Judicious imitation: children differentially imitate deterministically and probabilistically effective actions

Three studies look at whether the assumption of causal determinism (the assumption that all else being equal, causes generate effects deterministically) affects children's imitation of modeled actions. These studies show even when the frequency of an effect is matched, both preschoolers (N = 60; M = 56 months) and toddlers (N = 48; M = 18 months) imitate actions more faithfully when modeled actions are deterministically rather than probabilistically effective. A third study suggests that preschoolers' (N = 32; M = 58 months) imitation is affected not just by whether the agent's goal is satisfied but also by whether the action is a reliable means to the goal. Children's tendency to generate variable responses to probabilistically effective modeled actions could support causal learning.     

Conspecific individual recognition between starlings after toxicant-induced sickness

After feeding in the presence of a cagemate (Group S, n = 16), food-deprived starlings were intubated with the toxicant methiocarb (Group E, n = 8) or its nontoxic carrier, propylene glycol (Group C, n = 8). During the 4 days after intubation, the birds in Groups E and C were presented on 2 days with the Group S bird that was present during gavage (S+ bird) and on the other 2 days with another Group S bird (S? bird). Group E (but not Group C) birds were more agonistic toward S+ birds than S? birds, fed less in their presence, and were less likely to enter and perch in the same cage quadrant with them. A second experiment suggested that such differential behavior was probably not the result of behaviors exhibited by the S+ birds. Few calls were recorded in either experiment. Although acoustic signals might have been involved, we suggest that the starlings might have used visual cues to recognize individual conspecifics that were present during aversion learning.     

Postural,Visual, and Manual Coordination in the Development of Prehension

We investigated the real-time cascade of postural, visual, and manual actions for object prehension in 38 6- to 12-month-old infants (all independent sitters) and eight adults. Participants’ task was to retrieve a target as they spun past it at different speeds on a motorized chair. A head-mounted eye tracker recorded visual actions and video captured postural and manual actions. Prehension played out in a coordinated sequence of postural–visual–manual behaviors starting with turning the head and trunk to bring the toy into view, which in turn instigated the start of the reach. Visually fixating the toy to locate its position guided the hand for toy contact and retrieval. Prehension performance decreased at faster speeds, but quick planning and implementation of actions predicted better performance.     

The representation of items in serial position

Four experiments with rats tested their ability to anticipate serial patterns made from elements of reward magnitudes (14, 7, 3, 1, or 0 food pellets). Anticipation was measured by the running time in a straight alley. Elements arranged in a monotonically descending pattern were more easily anticipated than were the same elements arranged in a nonmonotonic pattern. Better anticipation was also observed when training utilized four trials per day with short interrun intervals (10–15 sec), spent in the startbox of the runway, than when training utilized one trial per day with long interrun intervals (4–5 min), spent in the rat’s home cage. Anticipation of the monotonie sequence was also superior when training consisted of one trial per day with a short interrun interval relative to that observed with four trials per day and a long interrun interval. Following acquisition of anticipation of the monotonie sequence with a short interrun interval, transfer to the same sequence with a long interrun interval resulted in disruption of anticipation. Finally, anticipation of a well-learned monotonie sequence was not disrupted by replacement of individual rewarded elements in the sequence with a 0-pellet element. These experiments indicate that the duration between runs of a trial, but not that between trials or the number of trials per day, is important in the formation of serial expectancies. They also suggest that the rats come to represent the sequence as items in serial position.     

Head-mounted eye tracking: a new method to describe infant looking

Despite hundreds of studies describing infants' visual exploration of experimental stimuli, researchers know little about where infants look during everyday interactions. The current study describes the first method for studying visual behavior during natural interactions in mobile infants. Six 14-month-old infants wore a head-mounted eye-tracker that recorded gaze during free play with mothers. Results revealed that infants' visual exploration is opportunistic and depends on the availability of information and the constraints of infants' own bodies. Looks to mothers' faces were rare following infant-directed utterances but more likely if mothers were sitting at infants' eye level. Gaze toward the destination of infants' hand movements was common during manual actions and crawling, but looks toward obstacles during leg movements were less frequent.     

The development of memory for location: what role do spatial prototypes play?

