The deaf child's conception of physical causality.

In an attempt to assess their causal thinking relative to hearing children of normal emotional status and emotionally disturbed hearing children, the responses of 12 deaf children, aged 8-10 yr., to question dealing with physical causality were compared with those of groups of emotionally disturbed and undisturbed hearing children of similar age and intelligence. Questions asked were of 2 experience levels, depending upon the accessibility of the causal agent to direct experience. Each child was asked 8 questions at each level. It was found that: (a) Significant differences among groups appeared with items whose causal agents were not accessible to direct experience, (b) The "prelogical" responses of the deaf tend to be of a phenomenistic nature. Those of the emotionally disturbed and normals are more inclined toward the animistic and dynamic categories. (c) By the age of 12 yr. no measurable group differences appeared. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of biological explanation: Are children vitalists?

Whether and how an understanding of biological explanation changes with development was explored in interviews with 24 first graders, 24 third graders, and 24 adults. Participants were asked about the changeability of biological and psychological characteristics and the causal mechanisms underlying biological, psychological, and mechanical phenomena (using both open-ended and forced-choice questions). In saying how characteristics might be changed, children and adults similarly distinguished between biology and psychology; they also responded similarly to questions about specific processes underlying biological change. Children's attributions of intention or agency to biological organs or body parts (i.e., vitalistic attribution) did not differ from adults', contrary to previous findings. The authors concluded that children's thinking about biology is not necessarily more vitalistic than adults'. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Difficulties in Comprehending Causal Relations Among Children With ADHD: The Role of Cognitive Engagement.

The present study examined whether time spent in long looks (i.e., ≥15 s), an index of cognitive engagement, would account for differences between children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison children in understanding causal relations. Children viewed two televised stories, once in the presence of toys and once in their absence. Dependent variables were visual attention and questions tapping factual information and causal relations. Comparison children answered significantly more causal relations questions than did the children with ADHD, but only in the toys-present condition. Four lines of evidence revealed that the difficulties children with ADHD had in answering causal relations questions in the toys-present condition could be linked specifically to this group's decreased time spent in long looks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in the use of distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency information for making causal attributions.

Examined developmental differences in the use of distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency information for making causal attributions. 144 1st, 3rd and 6th graders and college students were presented with brief story pairs consisting of an act manifested by an agent toward a target person. Each story in a pair was accompanied by a different level of a particular type of information (e.g., high consensus for one and low consensus for the other). Ss were asked to make causal inferences about both the agents and the targets. Results reveal significant age-related differences in the ability to use each type of information. Young children's use of distinctiveness information yielded the predicted agent attributions significantly more often than it yielded the predicted target attributions, while the reverse was true for consensus information. Findings are interpreted in terms of causal principles: Information was used in the predicted manner at a younger age when a covariation principle was required than when a discounting principle was required. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' and students' beliefs about punishment.

360 1st, 3rd and 5th graders and their 16 teachers from 3 school systems were interviewed in the fall and spring of the same school year to assess the developing relationship between teachers' and students' beliefs about punishment. Older children were less punitive than younger children. Teachers remained relatively punitive compared with 5th graders. Teachers with more punitive beliefs had students whose beliefs were more punitive when compared with students whose teachers had less punitive beliefs. Children and teachers thought that teachers should give more punitive responses than peers for the same misbehavior. The school systems that allowed corporal punishment had students with more punitive beliefs than the school system without corporal punishment. Results indicate that the school environment is perceived to be authoritarian and punitive by students and teachers. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Property transmission: An explanatory account of the role of similarity information in causal inference.

Many kinds of common and easily observed causal relations exhibit property transmission, which is a tendency for the causal object to impose its own properties on the effect object. It is proposed that property transmission becomes a general and readily available hypothesis used to make interpretations and judgments about causal questions under conditions of uncertainty, in which property transmission functions as a heuristic. The property transmission hypothesis explains why and when similarity information is used in causal inference. It can account for magical contagion beliefs, some cases of illusory correlation, the correspondence bias, overestimation of cross-situational consistency in behavior, nonregressive tendencies in prediction, the belief that acts of will are causes of behavior, and a range of other phenomena. People learn that property transmission is often moderated by other factors, but under conditions of uncertainty in which the operation of relevant other factors is unknown, it tends to exhibit a pervasive influence on thinking about causality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives.

