Cognitive Development最新文献

Social learning strategies guide individuals in deciding from whom to learn and when. Recent research on food learning has revealed that children adopt “who” strategies, but whether they used “when” strategies remained unclear. This study investigated 4- to 6-year-old children’s beliefs about “when” another child should copy their mother’s food choice. In Experiment 1, children (N = 24, 58% female) determined whether another child should adopt social or asocial learning when selecting food from among familiar or novel foods. In Experiment 2, children (N = 26, 57% female) determined whether another child should adopt social or asocial learning when selecting food in an environment with a low or high percentage of bad-tasting foods. Children responded that social learning should be adopted when selecting from among novel foods and in an environment with a high percentage of bad-tasting foods. These findings revealed that children employ two “when” strategies when making food choices.

Although the capacity to remember spatial and temporal information may develop at different rates throughout childhood, its early development has rarely been examined within the same participants, using the same task, and across different time delays elucidating retention of different aspects of early episodic memories. We used a novel tablet game to investigate memory for objects’ spatial locations and temporal order in a sample of toddlers ranging in age from 2 years to 2;8 years (M = 2;4 years, SD = 2 months; N = 73). We examined performance both immediately after an initial and an additional demonstration, following a 20-minute delay, and 1 week after learning; performance was also assessed following a new demonstration after the 1-week delay test. Using a linear mixed model, we found that toddlers remembered spatial locations better than temporal order, and temporal memory decayed more quickly and did not benefit from reminders compared to spatial memory, underscoring that early memory fragility may depend on the type of information being retained.

Saving plays an important role in children’s everyday lives. We examine the impact of a verbal prompt on children’s saving in a laboratory task and whether cognitive and environmental factors predict children’s performance on this task, as well as on parent-reported child saving behaviors. One hundred and eighty-seven 3- to 7-year-olds completed the saving task, in which they received tokens that they could spend immediately on a less preferred reward or save for a more preferred reward later. Half the children received a verbal prompt to save whereas the other half did not. Significantly more children in the prompt condition saved at least one token for their preferred reward, suggesting that highlighting saving as an option increases children’s saving. Parent-reported child saving was also significantly predicted by parent-reported inhibitory control and the saving practices parents reported with their child. We discuss implications of our findings for fostering adaptive future-oriented reasoning in childhood.

Previous research has shown that morally-relevant theory of mind enables children to avoid blaming a peer for an accidental transgression. The current study investigated whether this form of theory of mind helps children recognize that gender inequalities are unfair and create negative emotional experiences. Further, the study examined this ability across three perspectives (for themselves, for those who have been advantaged by inequality, and for those who have been disadvantaged by inequality). Participants were 141 children (M_Age = 6.67 years, 49% female, 32% ethnic/racial minority) recruited from the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. Experience with the negative consequences of gender bias and more advanced mental state understanding was associated with more negative evaluations of gender inequalities and more neutral attributions of others’ emotions. These findings shed light on the role of different forms of mental state understanding in children’s evaluations of inequalities based on gender.

Although it has been found that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with impaired ability of inhibition control often showed greater attentional blink (AB), there is minimal information in regards to attention deficit in the interaction of AB enhancement with sound induction. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task was used by presenting an audiology pure tone evaluation simultaneously with T2 to investigate how auditory-driven visual perception enhances AB in children with ADHD. The results showed that children with ADHD had greater AB, and they performed worse than typically developing children (TD) in AB amplitude and recovery time. In addtion, the sound enhanced AB in TD children but interfered in children with ADHD. These results indicate that children with ADHD with faulty attentional allocation have fewer resources available for targets in the cross-modality AB, thus leading to a severe interference effect and a larger AB. It demonstrates that sound can only enhance AB when attentional resources are previously invested and the ability to suppress interference are still sufficient after dividing attention in cross-modality.

