Correction to Condry and Spelke (2008).

Reports an error in "The development of language and abstract concepts: The case of natural number" by Kirsten F. Condry and Elizabeth S. Spelke (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2008[Feb], Vol 137[1], 22-38). The DOI for the supplemental materials was printed incorrectly. The correct DOI is as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.137.1.22.supp (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2008-01081-003.) What are the origins of abstract concepts such as "seven," and what role does language play in their development? These experiments probed the natural number words and concepts of 3-year-old children who can recite number words to ten but who can comprehend only one or two. Children correctly judged that a set labeled eight retains this label if it is unchanged, that it is not also four, and that eight is more than two. In contrast, children failed to judge that a set of 8 objects is better labeled by eight than by four, that eight is more than four, that eight continues to apply to a set whose members are rearranged, or that eight ceases to apply if the set is increased by 1, doubled, or halved. The latter errors contrast with children's correct application of words for the smallest numbers. These findings suggest that children interpret number words by relating them to 2 distinct preverbal systems that capture only limited numerical information. Children construct the system of abstract, natural number concepts from these foundations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonsymbolic, approximate arithmetic in children: Abstract addition prior to instruction.

Do children draw upon abstract representations of number when they perform approximate arithmetic operations? In this study, kindergarten children viewed animations suggesting addition of a sequence of sounds to an array of dots, and they compared the sum to a second dot array that differed from the sum by 1 of 3 ratios. Children performed this task successfully with all the signatures of adults' nonsymbolic number representations: accuracy modulated by the ratio of the sum and the comparison quantity, equal performance for within- and cross-modality tasks and for addition and comparison tasks, and performance superior to that of a matched subtraction task. The findings provide clear evidence for nonsymbolic numerical operations on abstract numerical quantities in children who have not yet been taught formal arithmetic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"What counts in the development of young children's number knowledge?": Correction to Levine et al. (2010).

Reports an error in "What counts in the development of young children's number knowledge" by Susan C. Levine, Linda Whealton Suriyakham, Meredith L. Rowe, Janellen Huttenlocher and Elizabeth A. Gunderson (Developmental Psychology, 2010[Sep], Vol 46[5], 1309-1319). A coding error resulted in incorrect item-level data being reported on the point-to-x task (not the children‘s overall performance on this task) in Table 2 and in the section of the Results headed Point-to-X Task Performance (second column, p. 1314). In the first paragraph in the section, the correct average score for knowledge of cardinal meanings of the number words. In the second paragraph in the section, there is an example illustrating children’s greater performance on items involving a target and a distractor that were one digit apart. An additional adjustment in the second paragraph involves the finding that children performed better when at least one of two choice sets was a small number (1–3) than when both choice sets were greater than or equal to 4. More information for the corrections and the corrected table are given in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-17955-026.) Prior studies indicate that children vary widely in their mathematical knowledge by the time they enter preschool and that this variation predicts levels of achievement in elementary school. In a longitudinal study of a diverse sample of 44 preschool children, we examined the extent to which their understanding of the cardinal meanings of the number words (e.g., knowing that the word “four” refers to sets with 4 items) is predicted by the “number talk” they hear from their primary caregiver in the early home environment. Results from 5 visits showed substantial variation in parents' number talk to children between the ages of 14 and 30 months. Moreover, this variation predicted children's knowledge of the cardinal meanings of number words at 46 months, even when socioeconomic status and other measures of parent and child talk were controlled. These findings suggest that encouraging parents to talk about number with their toddlers, and providing them with effective ways to do so, may positively impact children's school achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What counts in the development of young children's number knowledge?

