Children's responses to ambiguous messages and their understanding of ambiguity.

Conducted 4 experiments to investigate whether a total of 212 young children (aged 4 yrs 6 mo to 7 yrs 3 mo) could respond differently to ambiguous and unambiguous messages if they were prevented from pointing at the potential referents. The exact nature of the bias that was operating was examined in the final 2 experiments, which investigated whether the differential responding to ambiguous and unambiguous messages was based on an understanding of ambiguity or on an awareness of certainty and uncertainty about the interpretation of ambiguous and unambiguous messages. It was found that Ss were more likely to respond differently to ambiguous and unambiguous messages if they were prevented from pointing at the potential referents. It was also found that the improvement in differential responding was not accompanied by an improvement in verbal judgments of message quality, and the differential responses were closely related to judgments of certainty and uncertainty about the interpretation of the message. Ss who did not know that verbal messages could be ambiguous could nevertheless respond differently to ambiguous and unambiguous messages by attending to their own certainty or uncertainty about the interpretation of those messages. They were more likely to do that when they were prevented from pointing at the potential references. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Checking it out: Cognitive style, context, and problem type in children's monitoring of text comprehension.

Three experiments investigated the effects of age, context, and reflection–impulsivity (as assessed by the Matching Familiar Figures Test) on children's monitoring of comprehensibility problems in extended passages. In Exp I with 20 kindergartners and 20 2nd graders, reflective listeners were generally more effective detectors of referentially ambiguous terms in brief texts than were their impulsive agemates. Presence of a perceptual context for the messages significantly facilitated Ss' ambiguity detection as well. Exp II replicated the perceptual-context effect for 20 1st graders but failed to find any effects of cognitive style. In Exp III, 72 1st, 3rd, and 6th graders heard stories with several types of coherence problems, including referential confusions or global text-organization problems (missing story themes or resolutions). Half the Ss anticipated retelling the stories, and half did not. No effects of this listener–purpose manipulation were observed. More reflective listeners again detected referential ambiguities more readily overall, but this cognitive style effect did not extend to other types of message problems. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How children learn to listen: The effects of modeling feedback styles on children's performance in referential communication.

48 kindergartners and 48 2nd graders participated as listeners in a referential communication task with an adult speaker. Ss were presented with sets of 4 pictures and asked to choose the referent on the basis of a speaker's message. The messages were either adequate or ambiguous, describing 2 of the 4 possible referents. Ss were instructed to ask questions if they needed more information. Prior to these trials, Ss were exposed to 1 of 3 modeling conditions in which they viewed an adult listener responding to ambiguous messages by asking either general questions, specific questions, or specific questions accompanied by an explanation of the underlying strategy. A 4th group received no modeling. Although each of the modeling groups was successful in increasing the frequency of the modeled question, older Ss benefited more from modeling than younger children. Age differences suggested that the effectiveness of modeling interacted with children's existing cognitive abilities. Auxiliary evidence pointed to the role of information processing in children's abilities to deal with ambiguous communications as listeners. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bias in interpretation of ambiguous sentences related to threat in anxiety.

In the 1st of 2 experiments, currently clinically anxious, recovered clinically anxious, and normal control Ss were presented with a mixture of unambiguous sentences; both threatening and nonthreatening interpretations were possible for the latter. A subsequent recognition-memory test indicated that the currently anxious Ss were more likely than normal control and recovered anxious Ss to interpret the ambiguous sentences in a threatening fashion rather than in a nonthreatening fashion. This suggests that the biased interpretation of ambiguity found in currently anxious Ss reflected their anxious mood state. A 2nd experiment established that the difference in interpretative processes between currently anxious and control Ss was not due to response bias and that the interpretative bias was a reasonably general one. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and children's word recognition.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the word recognition processes of 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders. In Exp I, 72 Ss named target words that were primed by words that had more than 1 meaning. Targets were related either to the more or less frequent sense of the ambiguous prime or were unrelated to it. Findings indicate that older Ss were more likely than younger Ss to restrict processing of ambiguous words to the most frequent meaning. While younger Ss showed approximately equal facilitation for words related to either meaning, regardless of each one's relative frequency, 6th graders apparently retrieved only the most frequent meaning. Exp II, with 36 Ss, was similar to Exp I but included neutral primes and varied the interval between presentation of prime and target. Results show that all groups showed automatic retrieval of both meanings of the ambiguous word. For 6th graders, however, this retrieval was followed by a 2nd stage, in which attention was allocated to the more frequent meaning, maintaining it, while the less frequent meaning was inhibited. Overall data indicate that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory organization during children's repeated recall.

