Effects of age and self-verbalization on children's ability to delay gratification.

Examined the effects of overt self-verbalizations on the ability to delay gratification in 80 kindergartners and 3rd graders. Ss were instructed to verbalize a statement that focused on task-oriented, reward-oriented, or irrelevant statements (counting) about the delay period. Results indicate that only in a no-verbalization control condition were 3rd-grade children better able to endure the delay period than kindergarten children. Task-oriented self-statements facilitated delay behavior for children of both ages while reward-oriented self-statements inhibited delay behavior of the 3rd graders and had no effect on kindergartners. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's verbal rehearsal in a free-recall task.

Predicted that, while the use of categories in rehearsal would increase with age, organized rehearsal would be related to recall accuracy and recall organization for all ages tested. Data from 20 3rd and 20 6th graders confirm the predictions but are inconclusive for 20 kindergartners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imagery training and children's prose learning.

Used a pretest-posttest design to examine the effects of passage-illustration training (relative to a reading-practice control procedure) on reading comprehension in 10 3rd and 22 4th graders. Without this imagery training, imagery instructions did not improve performance on either a standardized reading comprehension test or a paraphrase prose recall procedure. After extended training in drawing adequate "comic strips" to illustrate prose passages, performance in a paraphrase recall task improved, but only when explicit imagery instructions were given with the task. The imagery training did not affect the standardized test performance, explicit imagery instructions notwithstanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Errors in short-term memory for speech: A developmental study.

In a previous study (R. Treiman & C. Danis, 1988), adults who were presented with lists of spoken consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonsense syllables for immediate recall produced many errors that combined the initial consonant onset of one to-be-remembered syllable with the vowel-consonant rime of another to-be-remembered syllable. These onset-rime recombination errors were more common than other types of recombination errors and also more common than serial position errors. These findings suggest that nonwords are remembered in terms of smaller phonological units. To replicate the previous results and to determine whether they generalize to children, the author tested kindergartners, 3rd graders, 6th graders, and adults on lists of nonsense CVCs. Onset-rime conjunction errors were the most frequent type of recombination error, even among kindergartners, suggesting that children code spoken syllables in terms of onset and rime units from a young age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's recall of television material: Effects of presentation mode and adult labeling.

Preschoolers, kindergartners, and 3rd and 4th graders viewed an edited prosocial cartoon in 1 of 4 viewing conditions that changed program features and introduced viewing information to aid recognition and structuring of central plot information. Older Ss recalled more total information; Ss who had viewed with an experimenter recalled more material than did Ss in other viewing conditions. Visual presentation enhanced central recall. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of equality--inequality relationships for liquid quantities: the role of minimal-difference concept examples

When one of two same-amount liquid quantities was actually, or proposed to be, altered by a very tiny (smidgen) amount, kindergartners and 2nd graders failed to recognize the resulting inequality, whereas 3rd and 4th graders were increasingly successful. Alterations larger than a smidgen, but still small, improved the judgments of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders but left kindergartners still thinking that equality was unchanged. Alterations in larger amounts that provided noticeable perceptual discrepancies led to nearly perfect inequality judgement across all grade levels. A rigorous evaluation of children's understanding of equality-to-inequality changes must include minimal-amount differences in a quantity along with the solicitation of verbal reports.     

Development of strategies for recall and recognition.

40 kindergartners, 42 3rd graders, and 40 5th graders (CA's 5 yrs, 5 mo; 8 yrs, 3 mo; and 12 yrs, 4 mo, respectively) viewed 30 pictures of familiar objects, and then their free recall of the object names and their recognition of the original pictures were tested. The recognition test included pairing each picture with another similar picture of the same object. Half the Ss in each age group were prepared for recall with a strategy known to improve it in adults, and half were prepared for recognition with a strategy known to improve recognition in adults. Children encoded the stimuli differentially in accordance with the expected memory task and retrieved different stored information for each task. Both free recall and picture recognition memory improved with age. The recall strategy improved free recall performance at all ages, but the recognition strategy improved recognition performance only at the oldest age tested. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic retrieval in young children as a function of type of meaning.

