用提取练习策略并没有显著差异,策略的复杂性增加了学习者的额外负荷,但是对策略有效性的发挥却不具有决定性影响。以上结果说明提取练习策略之所以比建构概念图策略更具优势,不是因为其策略本身更易掌握,而是因为其与建构概念图策略相比不受学习者前期知识水平的影响。这意味着认知负荷理论可以很好地解释提取练习在记忆保持与迁移中产生优势效应的内部机制,并进一步证实提取练习与精细编码不同,具有独特的加工机制。