Cognitive Development最新文献

One domain that has not been thoroughly investigated is children’s ability to categorize information, specifically conventional (known to others, no restrictions on sharing) and privileged (not known to others, restrictions on sharing). In Study 1, 73 four- and five-year-olds and adults classified conventional and privileged information by how it is shared. All age groups accurately classified the information types, though accuracy improved with age. In Study 2, 68 four- and 6-year-olds and adults were presented with scenarios where information type and how it was shared did not match (privileged but shared) and asked if it was conventional or privileged. Four-year-olds and adults categorized conventional information by its label and did so more than 6-year-olds, while there was no pattern for privileged information. These results support that even 4-year-olds can distinguish between conventional and privileged information, and categorization strategies may differ across age and type of information.

Existing evidence has revealed that geometrical intuitions develop spontaneously without formal education. However, empirical research exploring the development of specific intuitive geometric concepts, such as parallelism, is still lacking. To explore preschoolers’ intuition of parallelism, one of the most fundamental concepts in geometry, a series of deviant-detection items were presented to 96 3- to 5-year-old children. Children showed the ability to discriminate between parallel and intersecting lines at least from the age of 4. We grouped children as discriminators and non-discriminators based on their performance in discriminating parallel and intersecting lines without a cross point. For the children who succeeded in this discrimination, they could distinguish parallel lines from intersecting lines both with and without a visible cross point, although they were easily interfered with the visible cross point. Children also showed some naïve understanding of parallel curves and could extract common features from parallel lines and parallel curves, suggesting that the extension of their intuitions of parallelism might be more general than the definition in Euclidean geometry.

The goal was to specify the developmental trajectory of cardinal, ordinal, and spatial relational language comprehension and production. One hundred sixty-four 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old English-speaking children viewed a row of toy cars and were asked to place the appropriate car(s) into a toy garage based on the label provided (Give Me) or to produce the correct label for the specified car(s) (Tell Me). Children were tested using cardinal (one, three, five), ordinal (first, third, fifth), and spatial (front, middle, back) labels. Language performance improved with age, especially for spatial labels. Language performance was more accurate for cardinal labels than for spatial and ordinal labels. Performance was quite accurate for cardinal labels regardless of condition, whereas comprehension was higher than production for spatial and ordinal labels.

Previous research suggests that children differ substantially in their sensitivity to positive and negative parenting qualities. In a Swiss sample of N = 264 (M_age: 6.0 years, 50.4% female, 15% migration background), we examined the interaction between parenting and children’s sensitivity on executive functions (EF). Results showed that EF performance tended to be higher for sensitive children whose parents reported more involved parenting and tended to be lower for sensitive children whose parents reported the use of corporal punishment. No such effects emerged for less sensitive children. The results suggest that parenting quality may be more strongly related to EF performance in more sensitive children compared to less sensitive children.

The modulation of cognitive control by rewards has long been discussed, but there is scarce evidence of how social and non-social rewards influence cognitive control in childhood, especially in the preschool years. Critically, sociality has often been confounded with other important reward dimensions (e.g., tangibility) in prior studies, hence potentially misestimating the effect of social rewards. Thus, the present study re-examined the effects of social and non-social rewards on cognitive control, particularly on proactive and reactive control engagement during childhood. Thirty 5- to 6-year-olds and thirty 9- to 10-year-olds completed an AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) during an online session in three conditions: control, social reward, and non-social (i.e., monetary) reward conditions. Social rewards increased younger and older children’s response accuracy, suggesting greater cognitive control. However, no influence on how children engage cognitive control (i.e., proactively or reactively) was observed. The provision of non-social rewards did not influence cognitive performance in either group of children. When controlling for other reward dimension, we found evidence that social rewards, but not non-social rewards, can promote cognitive control performance in childhood.

Understanding the magnitude of rational numbers is crucial for mathematical development. However, children do not readily integrate the quantity of fractions and decimals and are even less likely to show a linear representation of fractions and decimals. Thus, the current study examined whether college-aged individuals show spontaneous quantity integration across distinct notations of rational numbers, whether rational number representation would resemble a number line, and whether their rational number representation predicts algebra performance. Further, we examined whether math anxiety plays a role. We found that college students do develop linear representation integrating the quantity between fractions and decimals. Quantitative representation of rational numbers predicted higher algebra scores. Linearity was not a significant predictor for algebra performance. The relations remained even after controlling for math anxiety. Implications for numerical understanding as well as math achievement are discussed.

