Informational social influence and product quality judgments.

Eight groups of 15 college females each rated the quality of 1 paper plate while exposed to simulated quality evaluations of other raters. Others' evaluations were manipulated by presenting the modal evaluation as higher or lower than the control (no influence) mean rating and by varying the uniformity of others' ratings at 2 levels of dispersion. The availability of intrinsic (product composition) cues during prerating examination of the plate was manipulated by making available, or withholding, 2 comparison plates. Others' modal evaluations significantly affected the Ss' quality ratings of the plate. This effect was substantially stronger when others' evaluations were more uniform. The presence or absence of comparison plates had no effect on the influence conditions. Results are interpreted, in conjunction with those of J. B. Cohen and E. Golden (see record 1972-11926-001) as providing support for the effect of informational social influence on ratings of product quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Order effects on children's moral and achievement judgments.

24 kindergartners were presented with 24 stories varying in the actor's intent, the outcome of the actor's behavior, and the competitiveness of the situation (noncompetitive/moral vs competitive/achievement dilemmas). Ss evaluated the actor by administering rewards or punishments in each of the stories on an 11-point graphic scale. Reversing the order of the stimulus cues increased the relative importance of outcome. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive bases of children's moral judgments.

Conducted 4 experiments with 140 3-, 4-, 5-, and 9-yr-olds to examine the cognitive bases of children's judgments of morality. Moral dilemmas consisting of information about a character's motives and the consequences of these actions were devised such that the order, concreteness, and imageability of information were systematically varied. Results show that 5-yr-old males, but not females, favored recent information while the other variables had no impact on Ss' moral judgments. Overall, the number of 5-yr-olds who used motive information was not significantly different from the number who used outcome information. In the 4th study, the reasoning strategy was examined rather than the content of children's judgments. Three distinct strategies of reasoning were observed: (a) focusing on either the motive or outcome to the exclusion of the other, (b) switching focus from one piece of information to the other, and finally (c) considering both aspects of the dilemma at a time. These abilities had significant parallels in a spatial rotation task. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschool children's judgments of number magnitude.

Two experiments were conducted to replicate and extend research by Siegler and Robinson. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-old children solved 36 magnitude-comparison problems involving pairs of numbers 1 through 9. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-old children sorted the numbers 1 through 9 into a small, medium, or large category. Three-year-olds tended to discriminate between 1 as a small number versus all other numbers as large; 4-year-olds showed signs of discriminating among 1, 2, 3, 4, medium, and large numbers. These results replicate findings reported by Siegler and Robinson and suggest that readiness skills for early childhood mathematics education should include the development of appropriate concepts of number magnitude. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parent and child expressed affect and children's social competence: Modeling direct and indirect pathways.

This study examined links between parents' and children's expressed affect during parent–child play and children's social functioning with peers. A total of 116 kindergarten-age children and their parents (114 mothers, 102 fathers) were observed during physical play interactions and were coded on global measures of expressed positive and negative affect. Kindergarten and 1st-grade teachers and peers provided measures of social competence. Latent variable path analysis with partial least squares was used to examine models that included "direct" and "indirect" pathways. Relations between parental positive affect and children's social competence were mediated by children's expressed positive affect. Parental negative affect was associated with negative social outcomes in children; however, these relations were not mediated by children's negative expressions. The strongest support for the hypothesized models was found in same-sex dyads. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of spatial cues on children's cardinal number judgments.

Administered a series of stimuli designed to assess the dependence of cardinal number judgments on relative length and relative density cues to 200 4- and 6-yr-olds. Among younger Ss, developmental changes were restricted to same-length/different-density stimuli and to different-length/different-density stimuli in which length differences exceeded density differences. Among older Ss, developmental changes were noted for different-length/different-density stimuli in which length and density differences were equal. Scalogram analyses revealed 4 distinct levels of stimulus difficulty for both age groups. There was some evidence that, in addition to the effects of relative length and relative density cues, children's cardinal number judgments are influenced by extreme crowding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive effects of training domain and age on children's moral judgments.

