Is the Chinese number-naming system transparent? Evidence from Chinese-English bilingual children.

Chinese-speaking children have been shown to have an advantage over English-speaking children in a variety of mathematical areas, including counting. One possible explanation for the advantage in counting is that the Chinese number-naming system is relatively transparent, compared to English, in that number names typically are directly indicative of base-10 structure (e.g., 12 is named "ten-two" rather than "twelve"). To determine whether the transparency of the Chinese number-naming system influences counting in bilingual children, we tested 25 Chinese-English bilingual children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, both in English and in Chinese. Children were asked to count as high as they could (abstract counting) and also to count objects in small, medium, and large arrays (object counting). No evidence was found for transparency or for transfer from one language to the other. Instead, relative proficiency in the two languages influenced counting skill. These results are discussed in terms of linguistic and cultural variables that might account for cross-linguistic differences in counting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A featural analysis of preschoolers' counting knowledge.

Investigated preschoolers' knowledge of counting principles by examining their ability to discriminate between features that are essential for correct counting and features that are typically present but unessential. The standard counting procedure was analyzed into 1 essential feature, word/object correspondence (WOC), and 4 optional features: counting adjacent objects consecutively, pointing once to each object, starting at an end of a row, and proceeding in a left to right direction. In Exp I, 10 3-, 10 4-, and 10 5-yr-olds were asked to judge a puppet's counting that either violated the essential or unessential features or that conformed to the standard correct procedure. Ss who knew the WOC principle presumably would reject counts that violated it more often than counts that conformed to it. Each S's skill in counting rows of objects also was assessed. In Exp II, 16 3-yr-olds completed a similar task but were able to see an adult model perform the task before judging. Skill in executing the standard counting procedure preceded knowledge of the underlying principle. Four- and 5-yr-olds knew that WOC was essential, although a high percentage of them did not know that other typical features were unessential. An analysis of probable environmental input and of the features' utility in separating already-counted from to-be-counted objects is proposed to account for the relative probabilities that Ss knew that each of the 5 features of standard counting was essential or optional. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual grouping and visual selective attention

The present study demonstrates that incongruent distractor letters at a constant distance from a target letter produce more response competition and negative priming when they share a target's color than when they have a different color. Moreover, perceptual grouping by means of color, attenuated the effects of spatial proximity. For example, when all items were presented in the same color, near distractors produced more response competition and negative priming than far distractors (Experiment 3A). However, when near distractors were presented in a different color and far distractors were presented in the same color as the target, the response competition x distractor proximity interaction was eliminated and the proximity x negative priming interaction was reversed (Experiment 3B). A final experiment demonstrated that distractors appearing on the same object as a selected target produced comparable amounts of response competition and negative priming whether they were near or far from the target. This suggests that the inhibitory mechanisms of visual attention can be directed to perceptual groups/objects in the environment and not only to unsegmented regions of visual space.     

Young children's use of syntactic cues to learn proper names and count nouns.

In 6 experiments, 144 toddlers were tested in groups ranging in mean age from 20 to 37 months. In all experiments, children learned a novel label for a doll or a stuffed animal. The label was modeled syntactically as either a count noun (e.g., "This is a ZAV") or a proper name (e.g., "This is ZAV"). The object was then moved to a new location in front of the child, and a second identical-looking object was placed nearby. The children's task was to choose 1 of the 2 objects as a referent for the novel word. By 24 months, both girls (Experiment 2) and boys (Experiment 5) were significantly more likely to select the labeled object if they heard a proper name than if they heard a count noun. At 20 months, neither girls (Experiments 1 and 6) nor boys (Experiment 1) demonstrated this effect. By their 2nd birthdays, children can use syntactic information to distinguish appropriately between labels for individual objects and those for object categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The "Swedish" mutation of the amyloid precursor protein (APPswe) dissociates components of object-location memory in aged Tg2576 mice.