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 47(1) of Developmental Psychology (see record 2011-00627-019). A coding error resulted in incorrect item-level data being reported on the point-to-x task (not the children‘s overall performance on this task) in Table 2 and in the section of the Results headed Point-to-X Task Performance (second column, p. 1314). In the first paragraph in the section, the correct average score for knowledge of cardinal meanings of the number words. In the second paragraph in the section, there is an example illustrating children’s greater performance on items involving a target and a distractor that were one digit apart. An additional adjustment in the second paragraph involves the finding that children performed better when at least one of two choice sets was a small number (1–3) than when both choice sets were greater than or equal to 4. More information for the corrections and the corrected table are given in the erratum.] Prior studies indicate that children vary widely in their mathematical knowledge by the time they enter preschool and that this variation predicts levels of achievement in elementary school. In a longitudinal study of a diverse sample of 44 preschool children, we examined the extent to which their understanding of the cardinal meanings of the number words (e.g., knowing that the word “four” refers to sets with 4 items) is predicted by the “number talk” they hear from their primary caregiver in the early home environment. Results from 5 visits showed substantial variation in parents' number talk to children between the ages of 14 and 30 months. Moreover, this variation predicted children's knowledge of the cardinal meanings of number words at 46 months, even when socioeconomic status and other measures of parent and child talk were controlled. These findings suggest that encouraging parents to talk about number with their toddlers, and providing them with effective ways to do so, may positively impact children's school achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linguistic structure as related to concept formation and to concept content.

"… we have examined two explanations of empirical data showing that concrete-perceptual concepts are learned to an adult level of understanding earlier than are abstract concepts. Data do not fully support a developmental explanation. A linguistic relativistic position is supported, but not proved to be correct." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in 4-year-old children's acquisition of vocabulary during storybook reading.

Two experiments were conducted to assess how children who differ in vocabulary knowledge learn new vocabulary incidentally from listening to stories read aloud. In both experiments, 4-yr-old children were classified as having either high or low word knowledge on the basis of a median split of their Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised (PPVT—R) standard scores. In Exp 1, children either listened passively or labeled pictures using novel words during the book readings. We found that children with larger vocabularies produced more novel words than did children with smaller vocabularies, and children who answered questions during the book readings comprehended and produced more words than did children who passively listened to the story. In Exp 2, children either listened to readings of a book, pointed to pictures during the readings, or labeled pictures during the readings. Children with larger vocabularies comprehended more novel words than did children with smaller vocabularies. Children who actively participated by labeling or pointing learned more words than did children who listened passively to book readings. Findings clarify the role of active responding by demonstrating that verbal and nonverbal responding are effective means of enhancing vocabulary acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The representation of abstract words: Why emotion matters.

Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing differences between concrete and abstract words. We find that neither proposal can account for experimental findings and that this is, at least partly, because abstract words are considered to be unrelated to experiential information in both of these accounts. We then address a particular type of experiential information, emotional content, and demonstrate that it plays a crucial role in the processing and representation of abstract concepts: Statistically, abstract words are more emotionally valenced than are concrete words, and this accounts for a residual latency advantage for abstract words, when variables such as imageability (a construct derived from dual coding theory) and rated context availability are held constant. We conclude with a discussion of our novel hypothesis for embodied abstract semantics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Planes, trains, automobiles--and tea sets: Extremely intense interests in very young children": Correction to DeLoache, Simcock, and Macari (2007).

Reports an error in "Planes, trains, automobiles--and tea sets: Extremely intense interests in very young children" by Judy S. DeLoache, Gabrielle Simcock and Suzanne Macari (Developmental Psychology, 2007[Nov], Vol 43[6], 1579-1586). The DOI for the supplemental materials was printed incorrectly. The correct DOI is as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.6.1579.supp. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2007-16709-024.) Some normally developing young children show an intense, passionate interest in a particular category of objects or activities. The present article documents the existence of extremely intense interests that emerge very early in life and establishes some of the basic parameters of the phenomenon. Surveys and interviews with 177 parents revealed that nearly one third of young children have extremely intense interests. The nature of these intense interests is described, with particular focus on their emergence, commonalities in the content of the interests, and the reactions of other people to them. One of the most striking findings is a large gender difference: Extremely intense interests are much more common for young boys than for girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's acquisition of the English cardinal number words: A special case of vocabulary development.

