A comparison of young children's understanding of contradictory representations in pretense, memory, and belief

The present study examined the nature of young children's understanding of various mental representations. 3- and 4-year-olds were presented with story protagonists who held mental representations (beliefs, pretenses, and memories) that contradicted reality. Subjects chose 1 of 2 alternate "thought pictures" (depicting either the mental representation or reality) that reflected the mental state. While 4-year-olds performed relatively well on all scenario types, 3-year-olds chose the correct thought picture significantly more often for pretense and memory scenarios than for false belief scenarios. These results suggest that young children conceptualize pretense as involving mental representations, and that they have more difficulty understanding contradictory mental representations that purport to correspond to reality.     

Young children's memory for the true and pretend identities of objects.

Two studies examined how children conceive of the true and pretend identities of an object used in object-substitution pretense. In each study, 3- and 4-year-olds were assessed for their memory for each identity of an object that they used in a previous episode of pretend play (Study 1) or observed someone else using (Study 2). More children correctly remembered the true than the pretend identity of the objects, and there was no contingency between their tendency to remember each identity Additionally, children's tendency to correctly specify each identity was related to their age and when (i.e., during or after the pretend episode) the task was given. The results were explained by factors affecting young children's ability to manage separate representations of true and pretend identities of objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young Children Know That Trying Is Not Pretending: A Test of the "Behaving-As-If" Construal of Children's Early Concept of Pretense.

In 3 studies, young children were tested for their understanding of pretend actions. In Studies 1 and 2, pairs of superficially similar behaviors were presented to 26- and 36-month-old children in an imitation game. In one case the behavior was marked as trying (signs of effort), and in the other case as pretending (signs of playfulness). Three-year-olds, and to some degree 2-year-olds, performed the real action themselves (or tried to really perform it) after the trying model, whereas after the pretense model, they only pretended. Study 3 ruled out a simple mimicking explanation by showing that children not only imitated differentially but responded differentially with appropriate productive pretending to pretense models and with appropriate productive tool use to trying models. The findings of the 3 studies demonstrate that by 2 to 3 years of age, children have a concept of pretense as a specific type of intentional activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confirmatory factor analyses of academic self-concept scales: Reply to Marsh and Yeung (1997).

H. W. Marsh and A. S. Yeung (1997) criticized the conclusion of S. M. Simpson, B. G. Licht, R. K. Wagner, and S. R. Stader (1996) that children differentiate their perceived ability, near-future expectancies, and distant-future expectancies within academic domains. They argued that Simpson et al.'s questionnaire items and confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) approach were problematic and that their conclusion was inconsistent with research on academic self-concept. The authors of the present article argue that this inconsistency is because items on academic self-concept scales are not adequate for answering the questions addressed by Simpson et al., and that Simpson et al.'s conclusion is quite consistent with 2 other important lines of research. Further, the authors argue that the criticisms of Simpson et al.'s items and CFA approach are unfounded and conclude that Marsh and Yeung inadvertently provided further support for Simpson et al.'s conclusion that current academic self-concept theories should be extended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The locus of orthographic-phonological facilitation: Reply to Roelofs, Meyer, and Levelt (1996).

In their comment, A. Roelofs, A. S. Meyer, and W. J. M. Levelt (see record 1997-06337-001) argued that serial-access language production models predict an interaction between semantic and orthographic-phonological variables in picture–word tasks. In this reply, the authors first show that this position conflicts with Roelofs et al.'s previous work and conclude that the model presented in the comment is a modification of Roelofs' (1992a, 1992b) original model. Next, they present 3 arguments against this new model. First, Roelofs et al. did not provide independent empirical evidence in favor of their modification. Second, contrary to Roelofs et al.'s prediction, the reduction of semantic interference appears to be independent of the percentage of shared orthography. Third, Roelofs et al.'s model predicts early phonological effects of spoken-word distractors, a prediction that is refuted by time-course data reported by H. Schriefers, A. S. Meyer, and W. J. M. Levelt (see record 1990-16319-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The validity and appropriateness of methods, analyses, and conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A rebuttal of victimological critique from Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001).

The authors respond to 2 victimological critiques of their 1998 meta-analysis on child sexual abuse (CSA). S. J. Dallam et al. (see record 2001-05308-002) (2001) claimed that B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (see record 1998-04232-002) (1998) committed numerous methodological and statistical errors, and often miscoded and misinterpreted data. The authors show all these claims to be invalid. To the contrary, they demonstrate frequent bias in Dallam et al.'s criticisms. S. J. Ondersma et al. (see record 2001-05308-001) (2001) claimed that Rind et al.'s study is part of a backlash against psychotherapists, that its suggestions regarding CSA definitions were extrascientific, and that the moral standard is needed to understand CSA scientifically. The authors show their suggestions to have been scientific and argue that it is Ondersma et al.'s issue-framing and moral standard that are extrascientific. This reply supports the original methods, analyses, recommendations, and conclusions of Rind et al. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structure of problem behavior in adolescence and young adulthood.

