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)     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's ability to discern fantasy and reality.

This study examined 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 128; 54% girls) ability to discriminate emotional fantasy and reality. Children viewed images depicting fantastic or real events that elicited several emotions, reported whether each event could occur, and rated their emotional reaction to the image. Children were also administered the Play Behavior Questionnaire and Pretend Action Tasks to assess play behaviors. Findings revealed age-related improvements in performance and biases in judgment based on the emotion depicted. Children reported that happy fantastic events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry fantastic events and that happy real events could occur significantly more often than frightening and angry real events. Children's emotional reactions to the images but not play behaviors were significantly related to their fantasy-reality distinctions. Implications for the relation between emotions and children's fantasy-reality distinctions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of instruction in narrative structure on children's writing.

Examined the possibility that direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelations could enhance 4th-grade children's organization in story writing. Whether the special instruction might affect quality, coherence, use of temporal and causal relations, and creativity in writing was also examined. 19 4th graders who scored at a low level on measures of knowledge of narrative structure were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments—instruction in knowledge of story structure or instruction in dictionary-word study. The instruction included a short-term, intensive phase with 6 sessions during 2 wks and a long-term, intermittent phase with 10 sessions during 5 wks. Instruction in narrative structure had a strong positive effect on organization in storywriting and also enhanced quality. There were no differential effects of the 2 treatments on coherence, use of temporal or causal links in writing, or creativity. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's emerging ability to make false statements.

This study examined the origins of children's ability to make consciously false statements, a necessary component of lying. Children 2 to 5 years of age were rewarded for claiming that they saw a picture of a bird when viewing pictures of fish. They were asked outcome questions (“Do you win/lose?”), recognition questions (“Do you have a bird/fish?”), and recall questions (“What do you have?”), which were hypothesized to vary in difficulty depending on the need for consciousness of falsity (less for outcome questions) and self-generation of an appropriate response (more for recall questions). The youngest children (2? to 3? years old) were above chance on outcome questions, but it was not until age 3? that children performed above chance on recognition questions or were capable of maintaining false claims across question types. Findings have implications for understanding the emergence of deception in young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cognitive training on primary mental ability structure.

We report results of the first empirical test, as far as we know, of the assumption of structural invariance of latent constructs from pretest to posttest in cognitive training research on the elderly. In all, 401 participants in the Seattle Longitudinal Study, over 62 years old, received a 5-hr test battery at pre- and posttest that included 16 ability tests, marking the five primary abilities of Spatial Orientation, Inductive Reasoning, Numerical Ability, Verbal Ability, and Perceptual Speed. A total of 229 of our subjects received 5 hrs of individual training on either Spatial Orientation or Inductive Reasoning. Restricted factor analysis with the {lisrel} algorithm tested the hypothesis of measurement equivalence across test occasions, separately for the control subjects and for each of the training groups. When ability-specific cognitive training intervenes, no structural change is observed for abilities not subject to intervention. However, slight shifts occurred in the optimal regression weights for the different markers for the training target abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of conceptual level and structure on initial interview behavior.

Assessed the impact of the conceptual level matching model within a counseling situation. A 2–3 randomized block design was used to compare the effects of matching counselee conceptual level (CL) to counselor-offered degree of structure in a 40-min initial interview analogue. Two treatment levels of counselor structure (low and high) were crossed with 2 blocks of undergraduates (24 low-CLs and 24 high-CLs) and 2 interviewers. It was predicted that matched persons (low CL, high structure; high CL, low structure) would respond better than mismatched persons (low CL, low structure; high CL, high structure). The high-CL matching predictions recieved a significant degree of support in expressions of self-awareness and satisfaction. The low-CL matching predictions received a significant degree of support in the areas of satisfaction and ratings of counselor helpfulness. Use of different behavioral outcomes and a flexible counseling style are stressed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of grade, syllable segmentation, and speed of presentation on children's word-blending ability.

Subsyllabic awareness was investigated with a word synthesis task. Children from kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade attempted to blend auditorily presented CCVC word segments (where C?=?consonant and V?=?vowel) to produce words. Subsyllabic segmentation and presentation rate of the word segments were varied, and the dependent measure was percentage correct in each condition. Several posttests were administered to measure the children's preexisting ability to recognize visually presented consonants, consonant clusters, rimes, and words. Second graders performed better than 1st graders, who in turn performed better than kindergarteners. Performance of all children was best on words that were segmented between onset and rime and poorest for words that were segmented into individual phonemes. Performance for word segrnents that were presented at the fast rate was better than for those presented at the slow rate. The authors suggest that preliterate children are able to manipulate suprasegmental units such as onset and rime, and that those units should be emphasized in early reading instruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' helping behaviors during children's at-home oral-reading practice: Effects of children's reading ability, children's gender, and mothers' educational level.