When children produce the names of the cardinal numbers from 1 to 1,000,000,000,000 in English, it is unlikely that they have previously learned all of these words. Rather, children have probably learned small set of basic number words and by combining these elements, construct additional words. To understand the development of number-word construction, students in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 named and counted from a set of numbers into the billions in 2 studies. Times taken to produce numbers were also recorded in Study 2. Despite large individual differences within grade, number knowledge increase dramatically with age, and many students in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 produced number words in the hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions, respectively. In Study 2, times to name and count decrease substantially with grade. The findings are discussed both in relation to children's growing knowledge to the number system and to vocabulary development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The performance of schizophrenics on social concepts.

"A hypothesis was derived from Cameron's view of schizophrenic thinking as a product of the social disarticulation of this group, as contrasted with Goldstein's interpretation of the defect in schizophrenic thought as the result of an impairment of the abstract attitude. The hypothesis was that schizophrenics would exhibit a greater decrement relative to normals on a test of social concepts than on tests of formal concepts." The data support this hypothesis. 22 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Nilsen and Bourassa (2008).

Reports an error in "Word-learning performance in beginning readers" by Elizabeth Nilsen and Derrick Bourassa (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 2008[Jun], Vol 62[2], 110-116). In the article, "Word-Learning Performance in Beginning Readers" by Elizabeth Nilsen and Derrick Bourassa (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2008, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 110-116), part of the Appendix was inadvertently left out. The Appendix appears in this correction in its entirety. The printer regrets this error. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2008-06986-004.) This investigation examined word-learning performance in beginning readers. The children learned to read words with regular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., snake) more easily than words with irregular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., sword). In addition, there was an effect of semantics: Children learned to read concrete words (e.g., elbow) more successfully than abstract words (e.g., temper). Trial-by-trial learning indicated that children made greater use of the regularity and semantic properties at later trials as compared with early trials. The influence of cognitive skills (paired associate learning and phonological awareness) on word-learning performance was also examined. Regression analyses revealed that whereas paired associate learning skills accounted for unique variance in the children's learning of both regular and irregular words, phonological awareness accounted for unique variance only in the acquisition of regular words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in tachistoscopic recognition between abstract and concrete words as a function of visual half-field and frequency

This experiment demonstrated that the greater right visual half-field (VHF) superiority for abstract words than for concrete words reported in two previous studies generalized to an independent, larger sample of abstract and concrete nouns. In addition, degree of concreteness was found to be positively related to overall recognition, with high concrete words averaging 38% correct, moderate concrete words averaging 30% correct, and abstract words averaging 20% correct. Analyses of ratio scores indicated that high frequency abstract words showed a significantly larger right VHF asymmetry than high frequency moderately concrete words or high frequency high concrete words. Groups of abstract, moderately concrete and high concrete words were also matched on right VHF recognition, to evaluate whether differences in VHF asymmetry were secondary to the differences in overall recognition. A significant interaction between VHF and word class was found, again indicating larger right VHF superiority for the abstract words. The data are consistent with previous suggestions that some left VHF concrete words are recongized by the right hemisphere.     

Word-learning performance in beginning readers.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 62(4) of Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale (see record 2008-17217-008). In the article, "Word-Learning Performance in Beginning Readers" by Elizabeth Nilsen and Derrick Bourassa (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2008, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 110-116), part of the Appendix was inadvertently left out. The Appendix appears in this correction in its entirety. The printer regrets this error.] This investigation examined word-learning performance in beginning readers. The children learned to read words with regular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., snake) more easily than words with irregular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., sword). In addition, there was an effect of semantics: Children learned to read concrete words (e.g., elbow) more successfully than abstract words (e.g., temper). Trial-by-trial learning indicated that children made greater use of the regularity and semantic properties at later trials as compared with early trials. The influence of cognitive skills (paired associate learning and phonological awareness) on word-learning performance was also examined. Regression analyses revealed that whereas paired associate learning skills accounted for unique variance in the children's learning of both regular and irregular words, phonological awareness accounted for unique variance only in the acquisition of regular words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of semantic context and memory in the acquisition of novel nouns

Three studies assessed the ability of 2-year-olds to use semantic context to infer the meanings of novel nouns and to retain those meanings a day later. In the first experiment, 24 2-year-olds heard novel nouns in sentences that contained semantically constraining verbs (e.g., "Mommy feeds the ferret"). They chose from a set of four novel object pictures to indicate the referent. Children learned a majority of the novel words. However, they occasionally failed to choose the correct object even when they understood the verb. Experiment 2 examined whether this was due to an inability to identify some of the pictures of novel objects. Experiment 3 tested 24 2-year-olds' memory for the newly learned nouns following a 24 hr delay and found significant retention. Results are discussed in terms of learning mechanisms that facilitate vocabulary acquisition in young children.     