Aged Tg2576 mice show abnormalities in hippocampal morphology and physiology and display behavioral deficits in spatial navigation tasks consonant with a deficit in the functional properties of the hippocampus. However, the nature of the spatial representations disrupted by the "Swedish" mutation of the amyloid precursor protein (APPswe) is unclear. In an effort to characterize the memory deficits in Tg2576 mice, the spontaneous object exploration paradigm was used to interrogate spatial and object memory in mice. With object arrays of comparable size, 16-month-old Tg2576 mice showed a normal object familiarity/novelty effect but impaired memory for the location of objects when 2 objects exchanged locations (topological transformation; Experiment 1). In contrast, Tg2576 mice showed preferential exploration of familiar objects when they were moved to previously unoccupied locations (Experiment 2), irrespective of whether the transformation altered the metric properties of the object array (Experiments 3). These results suggest that Tg2576 mice are able to form representations of the identity of objects and a memory of the spatial organization of objects in an arena. In contrast, conjunctive memory for specific object-location associations is severely impaired in aged Tg2576 mice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of foveal priming and extrafoveal preview on object identification.

The results of three different experiments suggested that the relation between an object in the fovea on fixation n and an object subsequently brought into the fovea on fixation n ?+?1 affects the time to identify the second object. In Experiment 1 we extended previous work by demonstrating that a previously seen related priming object speeded the time to name a target object even when a saccade intervened between the two objects. In Experiment 2 we replicated this result and further showed that the benefit on naming time was due to facilitation from the related object rather than inhibition from the unrelated object. In addition, naming of the target object was much slower in both experiments when there was not a peripheral preview of the target object on fixation n. However, because the effect of the foveal priming object was greater when the target was not present than when it was present, priming did not appear to make extraction of the extrafoveal information more efficient. In Experiment 3, fixation times were recorded while subjects looked at four objects in order to identify them. Fixation time on an object was shorter when a related object was fixated immediately before it, even though the four objects did not form a scene. The size of the facilitation was roughly comparable to that in several analogous experiments where scenes were used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of background information on object identification.

Previous research using briefly presented displays has indicated that objects in a coherent scene are easier to identify than are objects in incoherent backgrounds. Of interest is whether the identification of the target object depends on the identification of the scene or the identification of other diagnostic objects in the scene. Experiment 1 indicated objects are more difficult to identify when located in an "episodically" inconsistent background even when the same diagnostic objects are present in both inconsistent and consistent backgrounds. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the degree to which noncued (cohort) objects are consistent with the target object has no effect on this object identification task. Experiment 3 showed consistent episodic background information facilitated object identification and inconsistent episodic background information did not interfere relative to "nonsense" backgrounds roughly equated on visual characteristics. Implications for models of scene perception are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Objects and Positions in Visual Scenes: Effects of Perirhinal and Postrhinal Cortex Lesions in the Rat.

The authors assessed rats' encoding of the appearance or egocentric position of objects within visual scenes containing 3 objects (Experiment 1) or 1 object (Experiment 2A). Experiment 2B assessed encoding of the shape and fill pattern of single objects, and encoding of configurations (object + position, shape + fill). All were assessed by testing rats' ability to discriminate changes from familiar scenes (constant-negative paradigm). Perirhinal cortex lesions impaired encoding of objects and their shape; postrhinal cortex lesions impaired encoding of egocentric position, but the effect may have been partly due to entorhinal involvement. Neither lesioned group was impaired in detecting configural change. In Experiment 1, both lesion groups were impaired in detecting small changes in relative position of the 3 objects, suggesting that more sensitive tests might reveal configural encoding deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ease of processing constrains the activation flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning.

In 3 picture–word interference experiments, speakers named a target object in the presence of an unrelated not-to-be-named context object. Distractor words, which were phonologically related or unrelated to the context object's name, were used to determine whether the context object had become phonologically activated. All objects had high frequency names, and the ease of processing of these objects was manipulated by a visual degradation technique. In Experiment 1, both objects were nondegraded; in Experiment 2, both objects were degraded; and in Experiment 3, either the target object or the context object was degraded. Distractor words, which were phonologically related to the context objects, interfered with the naming response when both objects were nondegraded, indicating that the context objects had become phonologically coactivated. The effect vanished when both objects were degraded, when only the context object was degraded, and when only the target object was degraded. These data demonstrate that the amount of available processing resources constrains the forward cascading of activation in the conceptual-lexical system. Context objects are likely to become phonologically coactivated if they are easily retrieved and if prioritized target processing leaves sufficient resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children associate novel words with complex objects rather than salient parts.

