Children's understanding of representational change and its relation to the understanding of false belief and the appearance-reality distinction

This research concerns the development of children's understanding of representational change and its relation to other cognitive developments. Children were shown deceptive objects, and the true nature of the objects was then revealed. Children were then asked what they thought the object was when they first saw it, testing their understanding of representational change; what another child would think the object was, testing their understanding of false belief; and what the object looked like and really was, testing their understanding of the appearance-reality distinction. Most 3-year-olds answered the representational change question incorrectly. Most 5-year-olds did not make this error. Children's performance on the representational change question was poorer than their performance on the false-belief question. There were correlations between performance on all 3 tasks. Apparently children begin to be able to consider alternative representations of the same object at about age 4.     

Fine motor skills and executive function both contribute to kindergarten achievement

This study examined the contribution of executive function (EF) and multiple aspects of fine motor skills to achievement on 6 standardized assessments in a sample of middle-socioeconomic status kindergarteners. Three- and 4-year-olds' (n=213) fine and gross motor skills were assessed in a home visit before kindergarten, EF was measured at fall of kindergarten, and Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Academic Achievement were administered at fall and spring. Correlations indicated that EF and fine motor skills appeared distinct. Further, controlling for background variables, higher levels of both EF and fine motor skills, specifically design copy, predicted higher achievement on multiple subtests at kindergarten entry, as well as improvement from fall to spring. Implications for research on school readiness are discussed.     

Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten

This study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in one hundred and forty-one 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes. Measures of effortful control, false belief understanding, and the inhibitory control and attention-shifting aspects of executive function in preschool were related to measures of math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Results indicated that the various aspects of child self-regulation accounted for unique variance in the academic outcomes independent of general intelligence and that the inhibitory control aspect of executive function was a prominent correlate of both early math and reading ability. Findings suggest that curricula designed to improve self-regulation skills as well as enhance early academic abilities may be most effective in helping children succeed in school.     

Process of change during social skills training with preadolescents and its relation to treatment outcome

Videotaped excerpts of treatment sessions from a recent intervention study were examined to explore the changes occurring during social skills training and their relation to treatment outcome. 27 unpopular preadolescents who showed few conversational skills during pretreatment observations engaged in cooperative activities with 2 socially accepted classmates for 10 half-hour sessions. Half of these triads received coaching in conversational skills, while the others received nonspecific adult support during these activities. The quality of social interactions among triad members was evaluated during the sixth and tenth sessions. Children who received social skills training displayed more conversational skills and received more positive peer support during treatment than children who did not receive coaching. Coached children increased skill performance over time while noncoached children did not change. Furthermore, both conversational skills displayed and positive peer responses received during treatment sessions were positively related to treatment outcome.     

The relation of conceptual tempo to aggression and its control.

The relationship of conceptual tempo to fantasy and overt aggression and its control was examined in order to test the generalizability of this cognitive style to domains of social and personality functioning. Fifth-grade boys and girls were administered the Matching Familiar Figures Test and a projective measure of fantasy aggression and its control and were rated sociometrically by peers and teachers on physical, verbal, and indirect forms of overt aggression. While reflective and impulsive children did not differ in degree of fantasy aggression expressed, impulsive children, especially boys, were found to exercise less control over their aggressive thoughts than the other 3 conceptual tempo groups. Impulsive and slow-inaccurate children were also more overtly aggressive, especially in comparison with fast-accurates. In addition, fantasy aggression predicted overt aggression in impulsives but not in reflectives. This study presents new evidence that conceptual tempo relates to areas beyond problem solving involving the child's social-emotional makeup.     

独立学院如何培养应用型韩国语人才的认识与思考

独立学院传统的韩语人才培养模式重视书本理论与课堂教授,忽视了技能技术应用与课外实践。因此培养出来的学生只具有基本语言能力而缺乏实际技能,在就业市场上很难占得优势。独立学院韩语专业要办出特色,就一定要做好语言、技能、素质相结合的综合教育,以提高学生的综合竞争力,满足市场对韩国语人才的需求。     

Longitudinal contributions of executive functioning and visual-spatial skills to mathematics learning in young Chinese children

One hundred sixty-five Hong Kong Chinese children were administered measures of early mathematics, visual-spatial skills, and executive functioning (working memory, inhibition, shifting, updating) once in kindergarten (mean age?=?62.80 months, SD?=?3.74) and again in first grade (mean age?=?77.25 months, SD?=?4.60). In kindergarten, visual-spatial skills, inhibition, shifting, and working memory were all uniquely associated with concurrent mathematics performance; in first grade, only working memory and visual-spatial skills were significantly related to concurrent mathematics abilities. Furthermore, working memory and visual-spatial skills in kindergarten predicted 19% of the variance in children’s mathematics performance in first grade, beyond the autoregressive effects of mathematics performance in kindergarten as well as demographic variables. Findings highlight the importance of working memory and visual-spatial skills for young Chinese children in mastering mathematics.     

