The development of caching and object permanence in western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica): Which emerges first?

Recent studies on the food-caching behavior of corvids have revealed complex physical and social skills, yet little is known about the ontogeny of food caching in relation to the development of cognitive capacities. Piagetian object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible. Here, the authors focus on Piagetian Stages 3 and 4, because they are hallmarks in the cognitive development of both young children and animals. Our aim is to determine in a food-caching corvid, the Western scrub-jay, whether (1) Piagetian Stage 4 competence and tentative caching (i.e., hiding an item invisibly and retrieving it without delay), emerge concomitantly or consecutively; (2) whether experiencing the reappearance of hidden objects enhances the timing of the appearance of object permanence; and (3) discuss how the development of object permanence is related to behavioral development and sensorimotor intelligence. Our findings suggest that object permanence Stage 4 emerges before tentative caching, and independent of environmental influences, but that once the birds have developed simple object-permanence, then social learning might advance the interval after which tentative caching commences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of self-recognition in the infant.

A hypothesized 5-stage developmental sequence of self-recognition behaviors was tested in 48 infants between 6 and 24 mo of age, and the self-recognition sequence was compared to the development of object permanence. The predicted self-recognition sequence consisted of 5 tasks that Ss performed in front of the mirror, with later-developing tasks requiring the coordination of a larger number of behaviors relating to S's mirror image than earlier-developing tasks. The development of object permanence was assessed with the Uzgiris-Hunt scale, and the object-permanence items were assigned to stages that structurally paralleled the 5 stages of self-recognition. The self-recognition tasks formed an almost perfect Guttman scale, with 46 out of 48 Ss fitting the predicted developmental sequence precisely. This finding thus resolves most of the disagreements in previous research on the development of self-recognition: Previous studies examined different behaviors, which develop at distinct stages in the sequence. Object permanence and self-recognition showed a strong correlation, but there was no consistent relationship between the 2 skills across age groups. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of constructive and dramatic play on perspective taking in very young children.

Studied the effects of 2 types of play experiences—constructive and dramatic—on preschool children's perspective-taking (PT) performance. Pretests and posttests for 3 types of PT (perceptual, cognitive, and affective) were administered to 51 preschoolers, (mean age 4 yrs 10 mo) in 3 groups. Group 1 received 10 constructive play sessions, Group 2 received 10 dramatic play sessions, and Group 3 received no play treatment. Both play treatments produced substantial and roughly equivalent improvements in PT. These effects were general across the 3 types of PT, and they were not constrained by the Ss' pretraining performance on the PT tests. In view of recent evidence that some PT measures may not be reliable, a follow-up reliability study was conducted with 48 preschool children, mean age 4 yrs 8 mo. The test–retest reliabilities of the instruments used in the main experiment were high (i.e., perceptual task .72, cognitive tasks .64 and .49, and affective tasks .53 and .68). (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive development in kittens (Felis catus): A cross-sectional study of object permanence.

Administered tests of object permanence to 28-, 35-, 48-, and 150-day-old kittens (Felis catus) in order to assess as accurately as possible the developmental level reached at each age group in this Piagetian cognitive capacity. The results indicate that 28-day-old-kittens visually tracked a moving object in their perceptual field (Stage 2); 35-day-olds recovered a hidden object only if they had initiated a search movement at the time of disappearance (Stage 4a); 48- and 150-day-olds mastered multiple visible displacements (Stage 5b). The study showed that the upper limit, Stage 5b, observed in adult cats was reached by Day 48, which indicates a rapid development of object permanence in this species. Results are discussed in relation to object permanence in human babies and in terms of the relevance of object permanence to predatory behavior in the domestic cat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individuals and dimensions in children's judgment of same and different.

Used the 2-choice transposition problem to examine children's judgments of "same" and "different." When instructed to choose "the same" object in the test phase, kindergartners (n = 24) chose the same dimensional value whereas 3rd graders (n = 24) chose the specific stimulus which had been positive during training. When instructed to choose "the different" or "a different" object, both groups chose on the basis of individual identity. Ontogenetic changes in children's use of individual identities and dimensional values, and the relation between linguistic and cognitive factors, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses to "neutral" pronoun presentations and the development of sex-biased responding.

Investigated whether 36 kindergarten and 36 1st-grade children, like college students, would give male-biased responses to a "he" presentation and examined how Ss would respond to the use of "they" and "he or she" pronoun presentations. The effects of pronoun use on memory were also investigated, as were possible sex differences in responding. Each S was assigned to 1 of 3 pronoun presentation groups, each of which contained an equal number of girls and boys. Ss in the different groups listened to the exact same story except that Group I Ss heard the pronoun "they" used throughout the story, Group 2 Ss heard "she" or "he" used throughout the story, and Group 3 Ss heard the pronoun "he" throughout the story. Ss were then asked to retell the story and were shown pictures of a boy and a girl and asked to indicate which one the story was about. Results support the pronomial dominance theory of pronoun functioning for young children. Results also support the hypothesis that boys initially use a self-imaging response to neutral presentations. The time of transition away from this response was identified as the 1st-grade level. There was no indication that kindergarten or 1st-grade girls use the self-imagining approach. The "they" presentation appeared to be the most neutral. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental response to limb deficiency and limb replacement.