Studied semantic retrieval in 15 kindergartners and 15 3rd graders. Ss were timed while they verified sentences that paired animal names and properties. Properties varied in saliency (i.e., rated association strength) and in type of meaning (i.e., functional or nonfunctional properties). An attempt was made to test a theory of concept acquisition in children that maintains that functional meaning lies at the core of a concept and that identification of the functional core then leads to the derivation of a set of static identifiers (attributes). Some support was found for this hypothesis in that kindergartners were as adept as 3rd graders in retrieving functional meaning that was highly salient and dynamic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's generation and communication of mnemonic organizational strategies.

Using a series of alternating sort/recall trials, whether 108 1st, 3rd, and 6th graders' experience with categorically related items would facilitate their subsequent organization and recall of low-associated items was explored. Results indicate that 3rd graders exposed to the categorized materials recalled more low-associated items and demonstrated greater organization in sorting and recall than did 3rd graders with previous experience with low-associated materials. Sixth graders' performance with low-associated materials was not affected by their previous experience. Following the memory task, each S provided answers to a series of metamemory questions and then instructed a 1st-grade child in how to perform the memory task. The instructions given to the 1st graders, as well as the performance of these younger children, reflected the older children's differential experience with taxonomic vs low-associated materials. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distributive justice development and social class: A replication.

28 kindergartners and 28 3rd graders, equally divided between lower- and middle-class and between boys and girls, were given the Distributive Justice Scale, a vocabulary test, and sociometric peer ratings. Results show that regardless of grade, the lower-class Ss lagged behind the middle-class Ss in distributive justice development even when verbal ability was controlled. Findings replicate those of a previous study drawn from the same population (R. Enright et al; see record 1981-07767-001). Both studies show statistically equivalent scores. The peer ratings showed that in both kindergarten and 3rd grade, lower-class Ss were most often named as having negative socioeconomic traits. Implications for social class distributive justice are discussed. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension and production of standard and Black English by lower-class Black children.

72 lower-class kindergartners, 3rd graders, and 6th graders were given grammatical contrasts and production tests. Ss had to comprehend stimulus sentences with contrasting grammatical characteristics in Black English and standard English and had to spontaneously produce sentences when shown stimulus pictures. Results indicate that comprehension of both easy and hard contrasts in Black and standard English decreased significantly with age. The results, though, may only be applicable to older children, since young children seemed to be heavily influenced by semantic factors. The results are consistent with previous results suggesting that Black children "code switch," although the effect of semantic constraints on young Black English speakers needs to be further investigated. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors influencing rule discovery in children.

Reports on 2 studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery capabilities. This paradigm employs both learning and generalization phases. In Exp I with 48 3rd and 4th graders, it was determined that Ss could learn and generalize when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. In Exp II with 48 different 3rd and 4th graders, memory and attention manipulations were added. Both manipulations facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery. In both studies 4th graders performed better than 3rd graders on generalization but not learning. The relationship between performance on the Esper and Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (given to all Ss), although inconsistent, when covaried out removed the significant grade but not experimental effects. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and sex effects on personal space schemata toward body build in late childhood.

A comparison of data from 38 4th-, 36 5th-, and 33 6th-grade children with data from a previous study with kindergartners and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders shows that the relative relations between the sex and body type of a target and the interpersonal distance used toward the target remains stable from kindergarten through 6th grade, although there are discrepancies in the absolute distances used toward the targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of a Thematic Apperception Test ({temas}) for urban Hispanic children.