Reading minds: the relation between children's mental state knowledge and their metaknowledge about reading

The relation between children's mental state knowledge and metaknowledge about reading was examined in 2 studies. In Study 1, 196 children (mean age = 9 years) were tested for verbal ability (VA), metaknowledge about reading, and mental state words in a story task. In Study 2, the results of Study 1 were extended by using a cross-lagged design and by investigating older children (N = 71, mean ages = 10 years at Time 1 and 11 years at Time 2) for mental state knowledge, metaknowledge about reading, and VA. Results showed a significant relation between early cognitive (but not emotion) mental state knowledge and later metaknowledge about reading, controlling for VA. Results suggest close links between different aspects of children's knowledge about the mind.     

Stepping stones to others' minds: maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months

This continuation of a previous study (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006) examined the longitudinal relation between maternal mental state talk to 15- and 24-month-olds and their later mental state language and emotion understanding (N= 74). The previous study found that maternal talk about the child's desires to 15-month-old children uniquely predicted children's mental state language and emotion task performance at 24 months. In the present study, at 24 months of age, mothers' reference to others' thoughts and knowledge was the most consistent predictor of children's later mental state language at 33 months. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development provides a framework within which maternal talk, first, about the child's desires and then about others' thoughts and knowledge scaffolds children's social understanding.     

Working memory load and automaticity in relation to mental multiplication

The authors’ aim was to examine the relations among mental multiplication, working memory load (WML), and automaticity by alternating the difficulty level of task characteristics. In Experiment 1, involving 30 fifth-grade students with mixed abilities, a 2 (WML) × 2 (automaticity) design was utilized. In Experiment 2, involving 21 high-achieving mathematics learners and 21 low-achieving mathematics learners in Grade 4, a 2 (WML) × 2 (automaticity) × 2 (achievement) design was utilized. Regardless of level of automaticity, individuals under low-WML conditions performed more accurately and faster. Regardless of level of WML, individuals under high automaticity conditions performed more accurately and faster. Group difference was significant. The simple effect of WML was bigger under the conditions with low automaticity, in comparison to the conditions with high automaticity. Alternating difficulty level simultaneously in 2 dimensions of testing conditions posed an amplified impact on the low-achieving group.     

Promoting classroom adjustment and social skills for students with mental retardation within an experimental and control group design

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the “I Found a Solution” computer‐assisted social skills intervention program on students with mild mental retardation. Teachers randomly divided students from two Israeli special schools (58 males, 29 females; aged 10.6 to 17.11 years) into an experimental and a control group. Teachers trained the experimental group using a social skills package including computerized social conflict scenarios and adventure games, group discussions, and homework tasks. Within the same time frame, teachers trained the control group to use various academic computer software programs. Following the intervention process, the research team collected information on students' self‐reported social skills and teachers' ratings of the students' adaptive classroom behavior. The experimental group performed significantly better than controls on posttest criteria. Teachers rated trained students as demonstrating better task orientation and less aggression and behavior difficulties. On subjective self‐reports, trained students reported more cooperation and assertion than the control group, but self‐control and empathy measures did not differentiate between groups. The use of a naturalistic mini‐environment for experimenting and rehearsing effective social strategies appears promising but requires further exploration.     

Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding

This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15-24-month-olds. At both time points, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental and nonmental state vocabulary levels were obtained via parental report. The results demonstrated that mother use of desire language with 15-month-old children uniquely predicted a child's later mental state language and emotion task performance, even after accounting for potentially confounding variables. In addition, mothers' tendency to refer to the child's over others' desires was the more consistent correlate of mental state language and emotion understanding.     