It has been proposed that humans use non-numerical features (such as convex hull and surface area) to estimate the number of objects in a scene. This would be an evolutionarily advantageous strategy if such features truly patterned with number in the world, but this has never been empirically tested. Here, we quantify the strength of the relationship between number and non-numerical features in two relevant image sets: the illustrations from children’s counting books, and real-world photographs. We find that non-numerical features are much less predictive of the number of objects in counting books than in photographs, despite the former being specifically designed for use in teaching children about numbers. Then, across three behavioral experiments, we ask whether the stronger relationship in photographs predicts better number estimation performance in adults (N = 120) and in children (N = 94; M age = 7;2 years). Our experiments reveal that number estimation is easier from the counting books than the photographs, even though non-numerical features are less predictive of number in books. This analysis uses real-world stimuli and draws into question the claim that non-numerical features are intrinsically involved in number extraction.

The present study introduces systematic data on the cognitive and linguistic abilities of refugee children. We tested 9–10 year-old Syrian refugee children (N = 25) on their cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory, shifting, inhibitory control, and fluid intelligence) and vocabulary knowledge in Arabic and Turkish. We compared their performance to two non-refugee control groups with low socioeconomic status, matched on age and mother’s education: Arabic-Turkish bilinguals (N = 29) and Turkish monolinguals (N = 19). Refugee children lagged behind both non-refugee groups in the fluid intelligence task. Compared to their bilingual peers, they showed poorer performance in working memory and shifting tasks. On the other hand, these scores matched their monolingual peers, with only slower performance in the shifting task. Greater exposure to trauma and poverty were predictors for lower scores in refugee children’s cognitive tasks. On the language tests, refugee children exhibited a smaller Turkish vocabulary size compared to both non-refugee controls. Trauma exposure, poverty and kindergarten attendance factors were significant predictors for this difference. As for the Arabic language skills, Syrian children outperformed their bilingual peers in Arabic. Although Syrian children displayed a more balanced bilingual profile, their performance in their dominant language (Arabic) was poorer than the bilingual control group’s performance in their dominant language (Turkish). Overall, the results suggest that refugee children’s working memory, shifting and fluid intelligence abilities, as well as mother tongue development, were negatively affected by forced displacement, but they were able to develop Turkish vocabulary skills and match Turkish monolinguals on both working memory and shifting abilities. This is the first piece of evidence suggesting that while being a refugee has adverse effects on children’s cognitive and linguistic development, holding bilingual status may actually create a protective shield in some cognitive abilities for disadvantaged refugee children.

In this study, we investigated whether preschool children can draw inferences about the emotional state of a film protagonist. A sample of 59 children aged 4 and 5 watched 20 scenes from a television show. Their ability to understand the protagonist’s emotional states was assessed using a reaction time task. Media sign literacy, theory of mind abilities, and the general understanding of the scenes were also evaluated. Our results show that even children aged 4 drew emotional inferences but only on a valence-based level (i.e., distinguishing between emotions of different valences). No exact inferences (i.e., distinguishing between emotions of the same valence) were drawn. There were no significant influences of media sign literacy or theory of mind on the inference generation, but general understanding of the film scenes was important.

Self-derivation through memory integration is the cognitive process of generating new knowledge by integrating individual facts. Across two studies, we longitudinally examined developmental change, individual stability, and relations with academic performance in a diverse agricultural community. We documented children’s self-derivation in their classrooms and examined the relation with self-derivation and academic performance a year later. In Study 1, we examined self-derivation (n = 94; M_age= 6.67; initially grades K and 1) using the same paradigm at both time points. We found evidence of developmental change from Time 1 to Time 2. However, self-derivation accounted for a small portion of the variance in self-derivation (reflecting individual stability) and academic performance measured one year later. In Study 2, we examined self-derivation across two different paradigms with children beginning in Grades 2 and 3 (n = 82; M_age= 8.60). Even across paradigms, we found evidence for individual stability. Year 1 self-derivation also predicted Year 2 academic performance. We posit that self-derivation through integration is a domain-general construct related to academic performance.