Learning from Apps and Objects: The Human Touch

In three studies, we examined children's geography learning from a physical puzzle and an app designed to mimic the puzzle. In Study 1, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds were taught Australia's states by an experimenter using a puzzle or were taught by an app. Children learned significantly more states from instruction with the puzzle than when they used the app independently. When children were allowed to bring home the puzzle or app for 1 week in Study 2, total learning between conditions was comparable. Length and frequency of use were related to learning only for puzzle users. In Study 3, children were taught the geography lesson by an experimenter using the app. Children's learning from this social app condition was equal to the social puzzle condition but higher than the solo app condition of the earlier studies, suggesting that learning from digital devices is most successful when supplemented with in‐person social interaction.     

Body or Mind: Children's Categorizing of Pretense

Researchers studying early social cognition have been particularly interested in pretend play and have obtained evidence indicating that young children do not understand that pretending involves mental representation. The present research investigates whether children think of pretending as a mental state at all, by looking at whether they cluster it with other mental states or with physical processes when making certain judgments. The results from 5 experiments suggest that most children under 6 years of age see pretending as primarily physical. Further, when asked about pretending as a 2-part process entailing planning and execution, even 8-year-olds claim that execution of pretense does not involve the mind, although the planning aspect of pretense does.     

Dissociations, developmental psychology, and pedagogical design

Although dissociations in children's responses are sometimes about "getting it right" for an experimenter, they might also often reflect differences between conscious and subconscious processing that are not geared to correct performance. Research with adults also reveals many cases of dissociation, and adults can more easily be subjected to neuroimaging methods that might help shed light on dissociation. Finally, much of the research on dissociations shows that human cognition is optimized in some contexts over others. School environments often correspond to less optimizing contexts. Research on dissociation could be used to inform pedagogical design.     

Embedded Librarians: MLS Students as Apprentice Librarians in Online Courses

ABSTRACT

Master of Library Science (MLS) students at one university are serving as apprentice “embedded” librarians in nursing courses at another university. Results of surveys of nursing students at the end of the class and reflections of the MLS students after this experience will be shared from the first semester iteration of this project. A comparison of this project with past iterations of the project will be made in the hope that the information gleaned from these interactions will help in the design of library services. Furthermore, this premise of the development of relationships in the provision of library services for distance learners will be further examined.     

Young Children's Conceptualization of Pretense: Action or Mental Representational State?

A growing body of research indicates that children do not understand mental representation until around age 4. However, children engage in pretend play by age 2, and pretending seems to require understanding mental representation. This apparent contradiction has been reconciled by the claim that in pretense there is precocious understanding of mental representation. 4 studies tested this claim by presenting children with protagonists who were not mentally representing something (i.e., an animal), either because they did not know about the animal or simply because they were not thinking about being the animal. However, the protagonists were acting in ways that could be consistent with pretending to be that animal. Children were then asked whether the protagonists were pretending to be that animal, and children tended to answer in the affirmative. The results suggest that 4-year-olds do not understand that pretending requires mental representation. Children appear to misconstrue pretense as its common external manifestations, such as actions, until at least the sixth year.     

The evolutionary significance of pretend play: Two-year-olds’ interpretation of behavioral cues

Pretend play begins very early in human life. A key question is why, when figuring out reality is young children’s major developmental task, they engage in its deliberate falsification. A second key question is how children know that pretend events are not real. Here we report three experiments addressing the latter question and providing indirect evidence for speculation on the first question. Children (N = 96) were shown actors eating or pretending to eat from covered bowls, and they had to indicate, on the basis of the actors’ behavioral signs, which actor was pretending to eat or had the real food. Even 24-month-olds could do so when the contents of the bowls were shown before the actions, and even when substitute objects were shown. However, when one of the bowls contained imaginary objects (i.e., was empty), even 30-month-olds could not indicate which actor was pretending. These studies show how the ability to interpret pretending from behavioral cues develops gradually as children’s representational abilities become more free of contextual support. We propose that, from an evolutionary and ontogenetic standpoint, pretend play might serve to heighten children’s sensitivity to social signs. This sensitivity could assist the development of theory of mind, with which social pretend play is associated. In this way, pretend play in humans might serve a similar purpose to play fighting in other species: In both cases, play might sensitize the organism to social signs that will allow for sophisticated coordination of social behavior later in life.     

Curative role of pantothenic acid in brain damage of gamma irradiated rats

Radiation induced brain damage is associated with impairment of mitochondrial functions, variations in the level of neurotransmitters, and oxidative stress. Mitochondrial function is closely linked to the level of neurotransmitters since the precursors are supplied by the Kreb’s cycle intermediates. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of pantothenic acid, an essential component in the synthesis of Coenzyme A (CoA), on the activity of the Krebs cycle enzymes, isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH), α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase (α-KGDH), and succinate dehydrogenase (SDH); the level of aspartic, glutamic and GABA; the activity of transaminases, and oxidative stress, in the cerebrum of γ-irradiated rats. Pantothenic acid (26 mg/Kg) was orally administered to the rats, 2 h after irradiation and during the following 5 days. Animals were sacrificed the 7th day post-irradiation. The exposure of male albino rats to γ-rays (5 Gy) has triggered oxidative stress notified by a significant elevation in the level of malondialdehyde (MDA), an end product of lipid peroxidation, associated to a significant decrease in the content of phospholipids, and the antioxidant compound glutathione (GSH). The activity of IDH, α-KGDH, and SDH, has significantly decreased, while the level of aspartic, glutamic and GABA has significantly increased. In parallel to these changes, the activity of alanine and aspartate transaminase has significantly increased, compared to their values in the control rats. Pantothenic acid treatment, has significantly attenuated oxidative stress; enhanced the activity of IDH, α-KGDH, and SDH; minimized the increase in the level of amino acids and the activity of transaminases, compared to their values in the cerebrum of irradiated rats. In conclusion, pantothenic acid could improve the level of neurotransmitters amino acids, which depends on the enzymatic activities of Krebs cycle and linked to oxidative stress.     

Where is the real cheese? Young children's ability to discriminate between real and pretend Acts

This study examined 2- to 3-year-olds' ability to make a pretend-real distinction in the absence of content cues. Children watched two actors side by side. One was really eating, and the other was pretending to eat, but in neither case was information about content available. Following the displays, children were asked to retrieve the real food (Experiment 1) or point to the container with the real food (Experiments 2 and 3). 3- and 2.5-year-olds distinguished between the real and pretend acts based on behavioral cues alone. Two-year-olds chose the containers at random, but their spontaneous reactions suggested that they discriminated the real acts from pretense to some degree. Possible accounts for the discrepancy between the different behavioral measures are discussed.     

Pretend Play Skills and the Child's Theory of Mind

Pretend play has recently been of great interest to researchers studying children's understanding of the mind. One reason for this interest is that pretense seems to require many of the same skills as mental state understanding, and these skills seem to emerge precociously in pretense. Pretend play might be a zone of proximal development, an activity in which children operate at a cognitive level higher than they operate at in nonpretense situations. Alternatively, pretend play might be fool's gold, in that it might appear to be more sophisticated than it really is. This paper first discusses what pretend play is. It then investigates whether pretend play is an area of advanced understanding with reference to 3 skills that are implicated in both pretend play and a theory of mind: the ability to represent one object as two things at once, the ability to see one object as representing another, and the ability to represent mental representations.