Presented a list of categorically related words to 20 2nd graders and 20 6th graders in a memory test. Multiple recall tests followed the initial presentation of words so that changes in memory organization could be assessed over recall attempts. Ss in both grades remembered many new words on later recall trials that they had not remembered on Trial 1. The proportions of new words recalled and the retrieval characteristics of these words were similar in both grades. Younger Ss, however, forgot many words during repeated recall, and older Ss did not. Different patterns of forgetting were correlated with different types of organizational strategies. Second graders recalled words in a sequential, rote manner with few transformations or rearrangements of words. Sixth graders, on the other hand, actively constructed larger categories or chunks of words over recall attempts. The spontaneous reconstruction of remembered information by 6th graders is interpreted as a manifestation of constructive memory-monitoring skills. Some potential advantages of a repeated recall paradigm for developmental research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of comprehension monitoring as a function of context.

Two studies with 59 Ss (preschoolers–4th graders) explored the effects of stimulus factors on children's ability to monitor comprehension of messages as listeners in a referential communication situation. Results of Exp I show that both complexity of the stimulus array and degree of message ambiguity affected performances. In line with previous findings, 4th graders but not younger Ss showed evidence of effective comprehension monitoring. Data from Exp II show that when conducive stimulus conditions were arranged, even 1st graders demonstrated considerable skill in comprehension monitoring. In addition to investigating comprehension monitoring per se, the studies also examined the role of comprehension monitoring in directing the overall comprehension process. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorization processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities.

Two studies investigated memory processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. In the 1st study, 64 2nd and 4th graders were administered this subtest under standard conditions. Ss were designated as either "labelers" or "nonlabelers" according to whether they used a stimulus labeling strategy to aid recall. Differences in performance between 2nd and 4th graders could be accounted for almost entirely in terms of the greater number of labelers in the 4th grade. In the 2nd study, labelers and nonlabelers from Exp I at each grade level were formally trained to use a labeling strategy. The training resulted in improved performance for all Ss. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of inferential set, outcome intent, and outcome severity on children's moral judgments.

38 1st, 2nd, and 6th graders read stories about aggressive acts that resulted in either mild or severe physically harmful outcomes that were perpetrated either accidentally or with mild or severe negative outcome intent. The inferential sets of Ss in the value-maintenance, situation-matching, and no-set conditions were manipulated, respectively, by telling Ss that they were going to play a game with or babysit and watch the "transgressor" or by telling them nothing about an interaction with the transgressor. Although younger Ss differentiated their moral judgments according to outcome intent, older Ss were uniformly harsh toward transgressors who intended to produce either mild or severe outcomes. Older Ss assigned blame on the basis of the intent to hurt and the foreseeability of harm, regardless of the degree of harm intended. Younger Ss regarded intentions with respect to severity as important, perhaps because of their greater rule orientation and concern with parental approval. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Etiquette of verbal conditioning.

Explored the role of ambiguity in producing verbal conditioning by using 2 E types and 2 S types. Es, designated "craftly" because they conditioned their Ss without S becoming aware, were assumed to be more ambiguous than normal Es. Ss uninformed about the correct response were considered to be in a more ambiguous position than informed Ss. 6 college students were assigned to each role within each of the 4 kinds of E-S groups. 1 set of 4 groups sat face-to-face while a visual barrier was interposed between another set. The barrier had no effect on conditioning. As expected, crafty Es were more effective conditioners and their verbal style was rated less clear and less certain. Informed Ss conditioned better than the uninformed. Certain types of ambiguity increase verbal compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of referential communication: Deciding that a message is uninformative.

