Cognitive Development最新文献

In this study we adapted the Computerized Comprehension Task (CCT), to be used in rural native communities with bilingual children learning Qom Indigenous language and the Chaco dialect of Argentinean Spanish. The main objectives were (a) to test the utility of this task, which provides accuracy and response time measures of decontextualized vocabulary, for use with children from three to seven years in schools and rural settings; (b) to assess Qom children’s vocabulary learning trajectories in both languages. The adaptation of the CCT was based on extensive fieldwork establishing language usage patterns, word frequency, and age of acquisition. Eighty-three children from three to seven years of age living in Chaco Province were assessed in Qom and Spanish, employing the CCT adaptation. Findings provided evidence of attrition of children’s heritage language (which is on par with vocabulary in the majority language up until age five), beginning as children approach elementary school.

We present a new 18-item parent-report measure of pretense development for 4- to 47-month-olds: the Early Pretending Survey (EPS). Study 1 (N = 231) demonstrated good internal reliability, and a strongly correlated 2-factor structure for 4- to 47-month-olds. Study 2 (N = 587) also showed good internal reliability, and found the two factors loaded onto a latent second-order Pretend Play factor. Study 3 (N = 84) found the EPS correlated with a researcher-led pretense experiment, however it no longer correlated when controlling for age. Additional analyses using subsamples of parents from Studies 2 and 3 showed good inter-observer reliability between parents (N = 29), and good longitudinal stability after 6 months (N = 196). Additional analyses combining Study 1–3 participants (N ≤ 902) found no item functioning differences across demographic variables, including child age, country, and socio-economic factors. Children’s EPS scores increased as they aged; girls had higher scores than boys; and children of younger parents had higher scores. Finally, we examined the age patterns of each EPS item, demonstrating when 25 %, 50 %, and 75 % of children were predicted to pass each pretense type. The EPS is useful for researchers to better understand how pretending relates to other areas of development (e.g., cognition, language). The EPS could also help parents, early years educators, and children’s media professionals decide which pretense types to use with children of different ages.

Basic statistical literacy is essential for interpreting external sources and developing critical thinking skills necessary for engagement in real-world contexts. However, many children and adults struggle with understanding and interpreting data. Therefore, it is critical to develop engaging, effective methods for teaching early data analysis, as they could enhance children’s statistical understanding, math, and higher-order thinking skills. We examined the effectiveness of a home-based, experimental game intervention for children’s (ages 5–6, 50 % female, 67 % white, 12 % Asian, 8 % biracial) statistical understanding and math skills. Families (majority high household income and parent education) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: graphing board game, graphing card game, or literacy board game. Children in the graphing conditions improved on statistical understanding and arithmetic, and children in the literacy condition did not. These results support the development of play-based materials to promote early mathematical and statistical skills, with implications for children’s mathematical development.

Children evaluate others based on how they speak, but do children evaluate others based on how they are spoken to? We examined how U.S. children and adults (N = 170 5- to 10-year-olds, 49 % female; 107 adults; in a city with a foreign population of 17.9 %) evaluated addressees of Foreigner Talk (i.e., slow, loud, simplified speech). In Study 1, children and adults evaluated Foreigner Talk addressees more negatively than Peer Talk or Teacher Talk addressees. In Study 2, adults and older children incorporated Foreigner Talk with additional contextual cues to inform their evaluations: a local peer receiving Foreigner Talk received lower evaluations than a foreign peer receiving Foreigner Talk. With medium to large effect sizes, these studies indicate the importance of speech register in children’s social inferences.

This quasi-experimental study investigates the intricate relationship among adolescents’ physical activity, working memory, and academic performance, recognizing their significance in adolescent development. Employing a quasi-experimental design, 85 13-year-olds from a Taiwanese junior high school were involved. Data scrutiny was facilitated through Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), with the mediation effect explored via Smart Partial Least Squares structural equation modeling (Smart PLS-SEM). Findings indicate significant improvements in physical fitness among both aerobic and resistance exercise groups compared to controls. Additionally, both exercise cohorts demonstrated a stronger positive association with verbal working memory scores than the control group. Intriguingly, visuospatial working memory fully mediated the relationship between resistance exercise and science performance. These results highlight the potential advantages of incorporating brief daily exercise sessions to bolster adolescent physical fitness and emphasize the mediating function of working memory in connecting physical activity with academic accomplishment. This study furnishes valuable insights for educators and policymakers striving to enhance adolescent well-being and academic achievement through targeted interventions.

