There's more to the picture than meets the eye: young children's difficulty understanding biased interpretation

5 experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were asked to infer a puppet's interpretation of a small, ambiguous portion of a line drawing after the puppet had been led to have an erroneous expectation about the drawing's identity. Children of both ages failed to ascribe to the puppet an interpretation consistent with the puppet's expectation. Instead, children attributed complete knowledge of the drawing to the puppet. In Experiment 2, the task was modified to reduce memory demands, but 4- and 5-year-olds continued to overlook the puppet's prior expectations when asked to infer the puppet's interpretation of an ambiguous scene. 6-year-olds responded correctly. In Experiment 3, 4- and 5-year-olds correctly reported that an observer who saw a restricted view would not know what was in the drawing, but children did not realize that the observer's interpretation might be mistaken. Experiments 4 and 5 explored the possibility that children's errors reflect difficulty inhibiting their own knowledge when responding. The results are taken as evidence that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately age 6 years.     

Representational flexibility and response control in a multistep multilocation search task.

Three experiments were conducted to explore the determinants of 2-year-olds' perseverative errors in a search task. In Experiment 1, children either retrieved an object during a preswitch phase or merely observed a hiding event. Active search produced perseveration on postswitch trials, but mere observation did not. In Experiment 2, similar results were found, even when active search occurred in the absence of observation. Finally, in Experiment 3, children observed a hiding event at 1 location on some pretest trials and simply retrieved an object at a different location on other trials. On test trials, in which an object was hidden at a 3rd location, children tended to search where they had searched previously. Together, the results indicate that active search is required to elicit perseveration, which points to failures of response control rather than representational inflexibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response control and the execution of verbal rules.

Two-year-olds' difficulty with rule execution is robust and pervasive. In Experiment 1, 120 32-month-olds received 1 of 6 tasks: a task assessing knowledge about a series of items; a deductive card sort requiring children to use their knowledge to sort the items by rules; and 4 modifications of the card sort that provided various types of task support. Children performed better on the knowledge task than the other tasks, which did not differ. Errors increased over trials and were typically perseverative. Experiment 2 replicated the finding that children failed to use rules systematically even when items were labeled by the rules' antecedents. Improvements in rule use seem to reflect emerging control over actions rather than increased representational flexibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Principles of Conventionality and Contrast in Word Learning: An Empirical Examination.

In Study 1, 4-year-olds avoided 2 names for an object when exposed to a common or a proper noun in a puppet's presence or to a common noun in a puppet's absence, but not when exposed to a proper noun in a puppet's absence. In Study 2, 3-year-olds avoided 2 names for an object when the requester for the referent of a second label in a different language was bilingual and present during naming, but not when the speaker was bilingual but absent or monolingual. Study 3 followed up on the results of the first 2 studies. When children could assume that the puppet knew the name the experimenter used, they inferred that the puppet's use of a different name implied a different referential intent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On having complex representations of things: Preschoolers use multiple words for objects and people.

Applying several names to an entity (polynomy) reflects the ability to categorize entities in different ways. Two experiments demonstrate preschoolers' abilities to apply multiple labels to representational objects and to people. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds labeled representational objects and verified labels for story characters. In both tasks children reliably produced or accepted several words per entity and accepted a high percentage of both class-inclusive and overlapping word pairs. These results were replicated in Experiment 2; 3- to 5-year-olds also completed appearance–reality and receptive vocabulary tests. The mean number of words produced in the labeling task was significantly related to receptive vocabulary, but not to appearance–reality performance. The results indicate that preschoolers represent an entity as belonging to multiple categories (e.g., dinosaur and crayon). Implications for cognitive and language development, particularly the appearance–reality distinction and the mutual exclusivity bias, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are Eyes Windows to a Deceiver's Soul? Children's Use of Another's Eye Gaze Cues in a Deceptive Situation.

Three experiments examined 3- to 5-year-olds' use of eye gaze cues to infer truth in a deceptive situation. Children watched a video of an actor who hid a toy in 1 of 3 cups. In Experiments 1 and 2, the actor claimed ignorance about the toy's location but looked toward 1 of the cups, without (Experiment 1) and with (Experiment 2) head movement. In Experiment 3, the actor provided contradictory verbal and eye gaze clues about the location of the toy. Four- and 5-year-olds correctly used the actor's gaze cues to locate the toy, whereas 3-year-olds failed to do so. Results suggest that by 4 years of age, children begin to understand that eye gaze cues displayed by a deceiver can be informative about the true state of affairs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intention and knowledge in preschoolers' conception of pretend

