Young children's appreciation of the mental impact of their communicative signals

This work addresses whether 30-month-olds appreciate that their communicative signals are being understood (or not) by another person. Infants produce a range of behaviors, such as repairing their failed signals, that have been construed as evidence that they have an implicit theory of mind. Such behavior could be interpreted as attempts to obtain some desired goal rather than as attempts to gain listener understanding. This study was designed to separate listener comprehension from obtaining a material goal. In 4 conditions, children either did or did not get what they wanted and the experimenter understood or misunderstood their request. As predicted, children clarified their signal more when the experimenter misunderstood compared to when she understood. Regardless of whether young children achieved their overt goal, they engaged in behaviors to ensure their communicative act had been understood.     

Young children's understanding of different mental states.

There is considerable evidence in the recent literature on children's understanding of the mind that young children have difficulty understanding false beliefs. Even when presented very strong evidence that a person's belief conflicts with the reality to which it refers, they tend to assume that it coincides with reality. Two studies tested the extent to which 3-yr-olds make this same mistake with other mental states. Results show that children of this age understand that desires can differ from reality before they understand that beliefs can, even when the exact same tasks are used to assess each understanding. Findings also indicate that young children understand pretense in this regard somewhat later than desire but earlier than belief and dream, particularly when the pretense is supported by actions. Three explanations for the results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of representations: The origins of mental life.

Discusses the notion of representation and its role in cognitive theory. The representational theory of mind takes for granted the existence of such representational states and processes as symbol use, belief, meaning, and intention. A sequence of developments is proposed that would have the effect of reworking the elementary sensory-motor schemata present at birth into the propositional representational states that develop in 2–4 yr olds and that operate on the basis of meaning, significance, and intentionality. The theory is used to explain a series of intellectual achievements of young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's understanding of conflicting mental representation predicts suggestibility.

This study examined the relation between developmental suggestibility effects and preschoolers' emerging ability to reason about conflicting mental representations (CMRs). Three- to 5-yr-olds listened to a story accompanied by pictures. Following a 4-min delay, children answered straightforward and misleading questions about the story. One wk later, their memory for the story was assessed. Children also completed tasks indexing their ability to reason about CMRs. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that suggestibility was negatively related to performance on CMR tasks. This finding remained significant after controlling for age, children's level of initial encoding of the event, and their ability to retrieve event details when not misled. An integration is proposed between children's theory of mind and source monitoring that may help to explain early developmental changes in suggestibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games.

In two studies, the authors investigated 2- and 3-year-old children's awareness of the normative structure of conventional games. In the target conditions, an experimenter showed a child how to play a simple rule game. After the child and the experimenter had played for a while, a puppet came (controlled by a 2nd experimenter), asked to join in, and then performed an action that constituted a mistake in the game. In control conditions, the puppet performed the exact same action as in the experimental conditions, but the context was different such that this act did not constitute a mistake. Children's normative responses to the puppet's acts (e.g., protest, critique, or teaching) were scored. Both age groups performed more normative responses in the target than in the control conditions, but the 3-year-olds did so on a more explicit level. These studies demonstrate in a particularly strong way that even very young children have some grasp of the normative structure of conventional activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's phonological awareness and nonword repetition as a function of vocabulary development.

The role of vocabulary growth in the development of two reading-related phonological processes was examined. In Experiments 1 and 2, 4- and 5-year-olds and a sample of first graders performed better on phonological awareness tasks for word versus pseudoword stimuli, and for highly familiar versus less familiar words. Three- and 4-year-olds in Experiment 3 performed better for words with many versus few similarly sounding items in a listener's lexicon. Vocabulary was strongly associated with nonword repetition scores for 3- to 5-year olds. The shared variance of this association was accounted for by phonological awareness measures and did not appear to be due to phonological short-term memory, as previously argued. The author proposes that vocabulary growth, defined in terms of absolute size, word familiarity, and phonological similarity relations between word items, helps to explain individual differences in emerging phonological awareness and nonword repetition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dynamic mental representations.

This article pursues the possibility that perceivers are sensitive to implicit dynamic information even when they are not able to observe real-time change. Recent empirical results in the domains of handwriting recognition and picture perception are discussed in support of the hypothesis that perception involves acquiring information about transitions, whether the stimuli are static or dynamic. It is then argued that dynamic information has a special status in mental representation as well as in perception. In particular I propose that some mental representations may be dynamic, in that a temporal dimension is necessary to the representation. Recent evidence that mental representations may exhibit a form of momentum is discussed in support of this claim. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's conception of distance.