How do children learn associations between novel words and complex perceptual displays? Using a visual preference procedure, the authors tested 12- and 19-month-olds to see whether the infants would associate a novel word with a complex 2-part object or with either of that object's parts, both of which were potentially objects in their own right and 1 of which was highly salient to infants. At both ages, children's visual fixation times during test were greater to the entire complex object than to the salient part (Experiment 1) or to the less salient part (Experiment 2)--when the original label was requested. Looking times to the objects were equal if a new label was requested or if neutral audio was used during training (Experiment 3). Thus, from 12 months of age, infants associate words with whole objects, even those that could potentially be construed as 2 separate objects and even if 1 of the parts is salient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Limitations on preschool children's knowledge about counting: Using counting to compare two sets.

Possible limitations on preschool children's understanding of counting were examined by asking twenty 3-year-olds and twenty 4-year-olds to judge the appropriateness of counting carried out by a puppet. The puppet was asked to count either to find out how many objects were present altogether or to find out whether every object in one subset could have a corresponding object from the other subset. Within each counting task, half of the time the puppet counted all of the objects together and half of the time it counted the two subsets separately. Children at both ages showed some differentiation between the two counting tasks and performed at an above-chance level on the how-many task but not on the compare-sets task. The most common individual response pattern among the 3-year-olds was to judge both kinds of counts to be appropriate on both tasks, whereas the most common individual response pattern among the 4-year-olds was to judge counting of all the objects together to be appropriate and counting of the two subsets separately to be inappropriate on both tasks. The fact that children managed to differentiate appropriately between the two counting tasks despite using these basically undifferentiated strategies suggests that correct judgment processes coexisted with their predominant strategies and competed with them to determine performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitivity of 24-month-olds to the prior inaccuracy of the source: Possible mechanisms.

Three studies examined 24-month-olds' sensitivity to the prior accuracy of the source of information and the way in which young children modify their word learning from inaccurate sources. In Experiments 1A, 2, and 3, toddlers interacted with an accurate or inaccurate speaker who trained and tested children's comprehension of a new word–object link. In Experiment 1, children performed less systematically in response to an inaccurate than to an accurate source. In Experiments 2 and 3, after toddlers' comprehension of the new word–object links was tested by the original source, a second speaker requested the target objects. In Experiment 2, children responded randomly in response to the second speaker's requests when novel words were previously presented by an inaccurate source. In Experiment 3, toddlers responded randomly in response to both speakers in the inaccurate condition when their memory for words was taxed by a brief delay period. Taken together, these findings suggest that toddlers attend to accuracy information, that they treat inaccuracy as a feature of a particular individual, and that the word–object representations formed as a result may be fragile and short lived. Findings are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms by which children adjust their word learning from problematic speakers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating relationship constructs and emotional experience into false belief tasks in preschool children

Themes of separation from attachment figures are involved when caregivers are integrated into standard theory of mind tasks in which objects or toys are located. Two experiments test the hypothesis that searching for a caregiver would interfere with false belief performance and be related to a child's emotional awareness. Experiment 1 consisted of a cross-sectional study of three- to five-year-old children administered false belief tasks related to object identity, object location, and caregiver location, i.e., false belief tasks where story characters became separated from a parent and had to locate them. As expected, there were age-related improvements in false belief performance to above-chance levels during object identity and object location tasks, but performance on the caregiver location tasks showed no age-related improvement and at age five was poorer than other tasks. Emotional integration also varied with task. Children who were relatively more aware of emotions were more likely to pass tasks involving objects, and queries of emotions during tasks were related to false beliefs about objects but not caregivers. A second study of children five years of age indicated that it was not caregivers per se that disrupted their performance on false belief tasks. Additional tasks showed that this finding was due to caregivers being animate "behaving" objects whose relocation had been self- as opposed to other-directed, which suggests that false belief performance was related to the intent of the sought item. The developing awareness of the minds of others in five-year-olds and emotional content of the task may interfere with performance in false belief tasks that are social.     

Object categorization: Reversals and explanations of the basic-level advantage.

