Journal of Experimental Child Psychology最新文献

Children start formal schooling with substantial individual differences in their early literacy and numeracy abilities, but little is known about predictors of precocious (i.e., early advanced) reading and math. In this study, we investigated contributions from a range of cognitive and home-related predictors to early reading, arithmetic and applied math in 224 Dutch kindergartners (M_age = 5 years 5 months). Our results showed that precocious reading and math were differentially predicted by specific combinations of domain-specific, domain-general, and cross-domain cognitive skills. For reading, we primarily observed contributions from literacy-specific skills, especially letter knowledge. For mathematics, we observed contributions from various domain-specific, domain-general, and cross-domain cognitive skills. Predictors of "basic" arithmetic skills differed from predictors of "precocious" arithmetic fluency, suggesting qualitative differences between typical and precocious learners. Contributions from children's home environments (parental education levels and parent-child activities) remained relatively small across all models. Together, our results provide novel insights into the (co-)development of precocious reading and math in preschool-aged children.

Previous research suggests that monolingual children learn words more readily in contexts with referential continuity (i.e., repeated labeling of the same referent) than in contexts with referential discontinuity (i.e., referent switches). Here, we extended this work by testing monolingual and bilingual 3- and 4-year-olds' (N = 64) novel word learning in an interactive tablet-based task. We predicted that bilinguals' experience with language switches would buffer them against the attested challenges of referent switches on word learning. Unexpectedly, we found that monolinguals and bilinguals readily learned words in contexts of both referential continuity and referential discontinuity, and if anything performance was better in the referential discontinuity context. Overall, these results indicate that, at least for some learners under some conditions, referential discontinuity does not disrupt word learning. Our findings invite future research into understanding how and when referential continuity affects language acquisition.

We investigated the relationships among the moral self-concept, arousal reactions to third-party moral situations, and moral judgment in 5- to 7-year-old children (N = 59). Children's moral self-concept was assessed using a puppet task. In addition, children were shown audiovisual scenes depicting prosocial, antisocial, and neutral interactions between children. We measured phasic pupil dilation responses to the actions and collected children's judgments of the actions. The results show that children judged antisocial behavior as more negative and prosocial behavior as more positive than neutral behavior. In addition, children showed significantly higher arousal when observing antisocial behavior compared with neutral and prosocial behavior. Moreover, children's moral judgment related to their arousal: the more negative the moral judgment, the higher the arousal, even in prosocial and neutral scenarios. Finally, children's moral self-concept correlated with their explicit judgments, but not with their physiological arousal. These results support developmental theories suggesting a relationship between the moral self and moral judgment.

Persistence, characterized by continued efforts in the face of difficulties, is crucial for children's success. Many researchers have aimed to identify the factors that improve persistence. Previous research has found that children who use more strategies to solve a challenging task tend to exhibit greater persistence, suggesting that providing instructions for multiple strategies may enhance their persistence. Therefore, this study examined whether telling strategies through verbal instructions and demonstrations affected persistence in 4- and 5-year-old children using an unachievable persistence task. In preregistered Study 1 (N = 150), we instructed children to focus on multiple strategies or a single strategy in a direct or pedagogical manner during the task. No substantial effects of telling strategies through verbal instructions were found on the children's persistence and strategy use. In Study 2 (N = 54), demonstrating strategies did not affect children's persistence; however, demonstrating multiple and single strategies increased and decreased children's number of strategies, respectively. Thus, telling strategies through demonstrations, rather than verbal instructions, affected the number of strategies used by the children; however, the number of strategies used did not affect persistence. An exploratory analysis was conducted to examine why the number of strategies was not related to persistence. We found that independently devising new strategies, rather than following instructions, affected persistence. Furthermore, this relationship was replicated in Study 3 (N = 30). Our findings suggest that children are likely to persevere in challenging tasks by independently devising new strategies rather than following instructions.

Early spelling depends on the ability to understand the alphabetic principle and to translate speech sounds into visual symbols (letters). Thus, the ability to associate sound-symbol pairs might be an important predictor of spelling development. Here, we examined the relation between sound-symbol learning (SSL) and early spelling skills. A large sample of first-grade children (N = 365) was tested on well-known cognitive predictors of spelling ability (intelligence, phoneme awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and completed a novel sound-symbol learning paradigm, which required the serial application of newly learned sound-symbol correspondences to mirror spelling acquisition. The results revealed that performance on the SSL task explained unique variance in spelling performance in young children at risk of spelling problems beyond well-known cognitive predictors of spelling. The SSL task can be a useful tool for the early identification of spelling problems given that the SSL differentiated between children with poor and typical spelling skills.

