Effects of transgressor, damage, and type of presentation on kindergarten children's moral judgments.

Assessed the role of cognitive conflict (damage vs respect for adults) in 64 kindergartners' moral judgments, using both verbal and videotape presentation techniques. In contrast to a previous study by C. Peterson et al (1974), the present Ss' moral judgments were not affected by the age of the transgressor. Ss in the videotape condition based their judgments on intention, while Ss in the verbal condition based their judgments on damage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age and self-verbalization on children's ability to delay gratification.

Examined the effects of overt self-verbalizations on the ability to delay gratification in 80 kindergartners and 3rd graders. Ss were instructed to verbalize a statement that focused on task-oriented, reward-oriented, or irrelevant statements (counting) about the delay period. Results indicate that only in a no-verbalization control condition were 3rd-grade children better able to endure the delay period than kindergarten children. Task-oriented self-statements facilitated delay behavior for children of both ages while reward-oriented self-statements inhibited delay behavior of the 3rd graders and had no effect on kindergartners. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of order of presentation, primacy, and physical attractiveness on attributions of ability.

Conducted 4 experiments with 720 undergraduates to determine if physical attractiveness interacts with or negates the primacy effect found by E. E. Jones et al (see record 1969-06853-001). Results demonstrate that attractive Ss received uniformly high attributions regardless of performance. Unattractive Ss, however, received attributions similar to those received by Ss who had no physical-attractiveness stimuli presented. Physical attractiveness had an effect only when presented before performance. When presented after performance, attributions received by attractive-stimulus Ss were not significantly different from attributions received by unattractive-stimulus Ss, as had been the case when attractiveness was presented before performance. Results support D. Newston (see record 1974-11048-001) and Newston and R. J. Rindner's (1979) hypothesis that perceivers may stop processing information once a point of sufficient subjective information is reached. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral-reading practice: Effects of children's reading ability, children's gender, and mothers' educational level.

To investigate the popular recommendation that children practice reading aloud at home, the conversations of 76 3rd graders reading to their mothers were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded. Conversations between below-average readers and their mothers were marked by the frequent use of error corrections. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more error corrections than did college-educated mothers, despite equal numbers of above-average and below-average readers in each group. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more comments than did college-educated mothers. College-educated mothers asked significantly more questions, including high-level questions, than did high-school-educated mothers. Girls spoke more during the conversations than did boys. Text difficulty effects are underscored, and practical implications are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of linguistic structure on children's ability to isolate initial consonants.

In 4 experiments, preschoolers and kindergartners were asked to pronounce the initial consonants of spoken words. Children performed better on short words, such as bay, than on long words, such as bonus. Words with initial consonant clusters, such as brow, were more difficult for the children than words without initial consonant clusters, such as bar. A consonant cluster at the end of the word did not harm performance. Children did relatively well on words like suppose, for which the word's 1st syllable, /s/, constitutes a correct answer on the initial consonant isolation task. Children did more poorly on words like satin, for which this was not the case. Thus, the linguistic structure of a word affects children's ability to isolate the initial consonant. Implications for the design of phonemic awareness instruction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's ability to discern fantasy and reality.

This study examined 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 128; 54% girls) ability to discriminate emotional fantasy and reality. Children viewed images depicting fantastic or real events that elicited several emotions, reported whether each event could occur, and rated their emotional reaction to the image. Children were also administered the Play Behavior Questionnaire and Pretend Action Tasks to assess play behaviors. Findings revealed age-related improvements in performance and biases in judgment based on the emotion depicted. Children reported that happy fantastic events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry fantastic events and that happy real events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry real events. Children's emotional reactions to the images but not play behaviors were significantly related to their fantasy-reality distinctions. Implications for the relation between emotions and children's fantasy-reality distinctions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of spatial presentation and blocking on organization and verbal recall at three grade levels.

Investigated developmental trends in organization and free recall as they interact with spatial presentation and blocking. 695 Ss in Grades 4, 6, and 8 were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: spatial blocked, spatial unblocked, linear blocked, and linear unblocked. Analysis of variance for both dependent variables, organization and free recall, revealed significant main effects (p     

Separable effects of motives, consequences, and presentation order on children's moral judgments.