People are generally faster and more accurate to name or categorize objects at the basic level (e.g., dog) relative to more general (animal) or specific (collie) levels, an effect replicated in Experiment 1 for categorization of object pictures. To some, this pattern suggests a dual-process mechanism, in which objects first activate basic-level categories directly and later engage more general or specific categories through the spread of activation in a processing hierarchy. This account is, however, challenged by data from Experiment 2 showing that neuropsychological patients with impairments of conceptual knowledge categorize more accurately at superordinate levels than at the basic level--suggesting that knowledge about an object's general nature does not depend on prior basic-level categorization. The authors consider how a parallel distributed processing theory of conceptual knowledge can reconcile the apparent discrepancy. This theory predicts that if healthy individuals are encouraged to make rapid categorization responses, the usual basic > general advantage should also reverse, a prediction tested and confirmed in Experiment 3. Implications for theories of visual object recognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning the rules: Observation and imitation of a sorting strategy by 36-month-old children.

Two experiments were used to investigate the scope of imitation by testing whether 36-month-olds can learn to produce a categorization strategy through observation. After witnessing an adult sort a set of objects by a visible property (their color; Experiment 1) or a nonvisible property (the particular sounds produced when the objects were shaken; Experiment 2), children showed significantly more sorting by those dimensions relative to children in control groups, including a control in which children saw the sorted endstate but not the intentional sorting demonstration. The results show that 36-month-olds can do more than imitate the literal behaviors they see; they also abstract and imitate rules that they see another person use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What counts as by? Young children's use of relative distance to judge nearbyness.

The authors investigated how 3- and 4-year-old children and adults use relative distance to judge nearbyness. Participants judged whether several blocks were by a landmark. The absolute and relative distance of the blocks from the landmark varied. In Experiment 1, judgments of nearbyness decreased as the distance from the landmark increased, particularly for 4-year-olds and adults. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds and adults were more likely to judge objects at an intermediate distance as by the landmark when intervening objects were absent than when intervening objects were present. In Experiment 3, participants of all ages were more likely to judge objects at a short distance as by the landmark when intervening objects were absent. Reliance on relative distance to judge nearbyness becomes more systematic and applicable to larger spatial extents across development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual Search for Object Orientation Can Be Modulated by Canonical Orientation.

The authors studied the influence of canonical orientation on visual search for object orientation. Displays consisted of pictures of animals whose axis of elongation was either vertical or tilted in their canonical orientation. Target orientation could be either congruent or incongruent with the object's canonical orientation. In Experiment 1, vertical canonical targets were detected faster when they were tilted (incongruent) than when they were vertical (congruent). This search asymmetry was reversed for tilted canonical targets. The effect of canonical orientation was partially preserved when objects were high-pass filtered, but it was eliminated when they were low-pass filtered, rendering them as unfamiliar shapes (Experiment 2). The effect of canonical orientation was also eliminated by inverting the objects (Experiment 3) and in a patient with visual agnosia (Experiment 4). These results indicate that orientation search with familiar objects can be modulated by canonical orientation, and they indicate a top-down influence on orientation processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The human pulvinar and stimulus-driven attentional control.

The present study compared the behavioral effects of sudden motion onsets or color changes (i.e., featural changes) with the effects of new objects (i.e., multiple changes). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that lesions of the pulvinar affect stimulus-driven attentional control only when it is triggered by featural changes, but not by new objects. Experiment 3 revealed that when appended on a new object, a featural change is processed as a part of a more massive new object: Its attentional effects are larger and remain undisturbed by lesions of the pulvinar. In Experiment 4 a temporal superiority effect was found for featural changes, but not for new objects in healthy subjects. These results suggest that featural changes and new objects may be processed through different pathways and that the pulvinar may be particularly involved in stimulus-driven attentional control by sudden events entailing featural changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguishing types of superficial similarities: Different effects on the access and use of earlier problems.

When solving a problem, people often access and make use of an earlier problem. A common view is that superficial similarities may affect which earlier problem is accessed, but they have little or no effect on how that earlier problem is used. The reported experiments provide evidence against this view. Subjects learned four probability principles illustrated by word problems. Test problems varied in their similarity to the study problems in three ways: story lines, objects, and correspondence of objects' roles (i.e., whether similar objects filled similar roles). The superficial similarity of object correspondences had a large effect on use (Experiment 1), although it sometimes had little or no effect on access (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 showed that two superficial similarities, story lines and object correspondences, differentially affect and use. These results suggest a more complex role of superficial similarity in problem solving and the need for distinguishing types of superficial similarities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)