Two experiments investigated the role of spatial prototypes in estimates of location. In Experiment 1 (N = 144), children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects in an open, square box designed to look like a model house. In two conditions, opaque lines or walls divided the house into four regions, and in the other condition, no boundaries were present. Following learning, the dots marking the locations were removed, and participants attempted to replace the objects. Children and adults overestimated distances between target locations in different regions. Contrary to Huttenlocher, Hedges, and Duncan's hierarchical theory of spatial memory, none of the groups displaced the objects toward the region centers. In Experiment 2 (N = 96), boundaries were removed during testing to determine whether children and adults were more likely to displace objects toward region centers when uncertainty about location increased. Again, all age groups overestimated distances between target objects in different regions. In addition, adults and 11-year-olds in the most salient boundary condition displaced objects toward the region centers. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding how children and adults estimate location.     

Representation of situations involving changes sequence: A didactic interdisciplinary intervention

Our previous research, conducted in various fields, demonstrates the obvious difficulties children encounter when they must achieve, in a collective game situation, coordinated motor actions (Garnier, 1989) or solve additive problems in mathematics involving changes sequence (Bednarz Schmidt, & Dufour-Janvier, 1989b; Poirier & Bednarz. 1991a, b). These investigations show the children’s extreme centration on the states, and a global non anticipation of the situations that lead them to act punctually and sequentially. The didactic intervention that was developed in view of these difficulties, integrating sociomotor and mathematics activity, aims to develop the cognitive processes of decentration and anticipation on the basis of the resolution of these situations. In the pedagogical approach undertaken on 30 grade three children (8–9 years old), the social actions and interactions played a major part in the development of the aimed processes and in the elaboration of the representation of underlying relations to the situations involved (games and problems). A sociomotor examination (collective game) and a written examination in mathematics, carried out before and after the experiment, show, along with the qualitative analysis achieved during the intervention, the evolution of the child jaced with the aimed processes.     

Cues To Readings

In team sports, playing well means choosing the right course of action at the right moment and performing that course of action efficiently and consistently throughout the match. Research on decision making in sports indicates that although experts make more accurate decisions based on earlier occurring information, they tend to have speed, rather than accuracy, context-specific advantage in decision making. In light of the key notion of configuration of play, elements underlying its perception and interpretation and the ensuing anticipation and decision making are discussed. In connection with teachinglearning settings, observation and verbalization are presented as key strategies for eliciting critical thinking and the development of strategic and tactical knowledge. Finally, the authors present a dynamic model exploiting (a) action settings. (b) observation settings, and (c) debate-of-idea settings for the ultimate goal of conshucting strategic and tactical knowledge in team sports.     

Guiding children's behavior: The issue of compliance

Parents and teachers need to be aware of the principles of development in order to guide children appropriately. The process of guidance begins with attempts to baby-proof the environment, such as arranging the nursery in anticipation of the arrival of the infant. During the infant-toddler stage, adults may view their acts of altering the child's physical environment as their responsibility, not connecting such actions to the development of a discipline plan. In fact, the adults are beginning to develop a positive atmosphere so that the child has a healthy environment in which to grow. Sandy Bailey is Program Coordinator for the Montana Resource and Referral Netword, a statewide program based     

The rat’s simultaneous anticipation of remote events and current events can be sustained by event memories alone

After receiving events in a fixed order, A-B-C…, rats, like people, on being provided with A, may anticipate not only B, a current anticipation, but also C, a remote anticipation. In two experiments, we attempted to determine whether rats’ remote anticipations are mediated by item cues (C elicited by A) or by position cues (C directly elicited by Position 3 cues, which generalize to Position 2). In Experiment 1, rats in a runway received two series of three trials, XNY and ZNN, each in irregular order each day. N signified nonreinforcement; X, Y, and Z signified three qualitatively different food reinforcements. The rats manifested a remote anticipation by running faster on Trial 2 in the XNY series than in the ZNN series. Since the series were presented irregularly, Trial 2 performance cannot be explained on a positional basis alone. It can be explained on an item basis, by assuming that the memory of the Trial 1 reinforcer became associated not only with the Trial 2 event, but with the Trial 3 event as well. Thus on Trial 2 the memory of X signaled N and Y, whereas the memory of Z signaled N and N. Experiment 2 produced the same results, regardless of whether the XNY and ZNN series were presented in regular or irregular order. These results indicate that remote anticipations can be mediated by item associations. They offer no evidence that position associations can do the same, but they do not rule out that possibility.     