The present study investigated the moderation effect of visual temporal processing among the relationship between early picture book interaction experience and Chinese character reading of Chinese children with and without dyslexia. In total 118 Chinese children aged 8 to 10 years old were recruited from Taiwan. Half of them were typical learners, while the other half were identified as having dyslexia. We found children with typically developing showed significantly higher levels of early picture book interaction experience and visual temporal processing compared to those with dyslexia. Also, two groups of participants showed distinct profiles of visual temporal processing, early picture book interaction experience, and Chinese character reading. For typically developing students, visual temporal processing significantly contributed to Chinese character reading. In contrast, for students with dyslexia, the interaction between visual temporal processing and early picture book interaction experience was a significant predictor, and early picture book interaction experience’s significant contribution to Chinese character reading was only found for those who had better visual temporal processing.

Surprisingly little is known about how informational relevance guides children’s informing decisions. Although prior studies have demonstrated that children selectively inform and teach others these studies do not directly address whether children consider informational relevance specific to an outgroup member. We also know that children by age 5 and 6 show robust preferences for their ingroup members in various decisions but does information relevance modulate their ingroup preferences? In three experiments (N = 180), we investigated whether Iraqi Kurdish 6-year-old children expect others to inform an ingroup member or an outgroup member, depending on the informational relevance. In Experiment 1 children expected others to inform an ingroup member rather than an outgroup member irrespective of information type – extending prior work on ingroup preferences. In experiments 2 and 3, in which the relevance of the information to an outgroup member was highlighted, children’s expectation about informing an ingroup member was modulated by information type. Together, the findings suggest that children consider informational relevance to guide their expectations about others’ selective informing in the context of group membership, which could further explain how cultural knowledge is maintained and reinforced among members of the same cultural group.

We examined U.S. and Canadian children’s (n = 214) and adults’ (n = 72) belief in ability contagion – an expected improvement in performance when using a celebrity’s object (e.g., superior tennis skills when using Serena Williams’s racquet). Four- to 7-year-olds preferred using a celebrity to a non-celebrity object, but their performance on a related task did not differ depending on which object they used (Study 1). Adults and 5- to 8-year-olds expected that a celebrity object would lead to superior performance in a forced-choice paradigm (Study 2), but not when given the option to state that the objects were the same (Study 3), even though adults and older children (> 7.01 years) judged the celebrity object to have an enhanced worth. We find that participants do not believe in ability contagion using either implicit or explicit measures. We discuss implications of our results for versions of contagion accounts of celebrity objects.

Block construction is ubiquitous in early development, yet is surprisingly complex, involving step-by-step sequenced actions to create specific structures. Here, we use novel analytic methods to characterize these action sequences in detail, including which individual parts of the structure (‘states’) are built and how these structures are combined, creating a fully specified build path towards the final structure. We find that, like adults tested in a previous study, 4- to 8-year-olds build by creating a small subset of possible individual states and full build paths, and that they prioritize building layer-by-layer. The individual states and build paths that children produce are strikingly similar to those of adults, resulting in structures that are more stable than other possible (but not attested) states and paths. Our approach serves as a lens into the cognitive processes underlying block building and suggests that children’s building is guided by significant cognitive constraints consistent with “computational thinking”.

Anthropomorphised animals are a prevalent character type in children’s books. However, stories with fantastical protagonists are associated with poorer social learning than those with human protagonists. We explored whether children’s representations of characters’ internal states and dialogue in story retells were related to story character realism (anthropomorphised animal, human), story theme (sharing, busyness), age, and vocabulary. Three- to seven-year-olds (N = 171) listened to one of four versions of an illustrated storybook that manipulated character realism and theme. Developmental trends were evident: Older children included more internal state references and dialogue in their retells than younger children. Of note, children retelling a prosocial story with human protagonists included more socio-relational language than those retelling a busy-themed story featuring humans; the same advantage was not evident for stories with animal protagonists. These findings imply that realistic protagonists may elicit more robust representations of social ideas in the minds of young children.