Investigated whether young children typically attend to the age of the speaker when they lack knowledge of other communicative rules. Two experiments compared how children evaluate 3 types of uninformative messages (ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent) and whether and why the speaker's age affects the evaluation of each. In Exp I, 22 1st and 22 4th graders played a referential communication game with either a peer or an adult speaker. In Exp II, 22 1st graders played the same referential communication game used in Exp I, but Ss who were interacting with the peer speaker were told that the speaker was very smart and Ss who were interacting with the adult speaker were told that the speaker was very stupid. Overall results indicate that incomplete messages were the easiest to evaluate and inconsistent messages were the most difficult. The evaluation of ambiguous messages was affected by the age of the S and the age of the speaker. Although older Ss attended solely to the quality of the message, 1st graders based their evaluations of ambiguous and inconsistent messages on the age of the speaker. Adult speakers' messages were evaluated more positively than peers' because the young Ss thought the adults were smart and therefore more likely to be good communicators. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental and individual differences in conditional reasoning: The role of contradiction training and cognitive style.

Examined the development of conditional reasoning from the perspective of the competence-moderator-performance approach discussed by W. F. Overton (1985) and Overton and J. L. Newman (1982). The effects of task interpretation and cognitive style as moderator variables for conditional reasoning were examined, using 36 8th-, 36 10th-, and 36 12th-grade male students as Ss. Ss were given an inference task, and half the Ss at each grade level received training with contradictory evidence to alert them to faulty task interpretations. Generalization of training was assessed with a 2nd conditional reasoning task, and cognitive style was assessed with the Matching Familiar Figures Test. Results indicate that only the 12th graders benefited from contradiction training, and this training generalized to the subsequent task. A reflective style enhanced performance at each grade level for the initial task. However, the beneficial effects of a reflective style were restricted on the generalization task to 12th graders who had received contradiction training. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning and secondary reinforcement in 6–7-year-olds and 10–11-year-olds.

Conducted 2 experiments to investigate the 1st author's cognitive theory of secondary reinforcement effects, which predicts that Ss of a preoperational age (i.e., younger than 7 yrs) should not necessarily learn responses followed by a stimulus object previously instrumental in obtaining a reward, while Ss of a postoperational age should do so. Using 24 1st and 24 5th graders in 2 learning tasks, the prediction was confirmed. Furthermore, verbal responses indicated that the logical operations that presumably influenced the behavior of the older children actually did occur. In Exp II, using 28 2nd and 15 6th graders, the training task was simplified in order to try to facilitate logical reasoning, but the behavior of the younger Ss was not affected. It is concluded that secondary reinforcement of a stimulus–response associative type has yet to be demonstrated, and that secondary reinforcement of a cognitive type is heavily dependent on reasoning ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When two wrongs make a right: Promoting cognitive change by social conflict.

89 1st graders and 25 2nd graders were given information about conservation tasks that conflicted with their prior nonconservation judgments. Ss in a social interaction situation had higher conservation posttest scores than Ss who were given conflicting information in role-playing, imitation, and control conditions. The spontaneous generation of conservation assertions that occurred in the social interaction condition was related to significantly higher posttest scores. Results suggest that even incorrect information that conflicts with a prior but equally erroneous belief can stimulate cognitive growth. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neighborhood effects using a partial priming methodology: Guessing or activation?

K. Pugh, K. Rexer, M. Peter, and L. Katz (1994) found longer lexical-decision latencies to 4-letter words when an ambiguous letter (one from which neighbors could be formed) was delayed than when an unambiguous letter (one from which no neighbors could be formed) was delayed. They suggested that this was due to competition between partially activated words. However, K. I. Forster and D. Shen (1996) suggested that this effect may be due to participants' generating hypotheses on the basis of the previewed trigram. The authors conducted 2 experiments that used a partial priming methodology and found that lexical decision latencies were longer to words preceded by ambiguous trigrams than unambiguous trigrams when (a) the target was the highest frequency member in its neighborhood and (b) the prime was masked and presented for 60 ms. These results are inconsistent with Forster and Shen's prediction of no effect of prime ambiguity under these conditions, and they indicate that the ambiguity effect was not due to hypothesis generation on the basis of the partial primes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oral discussion, group-to-individual transfer, and achievement in cooperative learning groups.