Connecting goals and actions during reading: the role of illustrations

The ability to integrate information that is separated within a text, such as connecting a character’s action to a goal stated earlier in the text, is a critical factor in narrative comprehension. In the present study, we analyze the ability of 9- and 11-year olds to integrate such information. In addition, we examined the effect of illustrations on integration process by using on-line comprehension measures. Participants read narratives that conveyed a character’s goal early in the text, and an action was described later on that was either consistent or inconsistent with the goal. Narratives were presented either with an illustration that mirrored the situation described in the goal, or without an illustration. The results show that 11-year-olds spent more time on the inconsistent actions than on the consistent actions; in addition, 9-year-olds detected the inconsistency when illustrations were provided. An additional finding was that working memory moderated children’s ability to connect actions and goals. These results suggest that children as young as 9 years form connections between characters’ actions and their goals during text processing, although they need an illustration to keep the goal information activated to detect the inconsistency. Illustrations’ effectiveness was interpreted in terms of extra processing of the characters’ goal.     

Executive functioning and preschoolers' understanding of false beliefs, false photographs, and false signs

Two studies were conducted to investigate the specificity of the relationship between preschoolers' emerging executive functioning skills and false belief understanding. Study 1 ( N =44) showed that 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on an executive functioning task that required selective suppression of actions predicted performance on false belief tasks, but not on false photograph tasks. Study 2 ( N =54) replicated the finding from Study 1 and showed that performance on the executive functioning task also predicted 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on false sign tasks. These findings show that executive functioning is required to reason only about representations that are intended to reflect a true state of affairs. Results are discussed with respect to theories of preschoolers' theory-of-mind development.     

Young children selectively avoid helping people with harmful intentions

Two studies investigated whether young children are selectively prosocial toward others, based on the others' moral behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 54), 3-year-olds watched 1 adult (the actor) harming or helping another adult. Children subsequently helped the harmful actor less often than a third (previously neutral) adult, but helped the helpful and neutral adults equally often. In Study 2 (N = 36), 3-year-olds helped an actor who intended but failed to harm another adult less often than a neutral adult, but helped an accidentally harmful and a neutral adult equally often. Children's prosocial behavior was thus mediated by the intentions behind the actor's moral behavior, irrespective of outcome. Children thus selectively avoid helping those who cause--or even intend to cause--others harm.     

Maternal scaffolding and children’s narrative retelling of a movie story

Five-year-old children (n = 31) watched a brief videotaped segment from a movie with their mother, discussed the movie story with her, and then retold it to an experimenter. The quality of the stories the children told was related to the scaffolding strategies used by their mothers. Children whose mothers focused their own and the children’s attention on the story, prompted the children’s memories with questions and explanations, talked about the characters’ emotions, corrected the children’s mistakes, and engaged in extended exchanges about critical topics in the story during the preparatory discussion told significantly better stories than children whose mothers did not use such strategies and children in a control group (n = 14) who did not discuss the story with their mothers. Children’s recall of objective actions in the story was most strongly predicted by joint mother-child attention, extended exchanges on critical topics, and the mother’s correction of the children’s mistakes. Children’s comprehension of characters’ internal states was most strongly predicted by the number of questions the mother asked, extended exchanges, and correction. These findings have implications for how adults can promote children’s ability to understand, remember, and narrate a story.     

TEACHING ABOUT AGING IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: A ONE‐YEAR FOLLOW‐UP

This study followed up on a 7‐day, 5th‐grade intergenerational project on aging. The “Age Doesn't Matter” (ADM) project was interdisciplinary; incorporating dance, health education, history, art, and poetry to teach about growing older. Older adults came to the school to interact with the students and the students also went on field trips to a nursing home and a retirement hotel. Thirteen of the original 19 ADM students were still in the same school 1 year after the project's completion. These students were matched by grade, gender, and race with a comparison group (n = 13) one year after the project's completion. Three experts in the field of gerontology were asked to blindly review the students' responses to open‐ended questions about aging and to rate each student concerning his or her attitudes toward aging. The ADM students were judged to have significantly (p < .05) more positive attitudes toward aging than the comparison group students.     