Reasoning About Conjunctive Probabilistic Concepts in Childhood.

While adults are known to exhibit biases when making conjunctive probability judgments, little is known about childhood competencies in this area. Participants (aged between four and five years, eight and ten years, and a group of young adults) attempted to select the more likely of two events, a single event, and a conjunctive event containing, as one of its components, the single event. The problems were such that the objective probabilities of the component events were potentially available. Children in both age groups were generally successful when the single event was likely. However, when it was unlikely, a majority of children rejected it, choosing the conjunctive event instead, thereby committing the conjunction fallacy. A substantial minority of adults also committed the fallacy under equivalent conditions. It is concluded that under certain conditions children are capable of normative conjunctive judgments but that the mechanisms underpinning this capacity remain to be fully understood. (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)     

Where similarity beats redundancy: The importance of context, higher order similarity, and response assignment.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 35(1) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (see record 2009-00768-007). The DOIs for the article and the supplemental materials were incorrectly listed. The correct DOI for the article is 10.1037/a0012320 and the correct DOI for the supplemental materials is http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0012320.supp] People are especially efficient in processing certain visual stimuli such as human faces or good configurations. It has been suggested that topology and geometry play important roles in configural perception. Visual search is one area in which configurality seems to matter. When either of 2 target features leads to a correct response and the sequence includes trials in which either or both targets are present, the result is a redundant-target paradigm. It is common for such experiments to find faster performance with the double target than with either alone, something that is difficult to explain with ordinary serial models. This redundant-targets study uses figures that can be dissimilar in their topology and geometry and manipulates the stimulus set and the stimulus?response assignments. The authors found that the combination of higher order similarity (e.g., topological) among the features in the stimulus set and response assignment can effectively overpower or facilitate the redundant-target effect, depending on the exact nature of the former characteristics. Several reasonable models of redundant-targets performance are falsified. Parallel models with the potential for channel interactions are supported by the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Missing the trees for the forest: A construal level account of the illusion of explanatory depth.

An illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) occurs when people believe they understand a concept more deeply than they actually do. To date, IOEDs have been identified only in mechanical and natural domains, occluding why they occur and suggesting that their implications are quite limited. Six studies illustrated that IOEDs occur because people adopt an inappropriately abstract construal style when they assess how well they understand concrete concepts. As this mechanism predicts, participants who naturally adopted concrete construal styles (Study 1) or were induced to adopt a concrete construal style (Studies 2–4 and 6), experienced diminished IOEDs. Two additional studies documented a novel IOED in the social psychological domain of electoral voting (Studies 5 and 6), demonstrating the generality of the construal mechanism, the authors also extended the presumed boundary conditions of the effect beyond mechanical and natural domains. These findings suggest a novel factor that might contribute to such diverse social-cognitive shortcomings as stereotyping, egocentrism, and the planning fallacy, where people adopt abstract representations of concepts that should be represented concretely. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of function in conceptual development.

40 3-, 40 5-, and 40 7-yr-olds were administered a free-sorting task, a directed sorting task, a verbal labeling task, and a conversation task using 4 natural concepts: cup, scissors, money, and musical instrument. Results reveal that almost all Ss had a knowledge of the correct function for cup and scissors, and all but the 3-yr-olds knew similar information for money and musical instrument. However, none of the Ss used all of the knowledge they possessed to guide behavior in the free-sorting task. The 5- and 7-yr-olds could use their knowledge when cued in the directed sort and when forced to use it in the verbal labeling task. In comparison, the 3-yr-olds were relatively unable to use their knowledge to guide behavior in any of these 3 tasks. Inferences are drawn about both the structure of children's concepts and how that structure changes with development. (French abstract) (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)