Experiments 1 and 2 investigated 3- and 4-year-olds' understanding of the intended nature of pretend behaviors by testing their ability to distinguish between involuntary behaviors and the same behaviors emitted intentionally through acts of pretend. Four-year-olds' high rate of passing showed that (1) they understood intention as a mental cause of action and (2) they construed pretend behaviors mentalistically. Experiment 3 used the same contrastive procedure to examine Lillard's contention that 4-year-olds do not understand the knowledge conditions and hence the mental representational component of pretend actions. Whereas nearly all of the 5-year-olds understood that an agent who did not know of a specific animal could not be pretending to be that animal, 4-year-olds systematically associated ignorance with pretend. On the basis of the combined findings of the present experiments, and other research showing a mentalistic understanding of pretense by the age of 3 or 4, it was concluded that the specific reasoning requirements of Lillard's tasks resulted in an underestimation of children's appreciation of the mental features of pretend.     

When three is less than two: Early developments in children's understanding of fractional quantities.

Four experiments examined young children's understanding of the inverse relation between the number of parts into which a quantity is to be divided and the size of each part. In Experiment 1, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children tended to judge, incorrectly, that bigger shares would result from sharing with more, rather than fewer, recipients. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds correctly recognized the inverse effect of additional recipients when the sharing was based on subtraction rather than on equal partitioning. In Experiment 3, a modification of the equal-sharing task from Experiment 1 designed to reduce cognitive complexity successfully elicited correct performance from 7-year-olds but not from 5-year-olds. However, 5-year-olds markedly improved when they were given a chance to compare the outcomes of sharing with different numbers of recipients. Experiment 4 corroborated and extended this evidence of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analogical reasoning in young children.

Assessed the performance of 4- and 5-year-olds on geometric analogy tasks. Each task consisted of 16 analogy problems that were presented in a manipulative, gamelike context and that used attribute blocks that varied on the dimensions of color, size, and shape. Experiment 1 demonstrated that many of the preschoolers were capable of applying analogical reasoning in the solution of geometric analogy problems of the form A:B::C:?. We also found that children who did not consistently reason analogically showed evidence of a reasoning strategy that was governed by a hierarchical rule structure. Experiment 2, in which a modified version of the geometric analogy task in Experiment 1 was used, confirmed the findings of the initial experiment with regard to the analogical reasoning ability of 4- and 5-year-olds. The rule structure was verified for nonanalogical reasoners, whereas analogical reasoners generally exhibited no consistent pattern in their response errors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of drawing on memory performance in young children.

In Experiment 1, 32 5- to 6-year-old boys and girls participated in a unique event and were interviewed about that event 1 day later. Half of the children were asked to draw what happened during the event and half were asked to tell what happened. In both conditions, only children's verbal behavior was scored. Children in the draw group were as accurate and reported more information than children in the tell group, especially in response to direct questions. In Experiment 2, 32 5- to 6-year-olds and 32 3- to 4-year-olds participated in the same event used in Experiment 1 and were interviewed 1 month later. The 5- to 6-year-olds in the draw group reported more information than the 5- to 6-year-olds in the tell group after the 1-month delay. Drawing did not, however, increase the amount of information reported by 3- to 4-year-olds. These findings have important theoretical implications for memory development and important practical implications for children's eyewitness testimony. (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)     

Tests of the dynamic field theory and the spatial precision hypothesis: Capturing a qualitative developmental transition in spatial working memory.

This study tested a dynamic field theory (DFT) of spatial working memory and an associated spatial precision hypothesis (SPH). Between 3 and 6 years of age, there is a qualitative shift in how children use reference axes to remember locations: 3-year-olds’ spatial recall responses are biased toward reference axes after short memory delays, whereas 6-year-olds’ responses are biased away from reference axes. According to the DFT and the SPH, quantitative improvements over development in the precision of excitatory and inhibitory working memory processes lead to this qualitative shift. Simulations of the DFT in Experiment 1 predict that improvements in precision should cause the spatial range of targets attracted toward a reference axis to narrow gradually over development, with repulsion emerging and gradually increasing until responses to most targets show biases away from the axis. Results from Experiment 2 with 3- to 5-year-olds support these predictions. Simulations of the DFT in Experiment 3 quantitatively fit the empirical results and offer insights into the neural processes underlying this developmental change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents and outcomes of coping behaviors among unemployed and reemployed individuals

Four experiments examined young children's understanding of the inverse relation between the number of parts into which a quantity is to be divided and the size of each part. In Experiment 1 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children tended to judge, incorrectly, that bigger shares would result from sharing with more, rather than fewer, recipients. In Experiment 2, 5-year-olds correctly recognized the inverse effect of additional recipients when the sharing was based on subtraction rather than on equal partitioning. In Experiment 3, a modification of the equal-sharing task from Experiment 1 designed to reduce cognitive complexity successfully elicited correct performance from 7-year-olds but not from 5-year-olds. However, 5-year-olds markedly improved when they were given a chance to compare the outcomes of sharing with different numbers of recipients. Experiment 4 corroborated and extended this evidence of learning.     