Discusses perceptual–motor and cognitive development in children with congenital upper-limb deficiency and the use of myoelectric (i.e., responsive to muscle contractions) arm prosthesis in treatment. Ss can be trained to control motor activity that activates artificial limb movement, using conditioning or auditory and visual feedback. Limb deficient Ss may be delayed in the acquisition of object permanence, eye–hand coordination, and normal bilateral skills. Research on cognitive abnormalities in these Ss is inconclusive but may be influenced by the degree of limb deficiency. A longitudinal case study of a 19-mo-old quadrimembral amputee fitted with a myoelectric prosthesis is presented. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retarded object permanence development in methylmercury exposed Macaca fascicularis infants.

Mothers of 12 full-term, normal birth-weight Macaques (Macaca fascicularis) received methylmercury (MeHg) hydroxide orally in apple juice at 50 μg/kg/day for 4 mo to 2 yrs before conception and at individual doses during pregnancy. Mothers of 12 control infants received apple juice without MeHg. Infants were separated from their mothers on delivery and were laboratory reared. Beginning at 14 days of age, infants were tested for object permanence development using a plain reach task and hiding tasks. Results indicate that the performance of the MeHg-exposed infants on the full hiding task was significantly retarded compared with controls. On average, exposed infants required nearly twice as many sessions and were over 1 mo older than control infants when they would retrieve the fully hidden object. Although not all of the MeHg-exposed infants who exhibited retarded object permanence development showed signs of attentional problems, it is suggested that for some infants, these attentional problems may be an early precursor to later cognitive deficits. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Le décalage dans le développement de la notion d'objet: Mobilité et immobilité de l'objet.

Studied the development of object–person divergence in infants and the association of this divergence or decalage with the physical properties of the objects. Human subjects: 15 male and female Canadian infants (mean age 9 mo). Ss were given 5 identification tasks using mobile and immobile objects: (1) reorientation; (2) disappearance in place; (3) substitution; (4) disappearance in movement of dissimilar objects; and (5) disappearance in movement of similar objects. Ss were asked to indicate if the object was the same after a spatial-temporal transformation. Responses of the subjects to the identification task were recorded and classified by observers into 6 categories: disinterest, looking at object without moving, picking up the transformed object, picking up the nontransformed object, picking up 2 objects, and reproducing the transformation. The results were analyzed statistically and compared with those of another group of 16 infants performing a permanence test. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Yesterday and tomorrow: Development of early understanding of the terms.

Data from 90 2-, 3-, and 4-yr-old children indicate that there is a differential pattern of comprehension of the terms "yesterday" and "tomorrow" among the 3 age groups. Findings also suggest that the Ss learned the terms in an asymmetrical manner, with "yesterday" being understood as having 2 referential aspects (i.e., a time other than this day and past time) and "tomorrow" being understood only in terms of future reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Tokyo Declaration on work-related stress and health in three postindustrial settings—the European Union, Japan and the United States of America.

Sponsored by Tokyo Medical University, a "triangular" conference on "Work-Related Stress and Health in Three Postindustrial Settings—the European Union, Japan, and the US"—was held in Tokyo on October 31–November 1. Its 28 international scientists from all 3 settings and relevant disciplines described and discussed (1) present conditions of work, stress, and occupational health; (2) foreseeable trends; (3) needs for action; and (4) needs for research, education, and information. Discussions focused on the similarities and differences in all these respects between the 3 postindustrial settings. Agreement was reached concerning a number of conclusions and recommendations, including options for continued information exchange and concerted actions. This article discusses the conference and the specific proposals of the participants, which led to a document entitled the Tokyo Declaration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception and conception in coordination of perspectives.

Conducted 3 experiments, in an attempt to empirically describe the relative development of perceptual and conceptual understanding of projective relationships between objects and to explain a heuristic model of the cognitive processes involved in coordination of perspective tasks. Ss were a total of 330 4-12 yr olds. The results of Exps I and II indicate that the ability to relate perceptually and conceptually left-right and back-front relationships simultaneously emerged between the ages of 41/2 and 53/4 yrs, but by age 53/4 perception was more advanced than conception. On tasks emphasizing perceptual understanding, performance approached asymptote at about age 9, but for tasks emphasizing conceptual understanding, performance was well below asymptote at age 12. In addition, on the latter tasks, the greatest performance increases occurred between the ages of 9 and 11, suggesting that a developmental shift occurs during that age range. The results of all experiments are consistent with a model which identifies "extraction" of spatial relationships from the stimulus array and from the choice stimuli and "comparison" and "matching" of the images derived from extraction as the fundamental processes involved in both the perceptual and conceptual aspects of coordination of perspectives. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in the interface between perception and memory retrieval.