Intentional Behavior and Intentional Communication in Young Free-Ranging Orangutans

The goal of this study was to describe the ontogeny of the manipulation of an animate object (i.e., the mother) by young free-ranging orangutans within the context of food sharing. The food-sharing context is an important one in the development of object manipulation skills and social communication. 5 orangutans, ranging in age from 1 month to 5 years, were videotaped with their biological mothers for 18 hours over the course of 9 months. Systematic coding of the videotapes revealed that even young orangutans, 1-6 months old, used intentional (i.e., goal-directed) behaviors. When young orangutans directed behavior toward the mother in addition to the goal object then maternal responses were positive, resulting in the infant obtaining the food. Intentional communication, evident in gestures and consisting of an abbreviated action directed toward the mother, was found in the 3 oldest orangutans (2 1/2, 3 1/2, and 5 years of age). Cognitive competence and behavioral performance are considered from the developmental perspectives of Piaget and prelinguistic communication. The ability to use a communicative gesture as an intermediate means in the coordination of actions on a social agent with actions on an object is evident in young orangutans.     

Effects of Pointing Gestures on Memory for (In)Congruent Stimuli in Children and Young Adults

We investigated whether finger pointing toward picture locations can be used as an external cognitive control tool to guide attention and compensate for the immature cognitive control functions in children compared with young adults. Item and source memory performance was compared for picture‐location pairs that were either semantically congruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the upper half of the screen) or incongruent (e.g., a cloud presented at the lower part of the screen). Contrary to our expectations, pointing had an adverse effect on source memory compared to visual observation only, in both age groups. As expected, superior source memory performance was found for congruent compared to incongruent picture‐locations pairs in both age groups. These findings suggest that pointing toward pictures compared to only viewing may hamper memory, and that congruent picture locations are easier to remember than incongruent ones.     

Changes in the representation of dynamism in fifth grade children

According to research on mental representation carried out in the Piaget tradition (Galifret-Granjon, 1981; Piaget & Inhelder, 1966), the cognitive processes of decentration in terms of the states (initial and final) and anticipation (of change and movement) form the basis of the reconstruction of a dynamic situation. Children centered primarily on the initial and final states have great difficulty creating a mental representation of a dynamic situation. This study, based on a socio-constructivist approach (Gamier, 1985), seeks to help children develop these two fundamental processes. The pedagogical analysis focuses first on the observation of children's behaviour while playing ball in a group and then on the graphic representation of their actions drawn by the children after each play session. We saw in the children's game definite changes stemming from decentration. We also noticed that the children were centering less on the states in their graphic production which became increasingly rich in codes.     

Risk Factors,Resilience, and Psychological Distress Among Holocaust and Nonholocaust Surviviors in the Post-9/11 Environment

Many older adults have experienced or witnessed devastating life events including wars, hurricanes, and explosions. This study examined retraumatization and the relationship between certain risk factors, resilience, and psychological distress in the post-9/11 environment among 120 community-dwelling older adults. Results indicate that Holocaust survivors suffered more posttraumatic symptoms during the ongoing War on Terrorism than a comparison group. A significant contributor to posttraumatic symptomatology was anxiety followed by sense of safety, and survivor status. Clinicians should anticipate that older adults exposed again to trauma may experience posttraumatic symptomatology. Health-care practitioners should focus on distant history of trauma when assessing older adults for posttraumatic stress.     

Learning from other people's mistakes: causal understanding in learning to use a tool

Despite considerable debate about whether nonhuman primates learn to use tools via imitation, this type of learning by children has received surprisingly little attention. The findings of two studies that go some way toward filling this gap are reported here. Study 1 showed that when 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 68) were shown a correct solution to a tool-using task (which they could not solve spontaneously), all the children in both age groups managed at least a partial solution. When children were shown an incorrect solution followed by a correct solution, 2-year-olds again produced only a partial solution. By contrast, most 3-year-olds produced a full solution. Study 2 replicated this age change in a separate sample of children (N = 100) with a different tool-using task. Study 2 also showed that 3-year-olds benefit from observing an incorrect action when it can be contrasted with a correct action: they chose the more effective of the two actions. Taken together, the two studies indicate that by 3 years of age, children do not indiscriminately imitate actions on a tool, but selectively reproduce those actions that have a desired causal effect.