Absolute feedback and relative feedback significantly influence children's self-evaluation. However, previous research has examined these influences separately, leaving the relative importance of absolute versus relative feedback for children unclear. This study aimed to determine which type of feedback is more crucial for children and how they develop responses to both during educational transitions. The effects of absolute feedback and relative feedback on self-evaluation were compared among kindergarten children (N = 72) and first-grade children (N = 81) using a 2 (Absolute Score: high vs. low) × 2 (Relative Rank: high vs. low) between-subjects design. Results indicated that kindergarten children primarily responded to absolute feedback in terms of satisfaction with performance and predicting absolute scores. Conversely, first graders showed sensitivity to absolute feedback concerning satisfaction, emotional responses, and prediction of scores. Moreover, first graders also began exhibiting sensitivity to relative feedback regarding emotional responses and prediction of ranks. These findings imply that absolute feedback holds greater significance for children, but with age they become adept at integrating both types of feedback into their self-evaluation processes.

Determining how children solve arithmetic problems when they stop using their fingers is a real challenge. To take it up, the evolution of problem-size effects for tie and non-tie problems was observed when 6-year-olds (N = 65) shift from finger counting to mental strategies. These observations revealed that the problem-size effect remained the same for non-tie problems, whereas it drastically decreased for tie problems. Moreover, the solving strategy for tie problems switched directly from the representation of both operands on fingers to retrieval without transition through the representation of only one operand on fingers. This direct switch could be made possible by the relative ease to commit symmetrical representations to memory (in the case of tie problems) rather than non-symmetrical ones (in the case of non-tie problems). This would explain why, early during development, small tie problems are solved quickly and present null or negligible size effects. All in all, our results and interpretations provide an answer to the long-standing question as to why tie problems have a special cognitive status. Our results also nuance the classical description of the developmental pattern reported in all textbook chapters devoted to numerical cognition according to which a finger strategy where only one operand is represented on fingers constitutes a developmental stage between the representation of two operands on fingers and retrieval. We demonstrate here that it is true only for non-tie problems.

The minimal group effect, in which people prefer ingroup members to outgroup members even when group membership is trivially constructed, has been studied extensively in psychological science. Despite a large body of literature on this phenomenon, concerns persist regarding previous developmental research populations that are small and lack racial/ethnic diversity. In addition, it remains unclear what role holding membership within and interacting with specific racial/ethnic groups plays in the development of children's group attitudes. Using a collaborative multi-site study approach, we measured 4- to 6-year-old children's (N = 716 across five regions in the United States; 47.1% girls; 40.5% White, 13.3% Black, 12.6% Asian, 24.6% Latine, 9.2% multiracial) minimal group attitudes and preference for real-world racial/ethnic ingroups and outgroups. We found that, as a whole, the minimal group effect was observed in the total sample, and no significant differences were found between racial/ethnic groups; yet exploratory analyses revealed that the minimal group effect was most strongly displayed among older children compared with younger children and, when considered separately, was more clearly present in some racial/ethnic groups (White) but not so in others (Black). In addition, there was no relationship between children's minimal group attitudes and racial group preferences, suggesting that factors other than ingroup/outgroup thinking may influence young children's racial bias. Taken together, results highlight the continued need for large and racially diverse samples to inform and test the generalizability of existing influential psychological theories.

A family's socioeconomic status (SES) can be linked to a child's physical and cognitive health, with children from low-SES families often experiencing poor developmental outcomes. Early positive childhood experiences that include structured and unstructured physical activities (SUPAs) offer a potential avenue to promote positive health and cognitive development during early childhood. However, prior to school entry, it is not well-understood whether SES is related to participation in SUPAs or how SUPAs relate to early health and cognitive indicators such as aerobic fitnessand executive function (EF). Children (N = 99) aged 3 to 5 years were recruited from 17 classrooms in seven center-based pre-kindergartens. In fall and spring, children were assessed on EF using the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task and aerobic fitness was assessed with the 20-m shuttle run test. Family SES significantly predicted SUPAs and fall and spring fitness, with SUPAs and spring fitness significantly predicting spring EF. Partial support for an indirect relationship between SES and EF through SUPAs was also found. Results suggest that family SES could play a role in predicting participation in SUPAs and aerobic fitness, with SUPAs and aerobic fitness linked to EF during pre-kindergarten.

The purpose of this study was to pinpoint which mixture of cognitive abilities and number abilities underlies young children's early mental arithmetic learning (i.e., skill development) and to examine to what extent this mixture is akin to the mixture underlying children's early arithmetic performance. A total of 265 children were assessed on counting knowledge, symbolic magnitude comparison, number line estimation, logical reasoning, verbal working memory, spatial processing, phonological processing, and general processing speed. One year later in first grade, the children's mental arithmetic ability was assessed, and it was then reassessed in second grade. A latent change score model showed that arithmetic performance was supported by counting knowledge, number line estimation, logical reasoning, spatial processing, phonological processing, and general processing speed, whereas arithmetic development was only supported by verbal working memory. These results demonstrate that the mixture of abilities underlying arithmetic development and arithmetic performance are rather different. Mental arithmetic performance in Grade 1 is equally dependent on a combination of both number abilities and cognitive abilities, whereas mental arithmetic development between first grade and second grade is only supported by one cognitive ability, verbal working memory.