Four experiments examined how perception affects delayed recognition, visual pop out, and memory reactivation (priming) at 6 mo. Infants discriminated cues (Ls, Ts, and +s) differing in spatial arrangement or number of primitive perceptual units (textons) or both in a delayed recognition task and exhibited adultlike visual pop-out effects in a priming task. Performance at 6 mo resembled that at 3 mo and adult preattentive processing. Unlike at 3 mo, however, at 6 mo, an expectancy-based process overrode the perceptual characteristics of a novel pop-out stimulus in a delayed recognition test. Results indicate that delayed recognition memory becomes more "top down" over the 1st half-year, whereas memory priming remains age invariant and perceptually driven. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension and production of symbols in infancy: An experimental study.

There is now considerable evidence in support of the Piagetian-Wernerian hypothesis that early language emerges out of a more general symbolic capacity, one that also includes the use of gestural symbolic schemes in play. The present study examined the same hypothesis, but in a situation with more controls over the eliciting conditions for different aspects of early symbolization. The processes studied were word comprehension, word production, and gestural production. Ss were 26 infants tested longitudinally at 13 and 20 mo, responding to the same set of familar objects in realistic vs abstract versions. Word comprehension was unaffected by the abstraction manipulation at either age, but did increase significantly over time. Word production also increased developmentally and interacted significantly with abstraction (with more naming of realistic objects). Gestural production actually decreased over time. The abstractness effect on gesture interacted with age, in that the difference between realistic and abstract objects was much greater at 13 mo. Results are discussed in terms of a "switchover" in the preferred modality for recognizing or categorizing objects in the 2nd yr. Differences in the contextual dependence of gesture and word (i.e., effect of perceptual detail in the object) are also considered. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypnotically "reliving" a prior burn: Effects on blister formation and localized skin temperature.

60 Ss who had previously been burned were "hypnotically age regressed" and given both suggestions to "relive" the burn experience and suggestions that a blister was forming. Although 17 Ss reported vividly imagining the burn events, none showed localized skin-coloration changes or evidence of blister formation. Moreover, skin temperature measured before, during, and after age regression indicated no overall suggestion effects. Nevertheless, 1 S did show differential skin-temperature response to the suggestion. This S had showed only moderate hypnotic susceptibility on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-sectional study of object permanence in domestic puppies (Canis familiaris).

Visual accommodation and object permanence tests were administered to 70 puppies (Canis familiaris), aged 4 wks to 9 mo. The results showed that understanding of visible displacement problems emerged at the 5th wk and developed rapidly until the 8th wk. Although the search behaviors of older puppies were more flexible, no further significant development was observed between 8 wks and 9 mo. The results on invisible displacement tests suggest that understanding of invisible displacement problems appears around the 1st year in dogs' development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual processes in matching and recognition of complex pictures.

The role of perceptual feature sampling in speeded matching and recognition was explored in 4 experiments. Experiments 1-3 involved a perceptual matching task with pictures of various objects and scenes. In Experiments 2 and 3, same-different judgments were given under time pressure. The main objective of the matching task was to obtain measures of the perceptual processing rates of different object features. Experiment 4 was an old-new recognition experiment, in which the same stimuli as those in the matching task were used. Response signals were used to limit processing time in the recognition task. The results demonstrated that it is possible to predict speeded recognition performance from performance in perceptual matching. A simple stochastic feature-sampling model provides a unified account of the data from the 4 experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Permanence of measured vocational interests of adult males.

For 109 males tested on the Strong VIB in 1931 and in 1941, permanence of interest was measured by (a) test-retest rank-order correlations over 44 occupational scales for each subject, (b) total score test-retest correlations for the 44 scales, (c) mean test-retest score difference for each scale, and (d) differences in group patterns from test to retest. "… vocational interests of adult males… are remarkably stable when permanence is measured by the 4 methods… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of children's understanding of the metalinguistic term word..

Designed 3 experiments to assess 24 preschool (mean age 64.63 mo), 24 1st-grade (mean age 76.25 mo), and 24 2nd grade (mean age 88.61 mo) children's understanding of the term word. A modified aural discrimination task was used in which Ss were required to discriminate word from nonword stimuli along only 1 dimension at a time. Exp I tested Ss' discrimination of words and sounds. Exp II examined word–phrase differentiation. Both of these experiments followed previous research in examining children's comprehension of the term word in relation to nouns. Exp III examined Ss' understanding of word with stimuli from a variety of form classes. Results indicate that Ss' word concepts have been underestimated in past research suggesting that young children lack an adequate word concept: although preschool Ss did not understand the term properly, by 1st grade word was understood. These experiments also show that Ss benefited from brief training in which they were taught to attach the metalinguistic label word to their developing concept of the word as a unit of spoken language. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)