Preschoolers' understanding of others' desires: Fulfilling mine enhances my understanding of yours.

We developed a gift-giving task requiring children to identify their mother's desire, when her desire differed from theirs. We found a developmental change: 3- and 4-year-olds performed more poorly than 5-year-olds (Experiment 1). A modified version of this task (Experiment 2) revealed that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds whose desires had been fulfilled chose an appropriate gift for their mothers significantly more often than children whose desires were unfulfilled. Children who merely anticipated desire fulfillment also outperformed children whose desires were unfulfilled. Analysis of children's verbal explanations provides converging evidence that desire fulfillment enhanced children's tendency to adopt the perspective of their mother and justify their choices by referencing her desires. Discussion focuses on why desire fulfillment enhances children's ability to consider the desires of others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metarepresentation in action: 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' developing theories of mind in parent–child conversations.

Using a cross-sectional natural language database, the authors investigated the parent–child conversations of 36 three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds to explore 2 issues regarding the development of metarepresentation. First, children's uses of explicit contrastives (ECs), utterances that explicitly contrast 2 differing mental states, were explored. Four-year-olds and, to a greater extent, 5-year-olds were found to reliably use ECs. Second, parents' responses to children's uses of "I don't know" and implicit contrastives (e.g., contradictions) were examined to determine whether parents took these opportunities to highlight the representational nature of mental states. All children regularly elicited mentalistic responses from their parents and, in some cases, these parental responses were positively related to children's production of mental talk. Findings are discussed in terms of how theory of mind development may be guided by scaffolding processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding inference as a source of knowledge: Children's ability to evaluate the certainty of deduction, perception, and guessing.

Three experiments investigated children's understanding of inference as a source of knowledge. Children observed a puppet make a statement about the color of one of two hidden toys after the puppet (a) looked directly at the toy (looking), (b) looked at the other toy (inference), or (c) looked at neither toy (guessing). Most 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds did not rate the puppet as being more certain of the toy's color after the puppet looked directly at it or inferred its color than they did after the puppet guessed its color. Most 8- and 9-year-olds distinguished inference and looking from guessing. The tendency to explain the puppet's knowledge by referring to inference increased with age. Children who referred to inference in their explanations were more likely to judge deductive inference as more certain than guessing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mere memory testing creates false memories in children.

It has been reported that initial recall tests inoculate true memories against forgetting without creating false memories. This is not true of recognition tests. In 2 experiments with 5- and 8-year-olds, initial recognition tests elevated children's false-memory responses (false alarms to unpresented distractors) on delayed tests. In Experiment 1, false-memory creation exceeded true-memory inoculation in 5-year-olds, producing net losses in accuracy over time. In Experiment 2, false-memory creation exceeded true-memory inoculation at both age levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of triadic eye gaze information for "mind reading."

Five experiments examined children's use of eye gaze information for "mind-reading" purposes, specifically, for inferring another person's desire. When presented with static displays in the first 3 experiments, only by 4 years of age did children use another person's eye direction to infer desires, although younger children could identify the person's focus of attention. Further, 3-year-olds were capable of inferring desire from other nonverbal cues, such as pointing (Experiment 3). When eye gaze was presented dynamically with several other scaffolding cues (Experiment 4), 2- and 3-year-olds successfully used eye gaze for desire inference. Scaffolding cues were removed in Experiment 5, and 2- and 3-year-olds still performed above chance in using eye gaze. Results suggest that 2-year-olds are capable of using eye gaze alone to infer about another's desire. The authors propose that the acquisition of the ability to use attentional cues to infer another's mental state may involve both an association process and a differentiation process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of talker variability on word recognition in preschool children.

In a series of experiments, the authors investigated the effects of talker variability on children's word recognition. In Experiment 1, when stimuli were presented in the clear, 3- and 5-year-olds were less accurate at identifying words spoken by multiple talkers than those spoken by a single talker when the multiple-talker list was presented first. In Experiment 2, when words were presented in noise. 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds again performed worse in the multiple-talker condition than in the single-talker condition, this time regardless of order; processing multiple talkers became easier with age. Experiment 3 showed that both children and adults were slower to repeat words from multiple-talker than those from single-talker lists. More important, children (but not adults) matched acoustic properties of the stimuli (specifically, duration). These results provide important new information about the development of talker normalization in speech perception and spoken word recognition. (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)