Parental Reports of Children’s Scale Errors in Everyday Life

Scale errors refer to behaviors where young children attempt to perform an action on an object that is too small to effectively accommodate the behavior. The goal of this study was to examine the frequency and characteristics of scale errors in everyday life. To do so, the researchers collected parental reports of children’s (age range = 13–21 months at onset) scale errors over a 6‐month period. All but 1 of the parents (N = 30) reported at least 1 scale error with an average of 3.2 scale errors per child. These results suggest that most, if not all, children commit scale errors during early childhood.     

As Time Goes By: Children''s Early Understanding of Growth in Animals

Beliefs about naturally occurring transformations were examined in children aged 3 to 6 years in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 tested children's understanding that animals (but not artifacts) predictably get larger over time. Experiment 1a examined whether the results obtained in the first experiment could be attributed to an added memory component on the artifact task. Experiment 2 further examined beliefs about the aging of artifacts. In Experiment 3, color and shape (metamorphosis) changes of animals were investigated. At all ages, children appeared to understand that animals get larger and not smaller with age. While older children and adults allowed for rather dramatic changes in the size and shape of animals over the life span if the alternative involved decreasing in size with age, preschool children were less willing to accept these changes. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that even young preschool children have 2 conceptual insights about natural transformations: that they are lawful and nonrandom, and that they are domain and mechanism specific. Further, children as young as age 3 are able to go beyond the perceptual appearance of animals in making judgments about transformations caused by growth. Implications for children's understanding of personal and species identity are discussed.     

Seeing Is Believing: Children's Explanations of Commonplace, Magical, and Extraordinary Transformations

Children's magical explanations and beliefs were investigated in 2 studies. In Study 1, we first asked 4- and 5-year-old children to judge the possibility of certain object transformations and to suggest mechanisms that might accomplish them. We then presented several commonplace transformations (e.g., cutting a string) and impossible events (magic tricks). Prior to viewing these transformations, children suggested predominantly physical mechanisms for the events and judged the magical ones to be impossible. After seeing the impossible events, many 4-year-olds explained them as "magic," whereas 5-year-olds explained them as "tricks." In Study 2, we replaced the magic tricks with "extraordinary" events brought about by physical or chemical reactions (e.g., heat causing paint on a toy car to change color). Prior to viewing the "extraordinary" transformations, children judged them to be impossible. After viewing these events, 4-year-olds gave more magical and fewer physical explanations than did 5-year-olds. Follow-up interviews revealed that most 4-year-olds viewed magic as possible under the control of an agent (magician) with special powers, whereas most 5-year-olds viewed magic as tricks that anyone can learn. In a third study, we surveyed parents to assess their perceptions and conceptions of children's beliefs in magic and fantasy figures. Parents perceived their children as believing in a number of magic and fantasy figures and reported encouraging such beliefs to some degree. Taken together, these findings suggest that many 4-year-olds view magic as a plausible mechanism, yet reserve magical explanations for certain real world events which violate their causal expectations.     

General Communication

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP edited by Donald Sexton and Raymond Smilor (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1986—$32.00)

MINORITIES AND MEDIA: DIVERSITY AND THE END OF MASS COMMUNICATION by Clint C. Wilson II, and Felix Gutierrez (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985—price not given, paper)

MEDIA GRATIFICATIONS RESEARCH: CURRENT PERSPECTIVES edited by Karl Erik Rosengren, et al. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985—pricenot given, paper)

PROGRESS IN COMMUNICATIONS SCIENCES VII edited by Brenda Dervin and Melvin J. Voigt (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986—$45 to institutions, $29.50 to individuals)

MASS MEDIA VS. ITALIAN AMERICANS by Adolph Caso (Brandon Publishing, 21 Station St., Box 843, Brookline Village MA 02147 $4.95, paper)