Journal of Experimental Child Psychology最新文献

It has been established that young children who use their fingers to solve arithmetic problems outperform those who do not. However, it remains unclear whether finger counting itself enhances arithmetic performance or if children with already advanced numerical abilities are more inclined to use this strategy. In the current study, to shed light on this matter, we observed the behavior of 189 4- and 5-year-old children in an addition task and a task assessing their knowledge of the three “how-to-count” principles (i.e., stable order, one-to-one correspondence, and cardinality principles). Of these children, 169 were reassessed 1 year later (the second testing point). At the first testing point, our results revealed that finger users better know the counting principles than non-finger users. Nevertheless, some children use their fingers without knowing the principles, but in this case they present low performance in the addition task. Moreover, we found that knowing the counting principles does not naturally prompt finger use. Finally, we did not find evidence supporting the idea that finger use has a specific role in the development of counting principles, which questions the idea that finger counting has a functional role in the construction of the number concept. All in all, our results tend to show that children need to know the counting principles to be efficient finger users. Therefore, finger counting seems to be a useful tool when used by children who already possess advanced numerical knowledge.

Sensitivity to linguistic cues, in theory, can change the interpretation of social and game theoretical behavior. We tested this in a pair of experiments with children aged 4 and 5 years. Children were asked to give some, keep some, or put some stickers for themselves or for another player (a puppet) after collaborative activities. We found that the direction of the verb did influence how selfish the younger children were. We also had children tidy up the toys after each activity to determine their interpretation of some. Children could derive the pragmatic scalar implicature linked to some (i.e., interpreting it as meaning not all), and they did so particularly when it affected them personally. These findings have important implications for the stability of other-regarding preferences and the importance of instructions in games.

Learning in the everyday environment often requires the flexible integration of relevant multisensory information. Previous research has demonstrated preverbal infants’ capacity to extract an abstract rule from audiovisual temporal sequences matched in temporal synchrony. Interestingly, this capacity was recently reported to be modulated by crossmodal correspondence beyond spatiotemporal matching (e.g., consistent facial emotional expressions or articulatory mouth movements matched with sound). To investigate whether such modulatory influence applies to non-social and non-communicative stimuli, we conducted a critical test using audiovisual stimuli free of social information: visually upward (and downward) moving objects paired with a congruent tone of ascending or incongruent (descending) pitch. East Asian infants (8–10 months old) from a metropolitan area in Asia demonstrated successful abstract rule learning in the congruent audiovisual condition and demonstrated weaker learning in the incongruent condition. This implies that preverbal infants use crossmodal dynamic pitch–height correspondence to integrate multisensory information before rule extraction. This result confirms that preverbal infants are ready to use non-social non-communicative information in serving cognitive functions such as rule extraction in a multisensory context.

Research on mathematical cognition, learning, and instruction (MCLI) often takes cognition as its point of departure and considers instruction at a later point in the research cycle. In this article, we call for psychologists who study MCLI to reflect on the “status quo” of their research practices and to consider making instruction an earlier and more central aspect of their work. We encourage scholars of MCLI (a) to consider the needs of educators and schools when selecting research questions and developing interventions; (b) to compose research teams that are diverse in the personal, disciplinary, and occupational backgrounds of team members; (c) to make efforts to broaden participation in research and to conduct research in authentic settings; and (d) to communicate research in ways that are accessible to practitioners and to the general public. We argue that a more central consideration of instruction will lead to shifts that make research on MCLI more theoretically valuable, more actionable for educators, and more relevant to pressing societal challenges.

Watching fantastical content has been shown to negatively affect young children’s executive function (EF) skills. No study has investigated how long these negative effects persist and whether they extend to other cognitive skills. The current experimental study aimed to (1) detect how long fantastical content affects children’s EF performance and (2) examine whether watching fantastical content negatively affects children’s other (non-EF) cognitive task performance, namely mental transformation. A total of 120 5- and 6-year-old children (M = 66 months, SD = 5.52) were randomly assigned to one of the four following conditions: (a) immediate testing after watching an 8-min non-fantastical cartoon, (b) immediate testing after watching an 8-min fantastical cartoon, (c) 10-min delayed testing after watching a fantastical cartoon, and (d) immediate testing after an 8-min free play (control condition). After exposure to each condition, children were tested on EF and mental transformation measures. Results showed that children watching a fantastical cartoon performed worse on working memory and inhibitory control tasks than children watching a non-fantastical cartoon or playing. However, the 10-min delay between the watching and testing sessions eliminated the negative impact observed on inhibitory control. Groups did not differ on cognitive flexibility and mental transformation. As in previous studies, watching fantastical content negatively affected children’s EFs, but this negative impact disappeared in a few minutes and seems unique to EFs. These results suggest that fantastical content may temporarily affect attentional and information processing systems related to EFs.