Presents a theory of norms and normality and applies the theory to phenomena of emotional responses, social judgment, and conversations about causes. Norms are assumed to be constructed ad hoc by recruiting specific representations. Category norms are derived by recruiting exemplars. Specific objects or events generate their own norms by retrieval of similar experiences stored in memory or by construction of counterfactual alternatives. The normality of a stimulus is evaluated by comparing it with the norms that it evokes after the fact, rather than to precomputed expectations. Norm theory is applied in analyses of the enhanced emotional response to events that have abnormal causes, of the generation of predictions and inferences from observations of behavior, and of the role of norms in causal questions and answers. (3 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does talk of race foster prejudice or tolerance in children?

Assessed how children's racial evaluations were affected by talking about these with a friend whose level of prejudice was different from their own. The authors compared the kinds of evaluative statements and explanatory strategies used by the high- (HP) and low-prejudice (LP) partners of a dyad, as well as the change in attitude that followed from the discussion. White children from the 3rd and 4th grades were identified as above or below the median for their class on the Multi-response Racial Attitude (MRA) measure, which assessed evaluations of White, Black, and Chinese children. They were then paired with a friend who differed in level of prejudice, and asked to discuss 1 positive and 1 negative item from the attitude measure. Instructions were to talk about how the 3 races should be evaluated and why. After the discussion, each child was privately reassessed on the MRA. Analyses indicated that LP children stated significantly more negative evaluations and examples of Whites and more cross-race similarity than HP children. HP children became significantly less prejudiced in their evaluations after the discussion. Changes were greater in children whose LP partner made more statements about cross-race similarity, along with more positive Black and negative White evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Collider Principle in Causal Reasoning: Why the Monty Hall Dilemma Is So Hard.

The authors tested the thesis that people find the Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) hard because they fail to understand the implications of its causal structure, a collider structure in which 2 independent causal factors influence a single outcome. In 4 experiments, participants performed better in versions of the MHD involving competition, which emphasizes causality. This manipulation resulted in more correct responses to questions about the process in the MHD and a counterfactual that changed its causal structure. Correct responses to these questions were associated with solving the MHD regardless of condition. In addition, training on the collider principle transferred to a standard version of the MHD. The MHD taps a deeper question: When is knowing about one thing informative about another? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's thinking in the wake of Challenger

OBJECTIVE: The Challenger spacecraft explosion in 1986 offered an opportunity to study the thinking of normal children after a sudden and distant disaster, differences in thinking among children of different levels of emotional concern and different ages, and changes in their thinking over time. METHOD: The authors studied six thinking patterns known to characterize childhood posttraumatic stress disorder and four additional hypothesized patterns in 153 randomly selected children of Concord, N.H. (who watched the explosion on television) and Porterville, Calif. (who heard about it later). They compared the structured-interview responses of the more involved (East Coast) and less involved (West Coast) children, of the latency-age children and the adolescents, and of the children initially (5-7 weeks after the explosion) and 14 months later. RESULTS: The children exhibited the 10 predictable thinking patterns. They initially defended themselves, denying the reality of the explosion. They later fantasized about it. They tried to cope by seeking additional information on their own, at home, and at school. Most children talked about Challenger, but a minority of the latency-age youngsters avoided related talk and thoughts. The adolescents experienced more paranormal thinking, philosophical changes, and negative attitudes. Over the year, omens, paranormal experiences, and Challenger-based fantasies tended to disappear, but negative views about institutions and the world's future held steady or increased. CONCLUSIONS: The children's thinking followed predictable patterns. A higher degree of emotional involvement (East Coast children) was strongly linked to these thinking patterns, as was being an adolescent. Distant disasters appear to set up commonalities of thought that might come to characterize certain generations of children.     

Selective memory for social information, alertness, and physiological arousal in the detection of deception.

Examined the role of selective attention, as indexed by subsequent memory, in the social stress of a lie detection test. 74 male college students randomly assigned to deceptive or truthful conditions attempted to convince a polygraph examiner, who was blind as to each S's condition, that they were not lying. Without warning, 75 min after the test an experimenter tested S's recall of the questions that had been asked. Questions that were recalled had evoked significantly larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) than those that were not recalled. Deceptive Ss were detected (i.e., gave a larger SCR to relevant than to control questions) mainly on the basis of relevant questions they recalled compared with control questions they did not recall; the greater a deceptive S's tendency to recall control questions rather than relevant questions, the less likely he was to be detected. Innocent Ss were correctly classified mainly on the basis of SCRs to relevant questions they did not recall compared with SCRs to control questions they did recall. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of sex role stereotypes in black and white elementary school girls.

Examined the effect of race on degree of stereotyping. 20 1st- and 20 3rd-grade girls (half from each grade were black and half were white) answered 20 questions about characteristics usually considered typical of one or the other of the sexes. Both races gave equally stereotyped responses to questions about children, but blacks gave fewer stereotyped responses than whites to questions about adults. The bearing of the results on theories of the development of sex role stereotypes is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Complex language and comprehension monitoring: Teaching child witnesses to recognize linguistic confusion.

