Remembering and understanding: the effects of changes in underlying knowledge on children's recollections

This study was designed to explore the influence of changes in children's knowledge on earlier constructed memories. Kindergartners' (N = 102) recall of a series of stories was examined as a function of their interpersonal knowledge about the main story character. Children's knowledge about the protagonist was manipulated prior to presentation of the stories, and the effects of their impressions on story recall were examined. A change in some of the children's impressions was then promoted, and the impact of this second knowledge manipulation on recall of previously heard stories was assessed. The results indicated that children's story recall was affected by their prior impressions. Moreover, following the second knowledge manipulation, children revised their story reports in ways that were consistent with their newly acquired impressions, which suggests that they had reconstructed their memories of previously heard stories. These findings provide evidence for both prospective and retrospective effects of knowledge on memory.     

Young children's understanding of counting and cardinality

4-year-old's knowledge of counting and cardinality--the last count word reached represents the numerosity of the set--was tested in 2 experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the nature of early cardinality responses by presenting different forms of the cardinality question before, after, and before and after the child counted. Both type and time of question has large effects. Experiment 2 examined whether children of this age could recognize errors in 4 counting procedures and whether they would reject a cardinality response arrived at through a mistaken counting procedure. The children were very good at recognizing a standard counting procedure as correct. They had only limited success at treating procedures that violated the stable order of count words or violated the one-one correspondence between count word and object as incorrect. They lacked an understanding of the order irrelevance in that they judged valid, nonstandard counting orders as incorrect. The children did not seem to link their evaluation of a cardinality response with their evaluation of the counting procedure used to reach that response. The results do not indicate that counting principles initially govern the child's acquisition of counting knowledge. They are consistent with the suggestion that early cardinality responses are last-word responses.     

Deaf children's understanding of beliefs and desires

Twenty-two children (5-12 year old) who were profoundly, prelingually deaf were given two tests designed to tap their 'theory of mind', that is, their ability to attribute independent mental states to other people. The tests were versions of Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's Sally-Anne task and of Baron-Cohen's breakfast task. Seventy percent of the children were successful on all questions requiring belief attribution, a considerably and significantly larger percentage than the 29% obtained by Peterson and Siegal for a similar sample, though it is still lower than would be expected on the basis on chronological age. Children were universally successful on questions requiring the attribution of desire. We discuss implications of the findings.     

Young children's understanding of random phenomena

2 experiments on the development of the understanding of random phenomena are reported. Of interest was whether children understand the characteristic uncertainty in the physical nature of random phenomena as well as the unpredictability of outcomes. Children were asked, for both a random and a determined phenomenon, whether they knew what its next outcome would be and why. In Experiment 1, 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds correctly differentiated their responses to the question of outcome predictability; the 2 older groups also mentioned appropriate characteristics of the random mechanism in explaining why they did not know what its outcome would be. Although 3-year-olds did not differentiate the random and determined phenomena, neither did they treat both phenomena as predictable. This latter result is inconsistent with Piaget and Inhelder's characterization of an early stage of development. Experiment 2 was designed to control for the possibility that children in Experiment 1 learned how to respond on the basis of pretest experience with the 2 different phenomena. 5- and 7-year-olds performed at a comparable level to the same-aged children in Experiment 1. Results suggest an earlier understanding of random phenomena than previously has been reported and support results in the literature indicating an early understanding of causality.     

Exploring children's understanding of death concepts

This study is an investigation of the effects of death education on children and their understanding of death. The participants of this study were eighty 5- and 6-year-olds who were enrolled in a suburban kindergarten in Korea. To examine the level of children's understanding of death, researchers interviewed each child in both the control and experimental groups. After the interview, researchers provided an intervention (11 educational activities) to the experimental group. No educational intervention was provided to the control group. Researchers re-interviewed children in both groups after the treatment. The overall mean score of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group on all five categories of the death concept: causality, old age, irreversibility, finality, and inevitability. Implications regarding how death education can be approached in early childhood settings are also discussed.     

The development of children's understanding of intensive quantities

Researchers have been aware for some time of the differences between extensive and intensive quantities but the significance of these differences has not been recognized in mathematics curricula. In England children are provided with many opportunities in their first few years in school to manipulate, measure and reason about extensive quantities but have virtually no opportunity to do the same with intensive quantities. This paper contrasts extensive and intensive quantities and describes the obstacles to primary school children's understanding of intensive quantities: the need to consider two variables simultaneously and the difficulty of understanding inverse relations between variables. Study 1 shows that children have considerable difficulty in using inverse relations reasoning. Study 2 shows that this form of reasoning is more difficult in the context of intensive than extensive quantities problems. Implications for education are considered and examples of experiences with intensive quantities that could provided in school are presented.     