To investigate the popular recommendation that children practice reading aloud at home, the conversations of 76 3rd graders reading to their mothers were audiotaped, transcribed, and coded. Conversations between below-average readers and their mothers were marked by the frequent use of error corrections. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more error corrections than did college-educated mothers, despite equal numbers of above-average and below-average readers in each group. High-school-educated mothers made significantly more comments than did college-educated mothers. College-educated mothers asked significantly more questions, including high-level questions, than did high-school-educated mothers. Girls spoke more during the conversations than did boys. Text difficulty effects are underscored, and practical implications are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ruse and representations: On children's ability to conceal information.

Reports a marked development between the ages of 3 and 5 yrs in children's ability to conceal information. In a situation of high-affect involvement, 3-yr-olds did not know to misinform or withhold information from a competitor who always chose the object for which they themselves had previously stated a preference. Although only 29% of 3-yr-olds knew to influence the competitor's mental state, 87% knew to physically exclude the competitor. There was no difference between children's performance when trying to obtain the object for themselves or predicting what a story character would do. The success of the older children in concealing information indicated their new representational understanding that to influence another's behavior, one must influence that person's mental state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of instructions on children's attention to stimulus components.

In 3 experiments, 5-, 8-, 9-, and 12-yr-olds were given a component-selection task with instructions to attend to one component or another or with no specific instructions. Ss at all age levels varied their attention to the nondominant component (color) in accord with instructions. Thus, children even as young as age 5 are capable of altering their manner of attention deployment. In another respect, however, data suggest a developmental change in the way children respond to varying task demands: Ss at 8 yrs of age and beyond, but not the 5-yr-olds, reduced their attention to the dominant component (shape) in response to instructions to concentrate on the nondominant component. During the early school years, children apparently develop a tendency to employ "attentional trading," withdrawing attention from a normally dominant stimulus component when it becomes advantageous to increase attention to another feature. Results are discussed as calling for modification of earlier hypotheses concerning development of attention. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of children's family structure status on the development of stereotypes by teachers.

The possibility that teacher ratings of children may indicate a stereotype on the part of teachers was investigated by showing 30 teachers a videotape that focused on the social interaction of an 8-yr-old boy. Half of the teachers were given a background information sheet indicating that he was from a divorced home, while the other half were told he was from an intact home. Ss rated the boy on a wide range of 11 personality traits and predicted what his behavior would be like in 5 different school situations (e.g., copes with stress and popularity). The Bonferroni multiple-comparisons procedure indicated that the teachers rated the divorced child more negatively on the following 3 variables reflecting affective state or relations: happiness, emotional adjustment, and copes with stress. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of competitive reward structure and valence of outcome on children's achievement attributions.

Studied how success and failure outcomes occurring under competitive and noncompetitive reward structures influenced children's attributional and affective responses. 40 5th-grade boys solved sets of achievement-related puzzles, working in pairs in which one succeeded and one failed at the task. Results show that the reward structure of the performance setting was an important determinant of self- and interpersonal evaluations. Competitive conditions caused self-punitive behavior for failure outcomes and some ego-enhancing strategies for success outcomes. Failing Ss expressed strong negative affect and perceived themselves as less capable than their successful partners, while successful Ss perceived themselves as more deserving of reward than their failing partners. No differences in self-other attributions or affect were found in noncompetitive conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of children's ability to acquire knowledge of spelling patterns.

Studied morphological and orthographic spelling-pattern abstraction by administering 3 multiple-choice tests (one of nonsense words, one of real words, and a dictation test of nonsense words) to 20 good and 20 poor spellers at each grade level from 2 to 5. Results indicate that both groups showed developmental trends in pattern abstraction on all tests. Good spellers were about 2 yrs ahead of poor spellers in pattern acquisition. On the nonsense word tests good spellers performed better on orthographic than on morphological patterns while the reverse was true for poor spellers. Findings indicate that pattern abstraction occurs as part of spelling acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of text genre and verbal ability on adult age differences in sensitivity to test structure.

