“John thinks that Mary thinks that…” attribution of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children

Understanding of second-order belief structures by 5- and 10-year-old children was assessed in acted stories in which two characters (John and Mary) were independently informed about an object's (ice-cream van's) unexpected transfer to a new location. Hence both John and Mary knew where the van was but there was a mistake in John's second-order belief about Mary's belief: “John thinks Mary thinks the van is still at the old place”. Children's understanding of this second-order belief was tested by asking “Where does John think Mary will go for ice cream?” Correct answers could only be given if John's second-order belief was represented, since all shortcut reasoning based on first-order beliefs would have led to the wrong answer. Results suggested unexpected early competence around the age of 6 and 7 years, shown under optimal conditions when inference of second-order beliefs was prompted.     

Decision making styles and progress in occupational decision making

This study provides a reexamination of the role of different decisional strategies in facilitating progress in occupational decision making. Although the assumptions that a rational decision making style is the preferred mode of vocational functioning has been endorsed in a variety of career theories and interventions, there has been conflicting evidence about the validity of this assumption. To examine the role of different decisional approaches in the progress of making an occupational decision, the rational, intuitive, and dependent decision making style scores of 71 undergraduate students were used to predict progress in occupational decision making. The results of the regression analyses failed to provide support for the assumption that a rational style is the most effective in accomplishing this careerrelated task, but indicated strong support for the conclusion that the use of dependent decisional strategies is damaging, particularly in early stages of the decisional process.     

Electromyographic indications of laryngeal-area activity during stuttering expectancy

Using surface electrodes, mean microvolt values of laryngeal-area muscle activity were determined for 13 male and 6 female stutterers during 10-sec periods in which single words were silently read and stuttering expectancy was indicated. No significant differences in levels of laryngeal-area muscle activity were found between periods of fluency expectancy and stuttering expectancy preceding both fluent and stuttered speech. The results were interpreted as being nonsupportive of the hypothesis that a breakdown in stutterers' laryngeal-area muscle activity occurs during moments of stuttering expectancy. In addition, the results suggest that the most common rationale for the utilization of laryngeal biofeedback procedures to enhance fluency should be questioned.     

Self-consciousness and reactance

Two studies examined the effects of dispositional self-consciousness on reactance. In Experiment 1, men who were high in private self-consciousness displayed greater reactance responses to a coercive communication attempt (as reflected by attitude reversal) than did men lower in private self-consciousness. In contrast, the effect of public self-consciousness in this context was to inhibit the expression of reactance. In Experiment 2, women high in private self-consciousness exhibited greater reactance responses to a self-imposed threat to their freedom of choice (as reflected by equivocation over two choice alternatives) than did women lower in private self-consciousness. The effect of public self-consciousness in this context was negligible. These findings replicate and extend a previous self-awareness and reactance finding; they provide additional evidence that manipulated self-awareness and dispositional self-consciousness converge on the same psychological entity; and they provide additional evidence that there are important differences between the dimensions of private and public self-consciousness.     

Stimulus control of delayed matching in pigeons: Directed forgetting

Pigeons were trained in delayed matching-to-sample with two postsample stimuli. A postsample R-cue signaled that a matching choice phase would follow. A postsample F-cue signaled that a matching choice phase would not follow. Previous research found reduced matching accuracy on F-cued probe trials when comparison stimuli were presented in the choice phase. The present four experiments systematically varied the events following an F-cue to determine the conditions under which the F-cue reduces delayed-matching accuracy. When F-cues and R-cues controlled different behavior, matching on probe trials was poor. When both cues controlled the same behavior, matching on probe trials was good. This result is best explained by the theory that comparison stimuli retrieve the sample representation, but only in the behavioral context established by the R-cue. The present research supports the view that response-produced stimuli serve a contextual role in animal short-term memory.     

Beliefs about beliefs: representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception

Understanding of another person's wrong belief requires explicit representation of the wrongness of this person's belief in relation to one's own knowledge. Three to nine year old children's understanding of two sketches was tested. In each sketch subjects observed how a protagonist put an object into a location x and then witnessed that in the absence of the protagonist the object was transferred from x to location y. Since this transfer came as a surprise they had to assume that the protagonist still believed that the object was in x. Subjects had to indicate where the protagonist will look for the object at his return. None of the 3–4-year old, 57% of 4–6-year old, and 86% of 6–9-year old children pointed correctly to location x in both sketches. Of the many cases where 4–6-year olds made an error they failed in only about 20% to remember the initial location correctly. As a test of the stability of children's representation of the protagonist's wrong belief the sketches continued with a statement about the protagonist's intention to either deceive an antagonist or truthfully inform a friend about the object's location. Independent of age, of those children who correctly thought that the protagonist would search in x, 85% of the time they also correctly thought that he would direct his antagonist to location y and his friend to location x. This shows that once children can represent a person's beliefs they can constrain their interpretation of this person's stated intentions to the person's beliefs. In a more story-like situation another group of children had to infer a deceptive plan from the depiction of a goal conflict between two story characters and one character's expedient utterance. At the age of 4–5 years children correctly judged this utterance as a lie only 28% of the time while 5–6-year olds did so 94% of the time. These results suggest that around the ages of 4 to 6 years the ability to represent the relationship between two or more person's epistemic states emerges and becomes firmly established.     

Neuropsychological assessment of learning disabilities: a discriminant analysis

The neuropsychological test scores of 23 learning disabled children were compared with those of a matched population of normal children in the 9-1 to 13-1 age range. All children were administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), a dichotic listening task involving both free and directed recall conditions, a handedness inventory, the Tactile Performance Test and the Category Test from the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery. A multivariate analysis of variance resulted in a significant separation between groups (p less than .001) using these procedures. A stepwise discriminant function analysis revealed that both of the directed dichotic tasks contributed the most of all 13 measures to the significant group separation. In addition, other cognitive tasks found to discriminate normal from learning disabled children include general verbal processes, concept formation, and tactile memory. These findings suggest that the directed dichotic listening procedure and the WISC-R Verbal IQ measure are reasonably valuable clinical tools in the classification of learning disabilities.     

Temporal stability and predictive validity of self-assessed hand preference with first and second graders

The test-retest reliability and predictive validity of a five-item hand preference questionnaire (writing, drawing, throwing a baseball, brushing teeth, and cutting with scissors) were investigated in a sample of 80 children attending first and second grade. After 1 month, 81% of the second choices were the same as the first choices. There were interitem differences in the reliabilities of the five items. Writing and drawing hand exhibited the greatest degree of temporal stability. Writing hand was the one task which was significantly related to visual field bias as indexed by a face perception task.     

Development of cerebral dominance: dichotic listening asymmetry in normal and learning-disabled children

The magnitude of the dichotic right-ear advantage was assessed in 48 normal and 48 learning-disabled children representing an age range of approximately 5 years. All subjects were matched according to age, sex, and handedness. An analysis of results indicated a significant right-ear advantage in both the normal and learning-disabled children, but revealed no developmental trends for either group. Differences observed in the performance of the learning-disabled and normal children may reflect variability in selective attention rather than differences in the degree of cerebral lateralization. These results suggest a need for a reconceptualization of the causative factors affecting children with learning disorders and lend support to the notion that cerebral lateralization is not a developmental phenomenon.