Whether young children conceive of distance as rigid intervals of extent seems central to their larger understanding of space and to their measurement abilities (Piaget, Inhelder, & Szeminska, 1960). A sensitive test of children's conception of distance would require them to reason about distance rather than simply visually to estimate displayed lengths. Therefore, we investigated preschoolers' understanding of two distance principles. The direct–indirect principle is the idea that a straight route between two points is always the shortest. The same–plus principle is the idea that if two routes are the same up to a point, but then only one route continues, that route is longest. In two experiments, 32 children from 3? to 5 years old were given principle-relevant and principle-irrelevant problems that required comparison of two screened routes. Children performed better on principle-relevant than on principle-irrelevant screened tasks (74% vs. 19% correct). Their performances support the conclusion that even young children conceive of distance as intervals of fixed extent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's understanding of desire formation.

Two studies examined preschoolers' appreciation of how mental states arise. In Study 1, children aged 3 to 5 (24 at each age) better understood perception-generated beliefs (e.g., that looking in a certain location generates a belief about the location's content) and attitude-generated desires (e.g., that positive experiences with an activity generate a desire to partake of the activity again) than physiology-generated desires (e.g., that not eating for a long time generates a desire for food). In Study 2, 4- and 5-year-olds (48 at each age) better understood the effects of quantity of experience (e.g.. eating a lot vs. a little) than of time of experience (eating just now vs. a long time ago) on physiological states and desires. The findings suggest that whether children reason in more advanced fashion about desires or beliefs depends on which aspects of these mental states are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical psychologists' theory-based representations of mental disorders predict their diagnostic reasoning and memory.

The theory-based model of categorization posits that concepts are represented as theories, not feature lists. Thus, it is interesting that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994) established atheoretical guidelines for mental disorder diagnosis. Five experiments investigated how clinicians handled an atheoretical nosology. Clinicians' causal theories of disorders and their responses on diagnostic and memory tasks were measured. Participants were more likely to diagnose a hypothetical patient with a disorder if that patient had causally central rather than causally peripheral symptoms according to their theory of the disorder. Their memory for causally central symptoms was also biased. Clinicians are cognitively driven to use theories despite decades of practice with the atheoretical DSM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in children's use of external representations.

This study explored children's use of external representations. Experiment 1 focused on representations of self. Self-recognition was assessed by a mark test as a function of age (3 vs. 4 years), delay (5 s vs. 3 min), and media (photographs vs. drawings). Four-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds; children performed better with photographs than drawings; and there was no effect of delay. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-olds used a delayed video image to locate a sticker on themselves (self task) or a stuffed animal (other task). The 2 tasks were positively correlated with age and vocabulary partialed out. Experiment 3 used a search task to assess whether children have particular difficulty using external representations that conflict with their expectations: 3- and 4-year-olds were informed of an object's location verbally or through video; on half of the trials, this information conflicted with children's initial belief. Three-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds on conflict trials, indicating that assessments of self and other understanding may reflect children's ability to reason about conflicting external representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advances in children's mental health.

Comments on articles addressing children's mental health (MH) in the October 1988 issue of American Psychologist, including articles by D. Dougherty, D. K. Inouye, and L. Saxe et al (see PA, Vol 76:9682, 9693, and 9717). The articles overlooked recent advances toward improving services for troubled children: A 4-pronged effort has been embarked on to advance child MH. Progress is apparent in defining the system of care needed by children with MH problems and in support for state- and community-wide changes in interagency system development. The 3rd and 4th areas are the development of a national movement of parents of emotionally disturbed youth and advances in the area of minority group concerns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's responses to guilt displays.

Displaying guilt after a transgression serves to appease the victim and other group members, restore interpersonal relationships, and indicate the transgressors' awareness of and desire to conform to the group's norms. We investigated whether and when young children are sensitive to these functions of guilt displays. In Study 1, after 4- and 5-year-old children watched videos of transgressors either displaying guilt (without explicitly apologizing) or not displaying guilt, 5-year-olds appropriately inferred that the victim would be madder at the unremorseful transgressor and would prefer the remorseful transgressor. They also said that they would prefer to interact with the remorseful transgressor, judged the unremorseful transgressor to be meaner, and, in a distribution of resources task, gave more resources to the remorseful transgressor. The 4-year-olds did not draw any of these inferences and distributed the resources equally. However, Study 2 showed that 4-year-olds were able to draw appropriate inferences about transgressors who explicitly apologized versus those who did not apologize. Thus, 4-year-olds seem to know the appeasement functions that explicit apologies serve but only when children have reached the age of 5 years do they seem to grasp the emotions that apologies stand for, namely, guilt and remorse, and the appeasement functions that displaying these emotions serve. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's comprehension of pretend causal sequences.