Does mathematical vocabulary predict the change in students’ performance on mathematical tasks from one academic year to the next? Chilean Spanish-speaking students (N = 87) completed measures of mathematical vocabulary, mathematical skills (i.e., arithmetic fluency, calculation, and applied problems), receptive vocabulary, and working memory in Grade 2 (T1, M_age = 7:11 years:months, SD = 0:5, 46% girls). One year later (T2) they completed the same mathematical measures. Concurrent relations were found between mathematical vocabulary and the three mathematical skills at both time points. Together, general and mathematical vocabulary at T1 explained significant unique variance in the change in applied problems and calculation from T1 to T2. For calculation however, only mathematical vocabulary predicted significant unique variance in the change from T1 to T2. Change in arithmetic fluency was only predicted by working memory. These results address the roles of general and mathematical vocabulary in students’ mathematical development in elementary school.

It has been shown that school-aged children often turn to others for help with the motive to learn and expand on their knowledge or skills (so-called “mastery-oriented” help-seeking, Nelson-Le Gall, 1985). Although help-seeking in problem-solving contexts is increasingly studied in preschoolers, there is so far no experimental evidence that young children show a preference for mastery- as opposed to outcome-driven help. In two online experiments (N = 144, 72 female), 2- and 3-year-olds from diverse ethno-racial backgrounds living in the United States (68 % White; 16 % Latine) watched an agent failing at a task (e.g., pouring water into a cup) before they selected one of two helpers for the agent: one who demonstrated how to perform the task (mastery-oriented helper) or one who completed the task without demonstration (outcome-oriented helper). Children of both ages selected mastery-oriented helpers to assist the struggling agent (Experiments 1 and 2) but chose helpers randomly in a control condition in which the agent succeeded at the task and therefore needed no mastery-oriented help (Experiment 2). The findings indicate that young children recognize that furthering one’s abilities is a core motive of help-seeking.

This study investigated age and gender differences in global-local processing (the perception of parts forming a whole) in middle childhood. While there is a consensus on a global advantage effect regarding priority, speed, and accuracy of processing, its universality is debated. A Navon-type selective attention task with hierarchical stimuli was administered to 199 students aged 9 to 12 years. Repeated measures mixed ANCOVA with reaction times and accuracy scores showed that only boys exhibited a global advantage effect in speed, while girls demonstrated higher accuracy in both global and local conditions. A trade-off effect was suggested by a complementary analysis using Balanced Integration Score. An improvement with age was found regarding speed and overall performance, with no differential effect between hierarchical levels. These results are presented in the hopes of providing information on gender-specific challenges that can be mitigated through future interventions.

This study examined how children (31–71 months; N = 85) adjusted their teaching behaviors with three learners, each posing different communicative challenges, in comparison to a control learner, who showed no communicative challenge. With a Disabled learner, children showed fewer explicit teaching behaviors, and more eye contact with their parents and/or the primary experimenter as compared to when teaching a Control learner. With a Tired learner who followed identical scripted actions as the Disabled learner, children’s overall rate of teaching behaviors was largely unchanged. With a Spanish Speaking learner, children spoke less frequently but showed more frequent eye contact with the learner. These results demonstrate that while preschool children can modify their teaching strategies to adapt to the needs of different learners, they appear to teach less effectively and show markers of uncertainty when teaching to learners with disabilities.

The term “disability” encompasses many conditions (including a range of learning, intellectual, physical, sensory and socioemotional disorders) that can be caused by a variety of genetic, environmental, and unknown factors. We examine how children reason about the biological nature of disabilities, specifically the extent to which they use 'essentialist', 'infectious disease', or 'bodily damage' causal models. These models provide competing predictions regarding the biological nature of disability. The essentialist model views disabilities as caused by an internal essence, akin to genes, and entails thinking of disabilities as stable, immutable, and inheritable. The infectious disease model views disabilities as communicable, abnormal, and needing intervention. The bodily damage model views disabilities as resulting from injuries or toxins, which maybe stable but are not inheritable or transmissible. We review what is known about children's acquisition of these models, and discuss how disentangling these biological models is a fruitful avenue for future research.