Children''s Understanding of Cognitive Cuing: How to Manipulate Cues to Fool a Competitor

4-6-year-old children's understanding of cognitive cuing was studied in 2 experiments using a strategic interaction paradigm. Children could fool a competitor by hiding targets in locations that were labeled with semantically weakly associated cues and help a cooperative partner by hiding them in semantically highly associated locations. Very few 4-year-olds, half the 5-year-olds, and almost all 6-years-olds appropriately chose semantically highly vs. weakly associated hiding places to make the targets easy vs. difficult to find. The second experiment showed that 4-year-olds did not strategically manipulate cues as sources of information, although they themselves proficiently used them as such in a search task. These findings are discussed with regard to research on children's developing understanding of origins of knowledge and belief and with regard to recent claims that young preschoolers possess a metacognitive understanding of cognitive cuing.     

Very young children's memory for the location of objects in a large-scale environment

2 experiments were carried out to investigate 18- to 30-month-old children's memory for the location of a hidden object. In the first experiment, young children were observed in 2 different memory-for-location tasks, both conducted in their own homes. In 1, a toy was hidden in a natural location, and in the other it was hidden in one of a set of boxes with picture cues on top of them. Memory performance was significantly better when the toy was hidden within the natural environment. The effect of different types of hiding locations was examined further in the second experiment. No age differences were found when an object was hidden either in the natural environment or in 1 of a set of unmarked boxes (although performance was better in the former condition). However, in the third condition the older subjects (24-30 months) effectively used a landmark cue (a nearby piece of furniture) to help them remember in which plain box a toy had been hidden, but the young subjects (18-22 months) did not profit from such potential cues. The results, as well as some previous research with delayed-response tasks, were interpreted as reflecting developmental changes in very young children's ability to exploit available cues. The pattern of results suggested the possibility that 2-year-old children are capable of a simple form of mnemonic strategy, actively associating an available cue with the information to be remembered.     

The effect of superfluous information on children's solution of story arithmetic problems

Forty 6- to 7-year-old children were tested with single-step, addition/subtraction story problems with and without superfluous numerical information. Half of the children were allowed to find out the solution using objects and half were given pen and paper. Fewer problems with superfluous information than those without such information were solved accurately. Less than half of the problems were attempted with spontaneous modelling with objects and rarely were pen and paper used. In many cases, the use of objects could not facilitate solution of problems with superfluous information thus suggesting that in these cases children's failure to solve the problems could not be explained just by an increase in the cognitive demand for selective attention to, and memory of, the relevant information.     

3～5岁儿童母亲关于儿童自主观念的研究

自主性对儿童个性和社会性的发展至关重要,3~5岁是儿童自主性发展的重要时期,母亲观念对儿童自主性的发展影响很大。本研究以3~5岁儿童的母亲为研究对象,采用开放式问卷对193名母亲初测,在此基础上形成封闭式问卷对461名母亲再测。问卷调查结果表明,2/3的母亲重视儿童自主性的培养;2/3的母亲对儿童自主性内涵的理解不全面;母亲关于幼儿自主范畴的观念呈现领域差异,通常倾向于在健康、安全、道德与礼貌领域对孩子进行规范,而在个人领域让孩子拥有较多的自主权。     

Putting the "Noun Bias" in Context: A Comparison of English and Mandarin

Recently, researchers have been debating whether children exhibit a universal "noun bias" when learning a first language. The present study compares the proportions of nouns and verbs in the early vocabularies of 24 English- and 24 Mandarin-speaking toddlers ( M age = 20 months) and their mothers. Three different methods were used to measure the proportion of noun types, relative to verb types: controlled observations in three contexts (book reading, mechanical toy play, regular toy play), identical across languages; a vocabulary checklist (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory); and mothers' reporting of their children's "first words." Across all measures, Mandarin-speaking children were found to have relatively fewer nouns and more verbs than English-speaking children. However, context itself played an important role in the proportions of nouns found in children's vocabularies, such that, regardless of the language spoken, children's vocabularies appeared dominated by nouns when they were engaged in book reading, but not when they were playing with toys. Mothers' speech to children showed the same language differences (relatively more verbs in Mandarin), although both Mandarin- and English-speaking mothers produced relatively more verbs than their children. In sum, whether or not language-learning toddlers demonstrate a "noun bias" depends on a variety of factors, including the methods by which their vocabularies are sampled and the contexts in which observations occur.     

Developmental relations between notational counting and number conservation.

The 2 studies of this report sought to determine the developmental relationship between the child's use of counting as a notational symbol system to extract, compare, and reproduce numerical information and the development of number conservation. In study 1, children between 4 and 6 years of age were administered notational-counting and number-conservation tasks. Analysis of children's profiles across tasks indicated that children develop quantitative counting strategies (but do not necessarily count accurately) before they develop number-conservation concepts. In study 2, the generality of this sequence was tested. A population of 7- to 9-year-old "learning-disabled" children who reportedly were developing atypical counting skills were administered notational-counting and number-conservation tasks. All of these children who conserved number also used quantitative counting strategies, although some of these children frequently counted arrays inaccurately. The significance of these findings is discussed with respect to existing models of counting/number-conservation relations, and an alternative formulation is suggested based upon the new findings.     