Examined the effects of the order of presentation of motive and consequence information on the moral judgments of 96 kindergarten, 2nd-, and 5th-grade children. Information type (motives vs consequences) was varied factorially with presentation position (1st vs 2nd), allowing application of recent models of source credibility. Recency effects were obtained at all 3 ages. Since Ss were required to repeat each story prior to judgment, verbatim memory is unlikely to be the sole cause of recency. Results also showed a developmental shift in the weights of motives and consequences. For 5th graders, evidence suggested that the weight of motives was larger than the weight of consequences, whereas for kindergartners the weight of consequences was larger than the weight of motives. These conclusions do not depend on the assumption that the scale values are developmentally static, a necessary assumption in previous research. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of perceived ability and grade status on social interaction and influence in cooperative groups.

In this study we investigated how a natural status characteristic (grade level) and an experimentally induced status characteristic (ability) combine to affect group interaction and interpersonal perception in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. Eighty male fifth and sixth graders were randomly assigned to groups of four that were made into homogeneous or heterogeneous "ability" groups on the basis of a bogus aptitude test. Their social interaction was videotaped as groups worked on a group consensus task. The data indicated that the two status characteristics (actual and induced) had a similar and significant effect on the social interaction in the groups. High-status students dominated group interaction, were more influential, and were more likely to be perceived as leaders. The data also indicated that differences in helping behavior may be due, in part, to the perceived status of the student and not only to the student's ability to give help. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Classroom experience and children's self-perceptions of ability, effort, and conduct.

Investigated the relation of classroom experience to children's self-perceptions of ability, effort, and conduct in an observational study of 85 2nd and 6th graders. Data were collected on Ss' achievement level; self-perceptions; and their academic, conduct, and personal interactions with teachers and peers. Regression analyses revealed that work praise heightened ability and effort self-perceptions but that work criticism only had a detrimental effect on effort self-perceptions. Although conduct feedback proved unrelated to ability and effort self-perceptions, conduct criticism lowered conduct self-perceptions. Self-perceptions were only slightly influenced by teacher behaviors, such as monitoring or providing assistance, peer interactions, and degree of Ss' task orientation or misbehavior. There were few age or gender differences in the pattern of results. Findings suggest that children distinguish among different types of feedback and highlight the differential effects of feedback on achievement-related self-perceptions in laboratory and classroom settings. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of contiguity, regularity, and age on children's causal inferences.

Investigated the effects of contiguity and regularity on the causal inferences of 96 5- and 6-yr-old and 8- and 9-yr-old children, using a discrimination task whose novelty precluded any reliance on previously gathered information; responses were thus solely a product of the children's firsthand evaluation of the data. Contiguity affected the causal statements of those in each age group, while regularity influenced the statements of the older but not the younger children. Results are basically consistent with Piagetian theory, although several other explanations are viable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of prosodic stress and serial position on syllable omission in first words.

The authors documented syllable omission in one child's multisyllabic vocabulary from 10 to 20 months of age to evaluate L. Gerken's (1991, 1994, 1994) proposal that children organize their productions according to a trochaic metrical (strong–weak) template and omit syllables from target utterances that do not conform to this pattern. The trochaic template hypothesis was not supported by these early productions. Results indicated that the likelihood of producing a target syllable was influenced primarily by the strength of the prosodic stress placed on it and secondarily by its serial order within a word. Over time, the child demonstrated an increasing ability to include syllables with weaker prosodic stress in multisyllabic productions. Omissions became much less common with the onset of 2-word speech. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of generic language about ability on children's achievement motivation.

Nuances in how adults talk about ability may have important consequences for children's sustained involvement and success in an activity. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that children would be less motivated while performing a novel activity if they were told that boys or girls in general are good at this activity (generic language) than if they were told that a particular boy or girl is good at it (non-generic language). Generic language may be detrimental because it expresses normative societal expectations regarding performance. If these expectations are negative, they may cause children to worry about confirming them; if positive, they may cause worries about failing to meet them. Moreover, generic statements may be threatening because they imply that performance is the result of stable traits rather than effort. Ninety-seven 4- to 7-year-olds were asked to play a game in which they succeeded at first but then made a few mistakes. Since young children remain optimistic in achievement situations until the possibility of failure is made clear, I hypothesized that 4- and 5-year-olds would not be affected by the implications of generic language until after they made mistakes; 6- and 7-year-olds, however, may be susceptible earlier. As expected, the older children who heard that boys or girls are good at this game displayed lower motivation (e.g., more negative emotions, lower perceived competence) from the start, while they were still succeeding and receiving praise. Four- and 5-year-olds who heard these generic statements had a similar reaction, but only after they made mistakes. These findings demonstrate that exposure to generic language about ability can be an obstacle to children's motivation and, potentially, their success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's emerging ability to make false statements.