In 2 experiments, preschoolers' ability to understand pretend transformations was assessed. In Exp 1, 3- and 4-yr-olds watched 5 episodes in which 1 of 2 similar props was altered in a pretend fashion. Children's pretend responses showed that they understood these transformations. In Exp 2, 2-, 3-, and 4-yr-olds watched 6 episodes in which either a single or a double pretend transformation was carried out. In the single transformations, only 1 of 2 props was altered. In the double transformations, both props were transformed, but then 1 was returned to its original state. After each type of transformation, children made a pretend response to 1 of the 2 props. Children's accurate selection of prop in both experiments shows that they keep track of pretend transformations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Magnitude comparisons distort mental representations of magnitude.

Many cognitive processes rely on representations of magnitude, yet these representations are often malleable (H. Helson, 1964; J. Huttenlocher, L. V. Hedges, & J. L. Vevea, 2000; A. Parducci, 1965). It is likely that factors that affect these representations in turn affect the psychological processes that rely on them. The authors conducted 4 experiments to investigate whether language-expressible magnitude comparisons distort mental representations of compared magnitudes. Participants compared magnitudes and estimated those magnitudes in a variety of tasks. Exp 1 through 3 demonstrated systematic comparison-induced distortions. Exp 4 demonstrated that comparison-induced distortions might account for the asymmetric dominance effect discussed in the decision-making literature. Potential effects of comparison-induced distortions on other psychological processes (e.g., density effects, order effects, body-size estimation, pain estimation, and consumer decision making) are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental aggression and young children's representations of family relationships.

Children's maternal, self, and marital representations were examined in 46 children 3 1/2 to 7 years old using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. Children drawn from agencies serving battered women expressed fewer positive representations of their mothers and themselves, were more likely to portray interparental conflict as escalating, and were more avoidant and less coherent in their narratives about family interactions than children from a nonviolent community sample. Interparental aggression uniquely predicted representations of conflict escalation and avoidance after accounting for parent-child aggression, and the two types of aggression had additive effects in predicting positive maternal representations. The results suggest that witnessing aggression in the family affects children's developing beliefs about close relationships and may be a process by which these experiences give rise to later problems in social and emotional functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A reexamination of the perceptual-to-conceptual shift in mental representations.

The authors discuss the origins of categorical representations in young infants, using recent evidence on the categorization of animals. This evidence suggests that mature conceptual representations for animals derive from the earliest perceptually based representations of animals formed by young infants, those based on the surface features characteristic of each species, including humans. The shift from perceptually to conceptually based representation is a gradual and continuous process marked by initial, relatively simple, perceptually based representations coming to include more and more specific values of common animal properties. Development is thus a process of enrichment by perceptual systems, including that for language, and without the need of specialized processes that alter the nature of human thought and the representation of human knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's understanding of other people's beliefs and feelings and their connected communication with friends.

Links between experimentally assessed social understanding and naturalistically observed verbal communication between friends were investigated in a study of 38 young children. Affective perspective-taking and false-belief tasks were administered to the children at 40 months of age. Connected communication between friends (average length of connected episodes, average length of play episodes, and average length of pretend episodes) was coded from transcribed audiotaped conversations recorded from a 45-min observation when the children were 47 months of age. Performance on both social understanding tasks was significantly associated with connected communication between friends. Implications for the prognostic utility of social understanding tasks for regulation of real-life interactions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting young children's mental development and their significance in intervention

Factors affecting their developmental quotients (DQ) in 48 normal young children, who were involved in regular development assessments at child health care outpatient visits and whose parents received child-rearing guidance at Chaoyangmen Subdistrict of Dongcheng District, Beijing, and 43 controls aged 36 months were analyzed. Factors, such as their parents' receiving child-rearing guidance, paternal education, maternal education, paternal occupation, type of nursery schools, home environment quality score (HEQS) at 24 and 36 months of age, and mothers' knowledge of child-rearing were associated with children's DQ at their age of 36 months, with statistical significance at a level of 0.05 in univariate analysis. With multiple regression analysis, HEQS at the age of 36 months, family size at the age of 24 months, paternal education, children's sex, and mothers' age had influences on DQ at age of 36 months with statistical significance, and the degree of correlation of HEQS with DQ at 36 months was much higher than that of other factors, and it suggested that HEQS was an important link in child developmental intervention.     

Young children's responses to constructive marital disputes.

Toddlers (at ages 12, 18, 24, and 36 mo) and their parents participated in a longitudinal observational study of children's responses to constructive marital disputes. In a laboratory setting, couples engaged in a revealed difference marital problem-solving discussion while their child was in the room. Marital interactions were characterized as constructive on the basis of observed rates of positive and negative marital behaviors. The observational coding of child behavior included occurrence of distress, interference, distraction, play, smiling, and other positive behaviors. There was temporal stability in couples' interactions but not in individual child behavior. Children with more difficult temperaments were more reactive. Results highlighted the balance between the positive and interfering behaviors of toddlers during constructive marital disputes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)