Administered a thematic apperception technique (TEMAS) composed of chromatic stimuli picturing Hispanic characters in urban settings to 73 kindergartners to 3rd graders who were nonclinical and from Puerto Rican backgrounds and used data on 210 (kindergartners to 6th graders) clinical Puerto Rican Ss obtained earlier by the present 2nd author (1979) to investigate the psychometric properties of the instrument. Results show internal consistency and interrater reliability in scoring TEMAS protocols. TEMAS indices significantly discriminated between the public school and clinical samples. In the clinical samples, estimates of concurrent validity ranged from .32 to .51 with measures of ego development, trait anxiety, and adaptive behavior. Pretherapy TEMAS profiles predicted 6–22% of the variance in posttherapy treatment outcomes. Findings provide preliminary support for the clinical utility of the TEMAS for Hispanic children, who typically are inarticulate in response to traditional projective tests. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imagery Rating of 1,000 Frequently Used Words.

One thousand frequently used words were rated for imagery by adult subjects. Sixty-three 5-7-year-old kindergartners and first graders were then taught to read (pronounce) 756 of these words. Each subject received a different set of 12 words, but all received 4 words rated high in imagery, 4 medium and 4 low. No subject received words that he could already read. Results indicated that the imagery rating of words was significantly related to the subjects' ability to learn to read the words. It is concluded that imagery ratings may have considerable value in the teaching of reading. The word list with imagery ratings is presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Simultaneous and successive processing and narrative speech.

To assess the relationships between simultaneous and successive processing and narrative speech, 60 3rd graders were administered measures of story recall and marker tests for simultaneous and successive processing. Two indices of complexity of syntactical organization loaded on the successive factor, while speed of speech output loaded on the simultaneous factor. The relationship between successive processing and syntactical complexity is consistent with predictions derived from A. R. Luria's (1966, 1973) psychological findings. The relationship between speed of speech output and simultaneous processing suggests that fluent story recall may be dependent upon the formation of a unifying gestalt embodying the relationships between different parts of the story. (French summary) (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of the structure of color categories.

Previous investigators have argued that basic color categories are structured in terms of a universal focal area with varying boundaries. In the present study 2 developmental implications were investiaged: (a) that foci for color categories become established and are stabilized earlier than boundaries and (b) that focal judgments are always more stable than boundary judgments. A total of 20 kindergartners, 40 3rd graders, and 40 adults served in 3 color designation experiments modeled after those of B. Berlin and P. Kay (1969). Means and variances of focal and boundary judgments for the 8 basic chromatic terms were determined for the 3 groups. In general, both hypotheses were supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in, and consequences of, multiple- and variable-strategy use on a multitrial sort-recall task.

Second-, 3rd-, and 4th-grade children were given 5 sort-recall trials with different sets of categorizable items. The authors assessed multiple-strategy use on each trial and related intertrial changes in strategy use to levels of recall. Multiple-strategy use increased with age but was observed at all grades. Fourth graders who used more strategies had higher recall, with this pattern occurring only on later trials for 2nd and 3rd graders. Children of all ages showed substantial intertrial variability in using multiple strategies. Stable-strategy use (few strategy changes across trials) was related to high levels of recall, both for individual and group data, and was associated with the use of different numbers of strategies at different ages. Results were interpreted in light of new research and theory postulating that multiple- and variable-strategy use is the rule rather than the exception in development and that strategies do not always facilitate task performance (utilization deficiencies). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of indebtedness as a feature of reciprocal help exchanges between peers.

Examined age differences in children's understanding of indebtedness as a function of helper cost and relationship. 120 children from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades responded to 3 high-cost and 3 low-cost vignettes describing a hypothetical reciprocal exchange between 2 friends or 2 acquaintances. Fifth graders reported a diminished obligation to reciprocate following the receipt of low-cost help, whereas the obligation to reciprocate remained high for 3rd and 1st graders. Low-cost help also minimized any negative feelings resulting from a peer's inability to reciprocate for 5th and 3rd graders but not 1st graders. All children reported that it was more important for an acquaintance to reciprocate assistance than it was for a friend. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)