75 2nd graders were randomly assigned to cooperative learning groups in which oral discussion was structured or unstructured or to an individualistic learning group so that daily achievement, postinstructional achievement, and retention could be compared. Groups were stratified for sex and ability level. Results show that Ss in cooperative groups performed significantly higher on the accuracy of daily work than did Ss working individually. In addition, the high-, medium-, and low-ability Ss in the structured oral discussion cooperative condition scored higher on the postinstructional and retention tests than did Ss in the other 2 conditions. Ss in the unstructured oral discussion cooperative condition scored higher on these tests than did Ss who learned individually. Findings suggest that group-to-individual transfer takes place within cooperative learning groups and that orally summarizing the material being learned and the monitoring of others' summaries contribute to the efficacy of cooperative learning. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heuristic processing can bias systematic processing: Effects of source credibility, argument ambiguity, and task importance on attitude judgment.

High- and low-task-importance Ss (367 undergraduates) read a strong or weak unambiguous message or an ambiguous message that was attributed to a high- or low-credibility source. Under low task importance, heuristic processing of the credibility cue was the sole determinant of Ss' attitudes, regardless of argument ambiguity or strength. When task importance was high and message content was unambiguous, systematic processing alone determined attitudes when this content contradicted the validity of the credibility heuristic; when message content did not contradict this heuristic, systematic, and heuristic processing determined attitudes independently. Finally, when task importance was high and message content was ambiguous, heuristic and systematic processing again both influenced attitudes. Yet, source credibility affected persuasion partly through its impact on the valence of systematic processing, confirming that heuristic processing can bias systematic processing when evidence is ambiguous. Implications for persuasion and other social judgment phenomena are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity resolution in good and poor comprehenders: An eye fixation and self-paced reading study in primary school children.

To investigate the use of context and monitoring of comprehension in lexical ambiguity resolution in children, the authors asked 10- to 12-year-old good and poor comprehenders to read sentences consisting of 2 clauses, 1 containing the ambiguous word and the other the disambiguating information. The order of the clauses was reversed so that disambiguating information either preceded or followed the ambiguous word. Context use and comprehension monitoring were examined by measuring eye fixations (Experiment 1) and self-paced reading times (Experiment 2) on the ambiguous word and disambiguating region. The results of Experiment 1 and 2 showed that poor comprehenders made use of prior context to facilitate lexical ambiguity resolution as effectively as good comprehenders but that they monitored their comprehension less effectively than good comprehenders. Good comprehenders corrected an initial interpretation error on an ambiguous word and restored comprehension once they encountered the disambiguating region. Poor comprehenders failed to deal with this type of comprehension failure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of the cognitive basis of performance impairment after failure.

Tested the egotism hypothesis against the learned-helplessness hypothesis while considering developmental variation in reasoning about ability, using 30 male and 30 female 2nd graders and 30 male and 30 female 6th graders. The egotism hypothesis states that performance impairment after failure follows from attempts to avoid appearing low in ability. The learned-helplessness hypothesis states that this performance impairment occurs as a result of the perception of noncontingency. Ss were assigned either solvable or unsolvable matching-familiar-figures task items. Performance on a subsequent anagram task constituted the dependent measure. Results show that performance deficits on anagrams following failure on the matching-familiar-figures task appeared for 6th graders only. These deficits occurred when the anagrams were purported to be of moderate normative difficulty but not when they were said to be of high difficulty. Moreover, performance deficits were apparent only in those 6th graders who had a mature conception of ability. Males tended to increase performance when task conditions were unfavorable; females, especially younger ones, faced with this combination of adverse conditions showed substantial declines in performance. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescents' theories of education.

315 9th graders and 272 12th graders from 2 schools were administered a questionnaire to investigate associations between views about the purposes of education and personal goals, between personal goals and perceived causes of success, and between purposes of education and perceived causes of success. Results show that Ss found a logically consistent relationship among these elements of inquiry. For example, the view that school should enable Ss to enhance their wealth and status was less likely than any other view to be associated with a commitment to learning for its own sake and more likely to be associated with academic alienation. Ss also tended to expect success to result from the types of activity they preferred and from the personal qualities they thought school should encourage. Findings raise doubts about the wisdom of the current propensity to emphasize the role of schools in the advancement of one's wealth and social status. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)