69 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were (a) read stories depicting either good (nice) or bad (naughty) acts paired with neutral acts, (b) trained to consider intentions rather than consequences while making moral judgments, and (c) tested for their use of intentions in both moral judgment domains (niceness and naughtiness). Results support the hypotheses that (a) training would be effective in both domains, (b) cross-domain generalization of training would occur, and (c) Ss would judge bad behavior on the basis of intentions and independently of consequences before they would do so for good behavior. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimism in children's judgments of health and environmental risks.

Two studies of 6th graders (244 and 73 Ss, respectively) examined optimism and the degree of differentiation in perceived risks across diverse health, lifestyle, and environmental problems. Findings revealed perceptions of relative invulnerability and highly differentiated risk assessments. The strongest levels of optimism emerged for controllable and stigmatizing events such as illicit drugs, smoking, and AIDS. The effects of gender, assessment context, and methodological variations were minimal. Implications for health-promoting interventions with school-age children, the need for developmental information about risk perception processes, and the difficulty of distinguishing realistic from biased optimism are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of a narrative model on children's moral judgments.

Tested the hypothesis that children's moral orientation can be influenced by exposure to narrated models that express consistent moral judgments based on either the consequences of an action or the motives of the individual. 66 1st and 2nd graders were randomly assigned to 3 conditions: objective model (judgments based on consequences), subjective model (judgments based on motives), or no model, with an equal number of males and females in each group. Following the procedure of Piaget and others, a pretest presented all Ss with pairs of stories contrasting a well-intentioned act involving serious consequences with an ill-intentioned act involving minor consequences. In the experimental phase which followed the pretest by 2 wks, Ss were exposed to narrative characters who made consistent moral judgments. A posttest conducted by another E followed immediately. Results indicate that the objective model condition significantly increased responding based on consequences, and the subjective model condition significantly increased responding on motives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration theory applied to children's judgments of equity.

Studied information integration in judgments of deservingness and fair shares in 3 experiments using 4–8 yr old children. Even the youngest children had a well-developed sense of equity, and no age trends were found in this respect. Integrational capacity increased with age, but even some of the 4-yr-olds were able to integrate 4 pieces of information. Centration tendencies were absent. At a quantitative level, the data support 3 algebraic models: an averaging model for deservingness, a ratio model for equity division, and an equity integration model for multidimensional equity judgments. These results add to the evidence for a cognitive algebra of children's judgments. The importance of analysis at the level of the individual child is stressed. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confidence judgments in children's and adult's event recall and suggestibility.

The present work investigated the role of children's and adults' metacognitive monitoring and control processes for unbiased event recall tasks and for suggestibility. Three studies were conducted in which children and adults indicated their degree of confidence that their answers were correct after (Study 1) and before (Study 2) answering either unbiased or misleading questions or (Study 3) forced-choice recognition questions. There was a strong tendency for overestimation of confidence regardless of age and question format. However, children did not lack the principal metacognitive competencies when these questions were asked in a neutral interview. Under misleading questioning, in contrast, children's monitoring skills were seriously impaired. Within each age group, better metacognitive differentiation was positively associated with recall accuracy in the suggestive interview. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of the salience of intention and consequence on children's moral judgments.

Conducted a study with 96 middle-class students in 3 age groups (6-7, 8-9, and 10-11 yrs) to examine the extent to which the recency effect is a factor in children's moral judgments. The E read 4 stories which were centered around 2 themes, one depicting a child dropping cups and the other a child spilling glue, and which combined each of 2 levels of intent (accidental and purposeful) with each of 2 levels of consequence (light and heavy damage). Within each age group, the 32 Ss were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: intent-consequence (I-C), with intent first, followed by consequence; or consequence-intent (C-I), with consequence first, followed by intent. Results support the hypothesis that moral judgments are affected by the relative salience of cues, as manipulated by order presentation. However, the influence of order was complex and varied with the age of Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related priming effects in social judgments.