Conducted 3 studies on the structure of behavior, using data collected by the 2nd author and S. L. Jessor (1977). These earlier bivariate findings suggested that diverse problem behaviors, including problem drinking, illicit drug use, delinquent-type behavior, and precocious sexual intercourse, may comprise a single behavioral syndrome in samples of normal adolescents. Data had been collected in 6 self-report waves for 162 male and 222 female Ss from the time they were in Grades 7–9 to when they were aged 25–27 yrs and for 84 males and 100 females from the time they were college students to when they were aged 30 yrs (approximately). In Study 1, a multivariate test of this possible syndrome was carried out through a series of maximum likelihood factor analyses. Analyses were performed by sex on 4 waves of the panel data. In Study 2, multiple random subsamples of adolescents who participated in the 1978 National Study of Adolescent Drinking (J. V. Rachal et al, 1980) were used to determine the generality of the results. In Study 3, the presence of a similar syndrome in Ss in their middle to late 20's was investigated, using data from Study 1. The analyses consistently showed that a common factor accounted for the correlations among the different problem behaviors. The findings support the notion of a syndrome of problem behavior in both adolescence and young adulthood. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

True or false: Do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detecting small taxa using simulated comparison data: A reanalysis of Beach, Amir, and Bau's (2005) data.

On the basis of taxometric analyses of data sets that they created to pose interpretive challenges, S. R. H. Beach, N. Amir, and J. J. Bau (2005) cautioned that using comparison data simulated by J. Ruscio's programs can lead to inaccurate conclusions. Careful examination of S. R. H. Beach et al.'s methods and results plus reanalysis of their data fails to substantiate this concern: Using comparison data identified the taxonic structure of S. R. H. Beach et al.'s data sets, even when the taxon base rate was very low. The authors show that J. Ruscio's simulation programs generate comparison data appropriately and that analyzing these data provides a useful interpretive aid. Additionally, the authors discuss and illustrate the effective use of the inchworm consistency test to disambiguate taxometric results for small taxa and dimensional constructs with positively skewed indicators. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and the use of perceptual and temporal information in source memory tasks

A number of studies have reported age differences in memory for the source of information. S.A. Ferguson, S. Hashtroudi, and M.K. Johnson (1992) suggested that older adults do not efficiently use multiple distinctive characteristics of sources to distinguish between sources in source memory tasks. In the study reported here, participants heard information from 2 sources and later decided whether test items had been presented by Source A, by Source B, or were new. The distinctiveness of both perceptual and temporal characteristics of sources were independently manipulated. Older adults benefited more than young adults from multiple distinctive characteristics of sources. These results question the generality of S.A. Ferguson et al.'s hypothesis.     

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.     

Confidence in protection: Comment on Goldberg et al. (1999).

S. Goldberg, J. E. Grusec, and J. M. Jenkins (see record 1999-15264-001) presented a provocative and compelling argument for a narrow definition of infant–mother attachment that is true to J. Bowlby's (1969) original theory. In particular, S. Goldberg et al. emphasized protection as the central feature of attachment and considered the importance of such a narrow definition for empirical precision in studies of the interactional antecedents of attachment. This comment considers a number of questions raised by S. Goldberg et al.'s article, including practical, theoretical, and developmental issues stemming from an attachment-as-protection perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time has come to talk of many things: A commentary on Kurdek (1998) and the emerging field of marital processes in depression.

In an important investigation of the longitudinal relation between marital adjustment and depressive symptoms, L. A. Kurdek (see record 1998-11410-003) reported an apparent failure to replicate prior findings reported by F. D. Fincham, S. R. H. Beach, G. T. Harold, and L. N. Osborne (1997). He attributed the diverging results to differences between the analytic approach taken in each of the studies. The authors reanalyzed F. D. Fincham et al.'s data using L. A. Kurdek's analytic procedures and found no change in results. A more parsimonious assessment of the diverging results is that L. A. Kurdek failed to generalize F. D. Fincham et al.'s findings to a longer time lag and a sample characterized by a rather different pattern of attrition. The authors highlight several important issues that require greater attention in developing a cumulative body of knowledge on the longitudinal relation between marital processes and depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' understanding of pretense and presumption of congruity between action and representation.

In a series of 4 studies, A. S. Lillard's (see record 1993-32884-001) paradigm for studying preschoolers' understanding of pretense was replicated and systematically examined. The design varied the extent of the contradiction built into Lillard's format. Decreases in contradictory information yielded increases in the incidence of correct judgments indicative of an implicitly representational understanding of pretense. The findings present a challenge to Lillard's (see record 1993-32884-001) conceptual analysis of pretense and suggest that methods adopted from the classic false-belief paradigm of H. Wimmer and J. Perner (see record 1983-27705-001) may be inappropriate for assessing preschoolers understanding of pretense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concerning instrumental autonomic conditioning: A rejoinder.