American and Chinese children's understanding of basic relational concepts in directions

Two hundred first‐ and second‐grade Chinese children's knowledge of basic relational concepts in following directions was assessed on the Applications Booklet of the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts‐Revised (BTBC‐R, 1986). Chinese children's performance was then compared with that of the standardization sample of the BTBC‐R. Results indicated that both the American and Chinese children made significant improvements between the end of first and second grades, yet both American and Chinese children experienced difficulties on items such as following multiple‐step directions. American children, but not Chinese children, had difficulties following directions involving the concepts of right and left in combination with other relational concepts, the quantity concept of equal, and comparative and superlative features such as farther and farthest. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 261–272, 2004.     

Societal differences and their influences on children's mathematics understanding

England and Taiwan are two societies in which the languages, the rationales of education, the teaching orientations and the learning motivations in school are very different. Would such differences influence children's mathematical understanding? This problem will be my main concern in this paper.     

Young children's understanding of perception, desire, and emotion

Very young children seem to know that people experience several mental states: desires, perceptions, emotions. In three studies, we investigated 2- and young 3-year-olds' judgments and communications about how these states connect together in people's lives and minds. Two experimental studies with 56 participants demonstrated young children's understanding of at least one set of connections: In appropriate circumstances, a person's perception of desirable or undesirable objects leads to related emotional experiences. A complementary investigation of four young children's everyday conversations demonstrated their awareness of and expression of several additional connections between people's desires, perceptions, and emotions.     

Almost thinking counterfactually: children's understanding of close counterfactuals

Saying something "almost happened" indicates that one is considering a close counterfactual world. Previous evidence suggested that children start to consider these close counterfactuals at around 2 years of age (P. L. Harris, 1997), substantially earlier than they pass other tests of counterfactual thinking. However, this success appears to result from false positives. In Experiment 1 (N = 41), 3- and 4-year-olds could identify a character who almost completed an action when the comparison did not complete it. However, in Experiments 1 and 2 (N = 98), children performed poorly when the comparison character completed the action. In Experiment 3 (N = 28), 5- and 6-year-olds consistently passed the task, indicating that they made appropriate counterfactual interpretations of the "almost" statements. This understanding of close counterfactuals proved more difficult than standard counterfactuals.     

Sociocultural input facilitates children's developing understanding of extraordinary minds

Three- to 5-year-old (N = 61) religiously schooled preschoolers received theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks about the mental states of ordinary humans and agents with exceptional perceptual or mental capacities. Consistent with an anthropomorphism hypothesis, children beginning to appreciate limitations of human minds (e.g., ignorance) attributed those limits to God. Only 5-year-olds differentiated between humans' fallible minds and God's less fallible mind. Unlike secularly schooled children, religiously schooled 4-year-olds did appreciate another agent's less fallible mental abilities when instructed and reminded about those abilities. Among children who understood ordinary humans' mental fallibilities, knowledge of God predicted attributions of correct epistemic states to extraordinary agents. Results suggest that, at a certain point in ToM development, sociocultural input can facilitate an appreciation for extraordinary minds.     

Mother-child and father-child mutually responsive orientation in the first 2 years and children's outcomes at preschool age: mechanisms of influence.

Mechanisms accounting for the effects of mutually responsive orientation (MRO) at 7, 15, and 25 months in 102 mother-child and father-child dyads on child internalization and self-regulation at 52 months were examined. Two mediators at 38 months were tested: parental power assertion and child self-representation. For mother-child relationships, the causal pathway involving power assertion was supported for both outcomes. Diminished power assertion fully mediated beneficial effect of mother-child MRO on internalization and partially mediated its effect on self-regulation. For father-child relationships, MRO predicted self-regulation, but the mediational paths were unsupported. Paternal power assertion correlated negatively with both outcomes but was not a mediator. Although MRO with both parents correlated with child self-representation, and it correlated with self-regulation, this mediational path was unsupported.     