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in the impact of previously activated (and thus easily accessible) trait-related information on judgments about people. The authors hypothesized that age-related declines in the efficiency of controlled processing mechanisms during adulthood would be associated with increased susceptibility to judgment biases associated with such information. In each study, different-aged adults made impression judgments about a target, and assimilation of these judgments to trait constructs activated in a previous, unrelated task were examined. Consistent with the authors' hypotheses, older adults were likely to form impressions that were biased toward the primed trait constructs. In contrast, younger adults exhibited greater awareness of the primed information and were more likely to correct for its perceived influence, especially when distinctive contextual cues regarding the source of the primes were available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of automatism of social judgments.

Two studies, with 28 Ss, examined the development and correlates of automatic processing. Ss judged the suitability for a given occupation of a stimulus person described by traits or performed a similar stereotyped judgment task. Results show that automatism developed relatively rapidly (within a few dozen trials) and required repeated execution of the same process, not necessarily with the same content. Increases in processing efficiency, the ability to transfer the increased efficiency to new information content, and memory storage were related to automatism of a process developed through practice. A tentative theoretical account is presented that relates these results to others in social cognition and cognitive psychology, particularly those reported by J. R. Anderson (1983) on the architecture of cognition and by E. R. Smith (see record 1984-28664-001) on social inference processes. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The susceptibility of chronic schizophrenics to social influence in the formation of perceptual judgments.

To test the hypothesis that the schizophrenic process may be characterized by a progressive withdrawal from contact with and hence influenced by the social environment, regressed schizophrenics, partially remitted schizophrenics, and a control group of hospitalized TB patients (all VA) were tested in the Asch (1956) conformity-to-group-judgment situation. Schizophrenics were seen to respond to social stimuli, but their responses had little apparent relationship to the physical or social reality of the situation. From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2JQ48S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of training and set size on children's judgments of number and length.

When children are asked to compare 2 rows of dots in length or number, some respond consistently as if they were asked about number (i.e., with a number strategy) and some as if about length, regardless of what they are asked in fact. If such children are then trained to respond correctly to the kind of question on which they had made errors, they still do not differentiate the dimensions but instead make errors on the kind of question they had previously answered correctly. The choice of dimensional strategy is also determined by the number of dots in the sets and whether the session began with large or small sets. Findings from a study of 84 3-5yr olds are interpreted with reference to the distinction between having a strategy and attaching it to appropriate situations; apparently these strategies are applied out of bias rather than attachment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents' influence on children's achievement-related perceptions.

Two aspects of the relation between parents' perceptions of their children and children's self- and task perceptions in math and English were investigated: (a) the mediating role of parents' perceptions between grades and adolescents' self-perceptions and (b) the gendered nature of parents' perceptions. Data for this study are part of a longitudinal investigation (the Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions). Data from 914 sixth-grade adolescents and their parents are used in this article. Results showed that parents' perceptions mediate the relation between children's grades and children's self and task perceptions in both domains. Parents' perceptions had a stronger influence on children's perceptions than children's own grades. Significant but low correlations between gender and self and task perceptions were found in both math and English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child-care quality and children's social development.

This study examined the influence on children's social development of variation in the quality of their child-care environments. The sample consisted of 166 children attending representative child-care centers that varied widely in quality. Possible relations associated with age, child-care experience, and family background were controlled using hierarchical multiple regression. Both global estimates of child-care quality and specific program features, such as director experience, ratios, and verbal interactions, were obtained from observational measures and staff questionnaires. Measures of social development were derived from parent and caregiver ratings of the children. Of greatest importance is the finding that overall quality, caregiver–child verbal interactions, and director experience were each highly predictive of the children's social development in child care. Family background measures were also significantly predictive of several of the social outcomes, whereas child-care experience showed few significant effects. The implications for social policies and future research in child care are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's social judgments concerning emotionally disturbed peers.

Analysis of 31 4th and 6th graders' judgments of observable behavior (presented in vignettes) showed that Ss made distinctions between normal and disturbed central figures and among 4 disturbed central figures on degree of perceived disturbance. Liking and disliking were not related to each other or to degree of perceived disturbance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)