A. Crider, G. Schwartz, and S. Shnidman's (see 43:8) reply to E. S. Katkin and E. N. Murray's (see 42:10) review of instrumental autonomic conditioning makes several valid points but also contains many differences in interpretation based on a contrasting theoretical position. It is contended herein that the acceptability of "facts" as "facts" and "evidence" as "evidence" is determined often by predisposing epistemological orientations. Many of Crider et al.'s points are well taken, but the evidence on instrumental autonomic conditioning in humans remains far less convincing than the evidence available from animal studies. The methodological questions raised by Katkin and Murray's earlier paper appear to be clarified substantially by some of Crider et al.'s comments; however, the clarification has not reduced the danger of artifacts being interpreted as substantive evidence. (30 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the belief bias effect with ROCs: Reply to Dube, Rotello, and Heit (2010).

Comments on an article by Dube, Rotello, and Heit (see record 2010-14834-005). The authors argued (a) that the so-called receiver operating characteristic is nonlinear for data on belief bias in syllogistic reasoning; (b) that their data are inconsistent with Klauer, Musch, and Naumer's (see record 2000-02818-008) model of belief bias; (c) that their data are inconsistent with any of the existing accounts of belief bias and only consistent with a theory provided by signal detection theory; and (d) that in fact, belief bias is a response bias effect. In this reply, we present reanalyses of Dube et al.'s data and of old data suggesting (a) that the receiver operating characteristic is linear for binary “valid” versus “invalid” responses, as employed by the bulk of research in this field; (b) that Klauer et al.'s model describes the old data significantly better than does Dube et al.'s model and that it describes Dube et al.'s data somewhat better than does Dube et al.'s model; (c) that Dube et al.'s data are consistent with the account of belief bias by misinterpreted necessity, whereas Dube et al.'s signal detection model does not fit their data; and (d) that belief bias is more than a response bias effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The flat earth as a metaphor for the evidence for uniform efficacy of bona fide psychotherapies: Reply to Crits-Christoph (1997) and Howard et al. (1997).

On the basis of a meta-analysis of comparisons of bona fide psychotherapies, B. E. Wampold et al. (1997) concluded that the available evidence supported the notion that all psychotherapies are nearly equal in terms of efficacy. K. I. Howard, M. S. Krause, S. M. Saunders, and S. M. Kopta (1997) and P. Crits-Christoph (1997) raised 4 general issues with this conclusion: (a) counterexamples, (b) untested alternative hypotheses, (c) methodological problems, and (d) adequacy of randomized clinical trials. Each of these issues is discussed, and it is asserted that empirically there is no basis to alter the conclusions reached in B. E. Wampold et al.'s (1997) meta-analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Where are the effects of frequency in visual word recognition tasks? Right where we said they werep Comment on Monsell, Doyle, and Haggard (1989).

The authors' studies led them to conclude that category verification, lexical decision, and pronunciation tasks involve combinations of processes that cause them to produce differing estimates of the relation between word frequency and ease of lexical identification. S. Monsell et al (see record 1989-24836-001) challenged D. A. Balota and J. I. Chumbley's empirical evidence and conclusions, provided empirical evidence to support their challenge, and presented an alternative theoretical position. We show that Monsell et al.'s experiments, analyses, and theoretical perspective do not result in conclusions about the role of word frequency in category verification, lexical decision, and pronunciation that differ from those of Balota and Chumbley. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Considering phasic alerting in Alzheimer's disease: Comment on Tales et al. (2006).

A. Tales, R. J. Snowden, M. Brown, and G. Wilcock (2006; see record 2006-20657-014) have questioned the authors' view (see record 2004-12990-007) of a possible interdependence between attentional systems mediating exogenous spatial orienting and phasic alerting as well as the authors' suggestion that phasic alerting deficits in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be influencing their performance on tests of spatial orienting. Consistent with this possibility, both laboratories have previously demonstrated increased spatial orienting and decreased phasic alerting in patients with AD. In Tales et al.'s current study, however, they have instead suggested that their results provide evidence for functional independence between these attentional systems in AD. In this commentary, the authors address the misinterpretations of their study and evaluate the degree to which Tales et al.'s study addresses the issues that they raise. Given Tales et al.'s difficulty performing analyses on response time data because of variance issues, the presence of a reduced (although not significant) alerting effect in Tales et al.'s AD group (consistent with the authors' previous findings), and a potential floor effect in their measure of alerting, the authors question the validity of Tales et al.'s conclusions and reaffirm their position that not considering interactions among attentional systems can lead to inaccurate characterizations of the mechanisms by which they operate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' use of desires to solve theory of mind problems in a pretense context

K. Bartsch and H. M. Wellman (1995) have suggested that 3-year-old children's preference to construe behavior in terms of desire may interfere with their ability to reason according to belief in standard false belief tasks. Other researchers have suggested that young children fail typical measures of theory of mind because they have a reality bias (e.g., P. Mitchell, 1994). Study 1 demonstrates that even young children are able to correctly attribute a false belief to an agent when that belief is about the status of a pretense. Study 2 shows that children find it easier to attribute a false belief when the desires of the agent are eliminated. However, Study 3 suggests that a reality bias also influences children's ability to consider beliefs. Implications for recent accounts of theory of mind development are discussed.