The authors investigated the efficacy of 2 child witness preparation programs: task demand training (TDT) and comprehension-monitoring training (CMT) with task demand training (CMT + TDT). Preschool (M?=?60.8 months), kindergarten (M?=?76.0 months) and 2nd-grade (M?=?98.1 months) children participated. All children participated in either TDT (n?=?56), or TDT + CMT (n?=?43). After training, participants were interviewed about a video they watched. Questions contained either simple or complex language. Results suggest TDT + CMT better prepares witnesses of all ages for complex-language questions. When faced with complex-language questions, the TDT + CMT group averaged more requests for rephrasings than the TDT group. These data suggest even the very young children in this investigation benefited from the court preparation protocol including TDT and CMT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vitalism in naive biological thinking.

Vitalism is the belief that internal bodily organs have agency and that they transmit or exchange a vital force or energy. Three experiments investigated the use of vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena by 5- and 10-year-old English-speaking children and adults, focusing on 2 components: the notion that bodily organs have intentions and the notion that some life force or energy is transmitted. The original Japanese finding of vitalistic thinking was replicated in Experiment 1 with English-speaking 5-year-olds. Experiment 2 indicated that the more active component of vitalism for these children is a belief in the transfer of energy during biological processes, and Experiment 3 suggested an additional, albeit lesser, role for organ intentionality. A belief in vital energy may serve a causal placeholder function within a naive theory of biology until a more precisely formulated mechanism is known. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The suppression of exciting thoughts.

We examined how the suppression of an exciting thought influences sympathetic arousal as indexed by skin conductance level (SCL). Subjects were asked to think aloud as they followed instructions to think about or not to think about various topics. Experiment 1 showed that trying not to think about sex, like thinking about sex, elevates SCL in comparison to thinking about or not thinking about less exciting topics (e.g., dancing). Experiment 2 revealed that the suppression of the thought of sex yielded SCL elevation whether or not subjects believed their think-aloud reports would be private or public, and it also revealed that the effect dissipated over the course of a few minutes. Experiment 3 found such dissipation again but showed that subsequent intrusions of the suppressed exciting thought are associated with further elevations in SCL over 30 min. Because such an association was not found when subjects were trying to think about the exciting thought, it was suggested that the suppression of exciting thoughts might be involved in the production of chronic emotional responses such as phobias and obsessive preoccupations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Driven by power? Probe question and presentation format effects on causal judgment.

It has been proposed that causal power (defined as the probability with which a candidate cause would produce an effect in the absence of any other background causes) can be intuitively computed from cause-effect covariation information. Estimation of power is assumed to require a special type of counterfactual probe question, worded to remove potential sources of ambiguity. The present study analyzes the adequacy of such questions to evoke normative causal power estimation. The authors report that judgments to counterfactual probes do not conform to causal power and that they strongly depend on both the probe question wording and the way that covariation information is presented. The data are parsimoniously accounted for by an alternative model of causal judgment, the Evidence Integration rule. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of rewards on children's prosocial motivation: A socialization study.

This study examined the relation between mothers' attitudes/practices regarding the use of rewards and children's susceptibility to the undermining effects of rewards. We assessed the attitudes/practices regarding rewards for 72 mothers and assigned their children to a control condition or to one of four experimental conditions that differed in whether children received rewards for helping and whether children engaged in the helping task or watched other children help. Children were then given an opportunity to help in a nonreward free-choice period. Rewards enhanced helping in the immediate situation. However, rewards undermined children's helping in the free-choice period, but only for children whose mothers felt positive about using rewards. Moreover, mothers who felt more positive about using rewards reported their children to be less prosocial than children of mothers who had less positive attitudes. It was suggested that children's responses to rewards depend in part on their experiences with rewards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asking questions in first-grade mathematics classes: Potential influences on mathematical thought.

Investigated the types of questions that are asked in 1st-grade addition and subtraction lessons in Japan, Taiwan, and the US. Some researchers have argued that knowledge is, in part, constructed through questions and that these may be used differently in US than in Asian classrooms. Thus, each question about addition or subtraction in 311 observed lessons was coded as 1 of 6 types of questions. Analyses revealed that the Asian teachers asked significantly more questions about conceptual knowledge and about problem-solving strategies than did US teachers. In addition, Chinese teachers asked significantly more questions that were embedded in a concrete context than did US teachers. These findings allow speculation that the kinds of questions typically asked in Japanese and Chinese classrooms may contribute to the construction of more sophisticated mathematical knowledge for the children in those classrooms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)