The present study examined the effects of verbal ability and text genre on adult age differences in sensitivity to the semantic structure of prose. Young and older adults of low or high verbal ability heard narrative and expository passages at different presentation rates. The results demonstrated that older adults recalled less than younger adults and that age differences in recall were larger for low-verbal adults and expository texts. However, subjects from all groups favored the main ideas in their recalls for both types of passages. The results indicate that adult age similarities in the ability to focus on the main ideas when processing prose was not compromised by the verbal ability of the subjects or the organization of the passages used. However, the results also demonstrate how the characteristics of the learner and the characteristics of the text modulate the size of the age differences observed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of generic language about ability on children's achievement motivation.

Nuances in how adults talk about ability may have important consequences for children's sustained involvement and success in an activity. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that children would be less motivated while performing a novel activity if they were told that boys or girls in general are good at this activity (generic language) than if they were told that a particular boy or girl is good at it (non-generic language). Generic language may be detrimental because it expresses normative societal expectations regarding performance. If these expectations are negative, they may cause children to worry about confirming them; if positive, they may cause worries about failing to meet them. Moreover, generic statements may be threatening because they imply that performance is the result of stable traits rather than effort. Ninety-seven 4- to 7-year-olds were asked to play a game in which they succeeded at first but then made a few mistakes. Since young children remain optimistic in achievement situations until the possibility of failure is made clear, I hypothesized that 4- and 5-year-olds would not be affected by the implications of generic language until after they made mistakes; 6- and 7-year-olds, however, may be susceptible earlier. As expected, the older children who heard that boys or girls are good at this game displayed lower motivation (e.g., more negative emotions, lower perceived competence) from the start, while they were still succeeding and receiving praise. Four- and 5-year-olds who heard these generic statements had a similar reaction, but only after they made mistakes. These findings demonstrate that exposure to generic language about ability can be an obstacle to children's motivation and, potentially, their success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of children's physical attractiveness on teachers' evaluations.

After viewing the photograph of a physically attractive or unattractive child and a vignette depicting a misbehavior possibly committed by the child, 144 female elementary school teachers evaluated the pupil for blame, personality, and punishment before and after reading a report card characterizing the child as a good, satisfactory, or poor student. Though attractive children generally received more desirable personality ratings than unattractive children, a misbehavior was deemed less undesirable if attributed to unattractive rather than attractive children. Furthermore, unattractive girls were blamed less frequently and received more lenient recommendations for punishment than did unattractive boys. Implications for the physical attractiveness stereotyping hypothesis are discussed as well as explanations for the differential evaluations based on the child's sex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's suggestibility.

Two experiments investigated the effects of sadness, anger, and happiness on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory and suggestibility concerning story events. In Experiment 1, children were presented with 3 interactive stories on a video monitor. The stories included protagonists who wanted to give the child a prize. After each story, the child completed a task to try to win the prize. The outcome of the child's effort was manipulated in order to elicit sadness, anger, or happiness. Children's emotions did not affect story recall, but children were more vulnerable to misleading questions about the stories when sad than when angry or happy. In Experiment 2, a story was presented and emotions were elicited using an autobiographical recall task. Children responded to misleading questions and then recalled the story for a different interviewer. Again, children's emotions did not affect the amount of story information recalled correctly, but sad children incorporated more information from misleading questions during recall than did angry or happy children. Sad children's greater suggestibility is discussed in terms of the differing problem-solving strategies associated with discrete emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of aggressive cartoons on children's aggressive play.

"The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that exposure to aggressive fantasy in an animated cartoon may intensify children's impulses to aggression. Subjects were 36 first grade children, 18 girls and 18 boys, of middle class origin. The intensity of the child's aggressive impulses were inferred from his responses to questions concerning desire to 'play with' or 'pop' a large yellow balloon held by a tester. The experimental findings clearly supported the major prediction." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FF61M. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of computer programming on young children's cognition.

Assessed the effects of learning computer programming on the cognitive style (reflectivity, divergent thinking), metacognitive ability, cognitive development (operation competence, general cognitive measures), and ability to describe directions of 18 1st graders. Ss were pretested to assess receptive vocabulary (PPVT—R), impulsivity/reflectivity, and divergent thinking (the Figural Test of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking). Ss were randomly assigned to computer programming or computer-assisted instruction for 12 wks. Posttesting included the McCarthy Screening Test and measures of awareness of comprehension failure, operational competence, and describing directions. Results show that the programming group scored significantly higher on measures of reflectivity and divergent thinking. This group outperformed the computer-assisted group on measures of metacognitive ability and ability to describe directions. No differences were found on measures of cognitive development. It is concluded that computer programming can increase some aspects of problem-solving ability. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)