"My family and friends": six- to twelve-year-old children's perceptions of social support

A psychometrically sound instrument is essential for the study of children's subjective impressions about social support. To evaluate such an instrument, 249 children, 6-12 years old, from a population-based sample of black and white families (50% single mothers, 50% two parents) were studied. The newly developed instrument, "My Family and Friends," consists of 12 dialogues, based on Vygotskian principles, and yields information about (a) children's perceptions of the availability of individuals in their networks to provide different types of social support and (b) their satisfaction with the help they receive. Children collaborate in interactive dialogues and manipulate personalized props. Collectively, the data indicate that subjective impressions about social support can be measured in a reliable and valid manner from early childhood through adolescence, and that children understand and care about the quality and the differentiation of support (i.e., emotional, informational, instrumental, and companionship) within their social support networks. Further, children report significant variations in social support when undergoing major family upheaval.     

Uncovering Young Children''s Psychological Selves: Individual and Developmental Differences

3 major goals were addressed: (1) to examine whether 3 1/2-7 1/2-year-old children have consistent and meaningful concepts that reflect psychological self-understanding, (2) to uncover individual differences in young children's self-concepts, and (3) to determine whether any observed differences are stable over time. A new method was developed for assessing young children's self-concepts. 180 children between 3 and 8 years of age were presented with pairs of statements representing the high and low end points of 10 psychological dimensions. For example, the statements "It's not fun to scare people" and "It's fun to scare people" represent the low and high ends of the psychological dimension of aggression. Children were then asked to pick the statement that best described themselves. The dimensional scores were factor analyzed and higher-order factor scales were constructed. These factor scales were found to be internally consistent and psychologically meaningful in each age group, indicating that even young children have psychological concepts of themselves. Moreover, substantial individual differences were demonstrated on the scales even among the youngest children. Finally, these differences were found to be moderately stable over a 1-month test-retest.     

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.     

Representation and Reasoning in Early Numerical Development: Counting, Conservation, and Comparisons between Sets

The first experiment examined the developmental relation between counting and number conservation in the 3–6-year-old age range. Results indicated extended developments in both children's counting and their conservation reasoning, and a close relation between the 2. Only the oldest children gave evidence of conserving, and they also differentiated appropriately between conservation and control problems in their use of counting. The second and third experiments extended the finding that children below 6 years of age do not conserve to conditions in which counting was precluded. These results provide evidence of protracted developments in young children's understanding of relational aspects of number.     

Where Theories of Mind Meet Magic: The Development of Children's Beliefs about Wishing

In two studies, we probed children's beliefs about wishing. In Study 1, we gathered initial data on 50 3- to 6-year-old children's concepts of wishing and beliefs about its efficacy, with both a semistructured interview and a variety of tasks. Results revealed considerable knowledge about wishing in young children, along with an age-related decrease in beliefs about its efficacy. Parents were not found to encourage differently the beliefs of children at different ages, nor were they found to begin actively discouraging such beliefs at any particular age. A moderate relation was found between environmental supports for wishing and children's beliefs in its efficacy. In Study 2, we continued to probe these issues and also address the nature of the broader conceptual context in which children situate their beliefs about wishing. Participants were 92 3- to 6-year-old children. Results of this study suggest that children may reconcile beliefs in the efficacy of wishing with knowledge about everyday mental-physical relations by situating these beliefs more within their emerging beliefs about magic than within their theories of mind.     

"炳人识字法"在汉语语文教学中的运用及意义

“炳人识字法”是将国家颁布的2500个常用字1、000个次常用字和420个非常用字,不重复地编成七言句式的口诀。“炳人识字法”在语文教学识字中可使3至6岁的儿童,每天用半小时,10个月内即可轻松地掌握2940个汉字,远远超过了小学生6年级应识2000多字的识字量。“炳人识字法”是对我国传统的“集中识字”的继承和创新,在汉语语文的教育上有重要的的意义。     

Social Categorization and the Formation of Intergroup Attitudes in Children

The study was designed to test several hypotheses derived from intergroup theory concerning the effects of the presence of a novel social category on the formation of intergroup attitudes. Elementary school children (N = 61; aged 6–9) were given measures of classification skill and self-esteem and assigned to 1 of 3 types of school classrooms in which teachers made: (1) functional use of "blue" and "yellow" groups assigned on the basis of a biological attribute, (2) functional use of "blue" and "yellow" groups assigned on the basis of a random drawing, or (3) no explicit groups (despite the presence of blue and yellow groups). After 4 weeks, children completed measures of intergroup attitudes and behavior. As predicted, the functional use of color groups affected children's attitudes toward group members, with children showing consistent biases favoring their own group. Children with higher levels of self-esteem showed higher levels of intergroup stereotyping.     