Recent studies have enthusiastically examined the developmental origin of moral self-licensing, which is a tendency to act immorally after acting morally. However, it has not been considered enough how children evaluate personality traits of individuals who show moral licensing behavior and whether there is any developmental change in this evaluation. This study examined the developmental change in moral evaluation, social preference, and prediction of moral behaviors for moral licensing characters as well as moral or immoral characters. In total, 36 5- and 6-year-old children, 36 7- and 8-year-old children, and 58 university students participated in the study. The results revealed that 7- and 8-year-olds and adults evaluated moral licensing characters as more moral and likable than those who behave immorally, unlike 5- and 6-year-olds, who did not distinguish between the immoral and moral licensing characters. Importantly, 7- and 8-year-olds judged the moral licensing character as neutral in both moral evaluation and judgment of social preference, suggesting that they thought the immoral behavior was canceled out owing to prior moral behavior in the moral licensing character. However, adults still judged the moral licensing character as immoral and dislikable. Moreover, children’s prediction of moral behavior for all characters showed the same tendency as moral evaluation, whereas adults’ prediction was slightly different from their moral evaluation. Taken together, our findings revealed that the evaluation of individuals who show moral licensing behavior changed developmentally, and a moral licensing effect was found when evaluating others’ moral traits from around 7 or 8 years of age.

Behavioral issues frequently arise in primary school children, affecting their academic performance, social interactions, and general welfare. These concerns encompass challenges related to attention, concentration, aggression, oppositional behavior, and social maladaptation. The purpose of the current study was to examine the impacts of karate Kata training on extrinsic behavioral problems of elementary school students. The Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) questionnaire was given to all fourth- to sixth-grade students from a male elementary school, totaling 241 students, in Mashhad, Iran. A total of 76 eligible school-aged children with a total score of 65 and above in attention, aggression, oppositional defiance, and social maladaptation issues were selected and randomly assigned to an exercise group (n = 38) or a no-exercise control group (n = 38). Participants in the exercise group were instructed to engage in Kata training, which consists of a series of choreographed movements designed to enhance physical and mental discipline, for a duration of 12 60-min sessions, whereas the participants in the control group followed their daily activities. The CBCL from the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment was used to assess dependent variables such as attention and concentration, aggression, oppositional defiance, and social maladaptation at baseline and post-intervention. The repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that Kata training results in significant improvements in attention and concentration and significant reductions in aggression, oppositional defiance, and social maladaptation among elementary school students (all ps < .001). These results highlight the potential benefits of incorporating Kata training into interventions aimed at improving the behavioral outcomes of children.

Insecure-attached adults are more likely to lie. However, it is unknown whether infant–parent attachment quality relates to lie-telling in early childhood. As in adults, lie-telling in early childhood might be related to attachment insecurity. However, a competing hypothesis might be plausible; lie-telling might be related to attachment security given that lie-telling in early childhood is considered an advancement in social-cognitive development. The current study is the first to investigate the link between insecure/secure and disorganized/non-disorganized attachment and lie-telling behavior in early childhood. Because lie-telling is studied in the context of cheating behavior, the association between cheating and attachment is additionally explored. A total of 560 Dutch children (287 girls) from a longitudinal cohort study (Generation R) were included in the analyses. Attachment quality with primary caregiver (secure/insecure and disorganized/non-disorganized attachment) was assessed at 14 months of age in the Strange Situation Procedure, and cheating and lie-telling were observed in games administered at 4 years of age. The results demonstrated no relationship of attachment (in)security and (dis)organization with cheating and lie-telling. Results are interpreted in light of evidence that lie-telling in early childhood is part of normative development. Limitations are discussed, including the time lag between assessments, the fact that lie-telling was measured toward a researcher instead of a caregiver, and the conceptualization of attachment in infancy versus adulthood. Attachment quality does not affect early normative lie-telling, but how and when it may affect later lying in children remains to be explored.

This study explored the interplay of executive functions (EFs), social interactions, and theory of mind (ToM) in middle childhood. The first aim was to examine how specific EFs—shifting, inhibition, and working memory (WM)—predict social-perceptual and social-cognitive ToM. The second aim was to explore the potential mediating role of social interactions in the EF–ToM relationship. A total of 98 children aged 8 to 11 years completed three computerized EF tasks (task switching, flanker, and running span) and two ToM tasks (Strange Stories and Reading the Mind in the Eyes). The quality and quantity of social interactions were self-reported by using questionnaires. First, multiple regression analyses with age-adjusted scores examined how specific EFs predict ToM scores. The regression model was significant for social-cognitive ToM, but not for social-perceptual ToM. WM accuracy was the only significant, positive predictor for performance on the Strange Stories task. Second, mediation analyses assessed whether social interactions mediate this EF–ToM relationship. There were no significant mediation effects of the quality and quantity of social interactions on the relationship between WM and social-cognitive ToM. In conclusion, EFs play a significant role in explaining social-cognitive ToM variability in middle childhood. WM is relevant for understanding others’ mental states, in contrast to shifting and inhibition that lacked predictive value. The results also suggest different cognitive processes associated with social-perceptual versus social-cognitive ToM in this developmental stage.

Negation-triggered inferences are universal across human languages. Hearing “This is not X” should logically lead to the inference that all elements other than X constitute possible alternatives. However, not all logically possible alternatives are equally accessible in the real world. To qualify as a plausible alternative, it must share with the negated element as many similarities as possible, and the most plausible one is often from the same taxonomic category as the negated element. The current article reports on two experiments that investigated the development of preschool children’s ability to infer plausible alternatives triggered by negation. Experiment 1 showed that in a context where children were required to determine the most plausible alternative to the negated element, the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, exhibited a robust preference for the taxonomic associates. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds considered all the complement set members as equally possible alternatives in a context where they were not explicitly required to evaluate the plausibility of different candidates. Taken together, our findings reveal interesting developmental continuity in preschool children’s ability to make inferences about plausible alternatives triggered by negation. We discuss the potential semantic and pragmatic factors that contribute to children’s emerging awareness of typical alternatives triggered by negative expressions.