Working memory resources in children: stability and relation to subsequent academic skills

This study aimed to investigate the extent to which WM measured in kindergarten predicts WM measured in second grade (stability of individual WM progress) and the extent to which WM measured at kindergarten predicts academic performance at second grade (N?=?94). The results showed that WM skills significantly increase during the time span from Finnish kindergarten to second grade. Verbal (VWM) and visuospatial WM (VSWM) resources seem to develop quite independently, whereas individual progress showed some stability. WM resources measured just before the start of formal school predicted later academic performance and VWM acted as more powerful predictor than VSWM resources. The results have two important educational implications: first, an individual or group-based intervention designed to enhance children’s WM skills would be most important even before the start of school, and second, poor WM skills should be addressed when planning the learning environment beginning in kindergarten.     

The foundation of literacy skills in Korean: the relationship between letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness and their relative contribution to literacy skills

This study examined the relative contribution of letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness to literacy skills and the relationship between letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness, using data from Korean-speaking preschoolers. The results revealed that although both letter-name knowledge and phonological awareness made unique contributions to literacy skills (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and spelling), letter-name knowledge played a more important role than phonological awareness in literacy acquisition in Korean. Letter-name knowledge explained appreciably greater amount of variance and had larger effect sizes in literacy skills. Furthermore, children with greater syllable, body (e.g., segmenting cat into ca-t), and phoneme awareness had higher levels of letter-name knowledge. In particular, children’s syllable awareness and body awareness were positively associated with their letter-name knowledge, even after controlling for children’s phoneme awareness. These results suggest that Korean children’s awareness of larger phonological units (i.e., syllable and body) in addition to phoneme awareness may mediate the relationship between letter-name knowledge and literacy acquisition in Korean, in contrast with previous findings in English that have demonstrated a positive relationship only between phoneme awareness and letter-name knowledge, and the hypothesis that phoneme awareness mediates the relationship between letter-name knowledge and literacy acquisition.     

Compulsive-like behavior in individuals with Down syndrome: its relation to mental age level, adaptive and maladaptive behavior

This study examined the nature of repetitive, ritualistic, and compulsive-like behaviors in 50 typically developing children and 50 individuals with Down syndrome (DS), matched on mental age (MA; M = 59.72 months). Parents reported on their children's compulsive-like behaviors-including ritualistic habits-and perfectionistic behaviors, as well as their children's adaptive and maladaptive behaviors. Results indicated that children with DS show similar MA-related changes in compulsive-like behaviors compared to the MA-matched comparison group. Younger children (both typical and DS) exhibited significantly more compulsive-like behaviors than older children. In general, children with and without DS did not differ from each other in terms of the number of compulsive-like behaviors they engaged in, although participants with DS engaged in more frequent, more intense repetitive behaviors. Compulsive-like behaviors were differentially related to adaptive and maladaptive behaviors across the MA and mental retardation groups. The results extend the "similar sequence" model of development to the construct of compulsive-like behaviors, and also suggest that some repetitive behaviors may be among the behavioral phenotype of individuals with DS.     

Age and language skills of deaf children in relation to theory of mind development

Using four traditional false-belief tasks, I investigated deaf children's age and expressive language skills in relation to their theory of mind development. The children's parents who signed reported on their own knowledge of a mental sign vocabulary. The results indicate age of the child to be strongly related to theory of mind development. Deaf children demonstrated an ability to pass the theory of mind assessment battery between the ages of 7 and 8 years, on average. In comparison, hearing children have consistently demonstrated the ability to perform such tasks between the ages of 4 and 5 years. Therefore, the results indicate deaf children are delayed by approximately 3 years in this cognitive developmental milestone. Expressive language skills of the children and sign language skills of the parents who signed were not found to be significantly related to the children's theory of mind development.     

Early adolescents' and their parents' mental imagery in relation to perceived reading competence

This cross‐sectional survey study examined the relation between mental imagery (i.e., seeing images of a story ‘in the mind's eye’) and perceived self‐competence in reading. The study was conducted with a group of seventh‐grade to ninth‐grade students in the prevocational educational track of secondary schools in the Netherlands and their parents. Results showed a moderate relation between mental imagery and self‐competence beliefs, also after controlling for the quality of students' home literacy environment. Examination of gender differences revealed that girls outperformed boys in self‐competence beliefs. Furthermore, boys perceived themselves as better readers when their parents had higher mental imagery skills. No direct relation was found between parents' and adolescents' mental imagery skills. These findings imply that parents and teachers may need to be made aware of the importance of mental imagery strategies as it may enhance the reading experiences of boys as well as girls.