The development of children's understanding of cyclic aspects of time

Developmental psychological approaches to the study of time have fallen into 3 categories: studies of time perception; studies of logical, reconstructive abilities; and studies of the understanding of conventional time systems. The present work examines problems spanning the latter 2 categories--the development of children's understanding of temporal cycles and the relationship between cyclic concepts and cognitive development. 62 children, ranging in age from 4 to 10 years, were administered Piagetian tests of classification and seriation and a variety of specially designed cyclic tasks. Results show major progress in the representation of cyclic order and recurrence during the age period examined. For a variety of particular cycles, order responses were shown before continuity responses. The ability to produce a correct order is related to seriation performance but not classification performance when the variance attributable to age is partialed out. Continuity responses appear to be unrelated to performance on either of the Piagetian tasks tested when age is controlled.     

Human affection exchange: III. discriminative parental solicitude in men's affectionate communication with their biological and nonbiological sons

Although several investigations have addressed the nature of communication in men's relationships with their sons, relatively few have focused on positive interaction patterns, such as the exchange of affection, even though affection is of considerable importance to relational maintenance and satisfaction. According to affection exchange theory, affection is such a valuable relational resource because of the contributions it makes to humans’ long‐term viability and reproductive success. As such a resource, it should, thus, be governed by adaptive motivations, among which is the motivation for parents to invest in their children in ways that maximize their long‐term evolutionary success. Using the theory of discriminative parental solicitude, we predicted differences in the amount of affection men communicate to their biological sons, adopted sons, and step‐sons. We tested our predictions in two studies involving a total of 384 males. We discuss implications of the results for explaining the superordinate evolutionary motivations governing affectionate communication.     

Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions: relations to young children's emotional understanding and friendship quality

Mother- and father-reported reactions to children's negative emotions were examined as correlates of emotional understanding (Study 1, N = 55, 5- to 6-year-olds) and friendship quality (Study 2, N = 49, 3- to 5-year-olds). Mothers' and fathers' supportive reactions together contributed to greater child-friend coordinated play during a sharing task. Further, when one parent reported low support, greater support by the other parent was related to better understanding of emotions and less intense conflict with friends (for boys only). When one parent reported high support, however, greater support by the other parent was associated with less optimal functioning on these outcomes. Results partially support the notion that children benefit when parents differ in their reactions to children's emotions.     

Developmental changes in children's choices of practice strategies

This study investigated children's choices of deliberate practice strategies. Six-to 11-year-olds (n = 85) were presented with three outwardly similar motor tasks that varied only in the precision of the motor response required to succeed. Children then had the opportunity to practice these tasks before a “test” in which they had to complete all three tasks in the fastest overall time. While children of all ages spent relatively more time practicing the hardest task, only 10- and 11-year-olds scored more successes on the hardest task than the other tasks during the initial practice period. After verbal instruction, however, children of all ages scored more successes on the hardest task during practice, and younger children became more likely to persevere with the hardest task rather than switching tasks after a success. Children's practice choices may vary as a function of age and verbal instruction.     

Taking decisions seriously: young children's understanding of conventional truth

Research suggests that young children may see a direct and one-way connection between facts about the world and epistemic mental states (e.g., belief). Conventions represent instances of active constructions of the mind that change facts about the world. As such, a mature understanding of convention would seem to present a strong challenge to children's simplified notions of epistemic relations. Three experiments assessed young children's abilities to track behavioral, representational, and truth aspects of conventions. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 30) recognized that conventional stipulations would change people's behaviors. However, participants generally failed to understand how stipulations might affect representations. In Experiment 2, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children (N = 53) were asked to reason about the truth values of statements about pretenses and conventions. The two younger groups of children often confused the two types of states, whereas older children consistently judged that conventions, but not pretenses, changed reality. In Experiment 3, the same 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 42) participated in tasks assessing their understanding of representational diversity (e.g., false belief). In general, children's performance on false-belief and "false-convention" tasks did not differ, which suggests that conventions were understood as involving truth claims (as akin to beliefs about physical reality). Children's difficulties with the idea of conventional truth seems consistent with current accounts of developing theories of mind.     

Creativity in events and practices: a lens for understanding children's multimodal texts

This article argues that it is possible to look at children's texts in relation to the lens of literacy events and practices from the New Literacy Studies, and apply this perspective to an understanding of creativity. Teachers can then use the possibilities within a text to ask children different kinds of questions. Drawing on a 2‐year ethnographic study of a partnership between a group of artists and teachers in an Infants School in England, and their impact on children's text‐making, the paper seeks to understand the ways in which such a text can be identified as creative. A detailed analysis of one child's text is offered as evidence of this argument. This account is set within a project to map children's play in a Foundation classroom.