The Mind's "I": Children's Conception of the Mind as an Active Agent

1 hypothesis about children's developing conception of the mind is that preschoolers are limited to an understanding that persons have internal, mental contents like thoughts and beliefs, whereas older children and adults conceive of the mind itself as an independent, active structure or processor. Adults' conception of the mind in this independent active fashion seems evident in their use of personified mental metaphor (e.g., "My mind tricked me"). 3 studies examined the development and consolidation of this active, personified view. Study 1 provided an analysis of natural language data regarding 1 child's uses of vision words such as see and look from age 2 1/2 to 8 years. We examined the child's use of such words to refer literally to perception (e.g., "I see the TV") and also to refer nonliterally to active mental processes such as comprehension and inference (e.g., "I see what you mean"). Studies 2 and 3 examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' comprehension and production of mental metaphors. In a metaphor comprehension task, we asked children to interpret personified metaphoric statements about the mind (e.g., "My mind wandered") and 3 comparison domains, mechanics (e.g., "The car is dead"), nature (e.g., "The wind is howling"), and emotion (e.g., "Her heart was smiling"). In an explanation task, we asked children to explain the processes underlying the making of both instant photos and mental images. The findings reveal a developing ability to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provide considerable evidence about children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an independent entity deserving reference and conceptualization in its own right.     

The Inheritability of Identity: Children's Understanding of the Cultural Biology of Race

4 experiments explored adult and grade school children's beliefs about inheritability of identity, particularly the "one-drop rule" that defines children of mixed-race parents as belonging to the racial category of the minority parent. In Study 1, 8- and 12-year-olds ( N = 32) and adults ( N = 43) were asked the category membership of mixed-race children and the degree to which they resembled each parent. Study 2 investigated whether the same-aged children ( N = 36) and adults ( N = 18) expected mixed-race children to have white, black, or intermediate features. Study 3 explored children's ( N = 46) expectations about the inheritability of the same properties in animals. Older children, like adults, were found to believe that mixed-race children have black racial features. Adults additionally believe that such children inherit the categorical identity of the minority parent. Study 4 repeated the same tasks with black and white children ( N = 39) attending an integrated school. Unlike children attending a predominantly white school, children in the integrated school (regardless of race) expect mixed-race children to have intermediate racial features.     

Consequences of "minimal" group affiliations in children

Three experiments (total N=140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group or out-group children. Despite an absence of information regarding the relative status of groups or any competitive context, in-group preferences were observed on explicit and implicit measures of attitude and resource allocation (Experiment 1), behavioral attribution, and expectations of reciprocity, with preferences persisting when groups were not described via a noun label (Experiment 2). In addition, children systematically distorted incoming information by preferentially encoding positive information about in-group members (Experiment 3). Implications for the developmental origins of intergroup bias are discussed.     

Young Children's Understanding of Fictional versus Epistemic Mental Representations: Imagination and Belief

In 2 studies, 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to reason about the relation between mental representations and reality was examined. In the first study, children received parallel false belief and "false" imagination tasks. Results revealed that children performed better on imagination tasks than on belief tasks. The second study demonstrated that, when various alternative explanations for better performance on the imagination task were controlled for, children still performed significantly better when reasoning about another person's imagination than when reasoning about another person's belief. These findings suggest that children's understanding that mental representations can differ from reality may emerge first with respect to representations that do not purport to represent reality truthfully.     

幼儿园剪纸作品“新”起来

培养幼儿的本领不能忽视手指的灵活性,幼儿教师可以把剪纸文化引入幼儿教育。要为幼儿创设良好的剪纸环境,发展幼儿的动手操作能力,挖掘幼儿的创新能力,充分发挥剪纸作品的教育功能,让剪纸作品“动”起来、“站”起来、“玩”起来,从而让幼儿眼中的剪纸作品“新”起来。     

Form-Function Correspondences in Children's Inference

Perceptual similarity among concept members has been viewed as inadequate to motivate concept formation. Instead, it has been argued that intuitive beliefs about the world offer more structured motivation for concepts. Our research explores children's beliefs about the relations between perceptually based similarity among things and their predicted behaviors. We focus on form-function correspondences as fundamental components of very young children's belief systems. Groups of 2- and 4-year-old children were asked to choose which of 2 line-drawn animals evidenced a particular "function," a special behavior. Even the youngest children showed sensitivity to form-function correspondences by selecting the animal whose form afforded the particular function. A second study investigated how form-function correspondences affect the relative influences of perceptual similarity and shared labels over patterns of children's inference. Perceptual similarity, if "motivated" by intuitive beliefs about correspondences between form and function, was found to be sufficient basis for inference and a more robust basis than shared labels when children attributed meaningful functions to novel animal forms.