This study examined the origins of children's ability to make consciously false statements, a necessary component of lying. Children 2 to 5 years of age were rewarded for claiming that they saw a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions (“Do you win/lose?”), recognition questions (“Do you have a bird/fish?”), and recall questions (“What do you have?”), which were hypothesized to vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions). The youngest children (2? to 3? years old) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was not until age 3? that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were capable of maintaining false claims across question types. Findings have implications for understanding the emergence of deception in young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting children's reading of rimes: Reading ability, word frequency, and rime-neighborhood size.

Beginning readers were studied in 2 experiments to examine the influence of reading ability, word frequency, and rime-neighborhood size (the number of single syllable words with the same rime) on word and nonword recognition. Forty 1st and 2nd graders read 53 words and 27 nonwords containing rimes from different-size neighborhoods. Children reading at or below a 2nd-grade level were less affected by rime-neighborhoods than children reading at or above a 3rd-grade level. Rimes from large neighborhoods were read correctly more often in lists and stories than rimes from moderate or small neighborhoods, particularly in low-frequency words. As children learn to read, they become increasingly sensitive to rime-neighborhood size. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of mothers' gender-role stereotypic beliefs on mothers' and children's ability perceptions.

Examined the relation between mothers' gender stereotypic beliefs, their perceptions of their children's abilities, and their children's self-perceptions in 3 activity domains. Approximately 1,500 mothers and their 11- to 12-yr-old children responded to questions about the children's abilities in the math, sports, and social domains. It was predicted that mothers' beliefs about their children would be moderated by their gender stereotypic beliefs about the abilities of female and male people in general. As predicted, path analyses revealed that mothers' gender stereotypic beliefs interact with the sex of their child to influence their perceptions of the child's abilities. Mothers' perceptions, in turn, mediate the influence of past performance on children's self-perceptions in each domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of sociocultural, economic, and home background factors on children's ability to engage in imaginative play.

Examined the phenomenon of imaginative play and its concomitants in unstructured play situations among 60 South African and Israeli preschool children of lower- and middle-class economic status. Results suggest that socioeconomic status was the overriding variable in determining the observed levels of imaginative play, and the contention is raised that the deficits in imaginative play among lower-class children were created not by the lack of experiences or stimulation per se but rather by the failure of the lower-class parents to help their children with the integration of the plethora of stimuli that confront them in everyday life. It was also found that a number of the specific home background factors thought to be particularly important for the development of imaginative play are culture-bound. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of marital and parent-child relations on children's adjustment.

Investigated the effects of marital dissatisfaction, marital conflict, and the parent–child relationship on the childhood adjustment of 30 boys and 26 girls (aged 6–14 yrs) in 47 nonclinic families. In support of previous findings, results of a battery of tests show a strong relationship between mothers' marital satisfaction and conflict style and their own ratings of boys' adjustment. However, based on fathers' and children's reports, marital satisfaction and conflict style did not contribute unique variance over the parent–child relationship in predicting children's adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of self-concept on children's causal attributions and self-reinforcement.

Studied self-concept as a dispositional variable influencing children's cognitive-attributional and affective-self reinforcing reactions to achievement outcomes. 64 6th-graders classified as high or low in self-concept on an abbreviated version of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale were given an achievement task on which they succeeded or failed. A preinstructional set was used to allow Ss to interpret their performance as being determined by skill or luck. More high than low self-concept children attributed their success to the skill cue. High self-concept Ss also engaged in more self-reward for success. Both self-concept groups used lack of skill to account for their failure, but the low group responded with more self-punishment. Results are discussed within an attributional model of achievement behavior. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ruse and representations: On children's ability to conceal information.

Reports a marked development between the ages of 3 and 5 yrs in children's ability to conceal information. In a situation of high-affect involvement, 3-yr-olds did not know to misinform or withhold information from a competitor who always chose the object for which they themselves had previously stated a preference. Although only 29% of 3-yr-olds knew to influence the competitor's mental state, 87% knew to physically exclude the competitor. There was no difference between children's performance when trying to obtain the object for themselves or predicting what a story character would do. The success of the older children in concealing information indicated their new representational understanding that to influence another's behavior, one must influence that person's mental state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)