摘要:

Previous studies (Dias&Harris, 1988, 1990; Markovits&Vachon, 1989) have established that young children can correctly respond to certain conditional reasoning problems with empirically false premises, when these are presented in a fantasy context. Such results have been interpreted as indicating that young children possess logical reasoning competence which must be protected from interference with their empirical knowledge. However, Markovits (1993) has proposed a model of reasoning in which context effects are considered in the light of both developmental and information retrieval processes. This predicts that presenting empirically false premises in a fantasy context should improve performance on the valid logical formmodus ponensamong young adolescents. It also predicts that presenting empirically true premises in a fantasy context should decrease performance on the invalid logical form affirmation of the consequent. A total of 89 12‐years‐old and 117 14‐year‐olds were given two reasoning problems involving either true or false premises. These problems were embedded in either a fantasy or a realistic context. Results were consistent with the predictions made by th

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00660.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Despite more than 25 years of research there is still dispute about the growth curve of referential communication. It is usually maintained that this capacity is in place by 7 years of age but a few studies have uncovered deficits in the later stages of primary school. The issue is important given the role played by verbal information processing in education. This study examined referential communication in Italian and English children at 6 and 9 years, tested individually. Sex and socio‐economic status (SES) were also main variables. A sensitive scoring system allowed the effects of feedback to be examined. The group data showed that 9‐year‐olds were significantly better speakers than 6‐year‐olds and that Italian children produced considerably more redundancy in their descriptions. As listeners, all children handled adequate messages well but with ambiguous messages age, sex and SES were significant main effects. Subject‐by‐subject analysis showed that less than 10 per cent of 6‐year‐olds and only 20 per cent of 9‐year‐olds were consistently able to detect ambiguity in messages, unaided. Cultural differences in the ability to profit from feedback were also revealed. The implications of the results for theoretical positions in referential communication and for the processing of verbal information in the classroom are discussed. It is concluded that there is a strong case for developing a standardized test of speake

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00661.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Kemler Nelson (1984) reported an experiment (Expt 4) intended to demonstrate that the processing of categories evolves with development from a holistic to an analytic mode. Five‐ and 10‐year‐old children were asked to learn two categories of schematic faces which were either defined by a single attribute value or structured by overall similarity. As the identification of the children's processing modes was ambiguous, we replicated this experiment, with additional criteria to differentiate between holistic and multi‐attribute processing. Results showed that both the 5‐ and 10‐year‐old children used an analytic processing mode. The main developmental difference concerned the number of attributes on which their categorization judgements were based. These results can be related to the format o

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00662.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Ten autistic, 10 mentally retarded and 10 normal children, matched on verbal mental age, were asked to narrate a story from a wordless picture book. The narratives were coded on a range of measures tapping the following characteristics: story length and complexity, story structure, referential devices, and affective and social‐cognitive narrative enrichment devices. The main findings were that, compared to both control groups, the autistic children produced significantly shorter stories and were less likely to include any causal statements to explain the relationship between events in the stories. For the autistic children, the use of a story schema, referential devices that took account of their listener's needs, and the frequency of enrichment devices were all significantly correlated, suggesting that they reflect the same underlying knowledge. These findings are discussed in relation to the theory of mind hypothesis of autis

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00663.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Pre‐school children (mean age 4.8 years) in matched monoglot English and bilingual Italian‐English kindergarten classes were given tests of (lexical and sublexical) metalinguistic awareness in English. Bilingual schoolchildren were superior to monolingual children at a task of spoken morpheme deletion (RAINBOW → BOW). They were also superior at detecting the odd‐one‐out from sets of pictured words when detection was meaning‐based and when it was initial‐phoneme based. The advantage to the bilingual group persisted for morpheme‐deletion and phonological sorting after partialling out performance on the meaning‐based task.Exposure to the second language (Italian) at a pre‐literate stage may improve metalinguistic skills. In particular, speech‐sound awareness, which is implicated in reading mastery, benef

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00664.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The ability of 3‐ to 4‐month‐old infants to categorize left‐right spatial relations was investigated in two experiments employing the paired‐preference procedure. In Expt 1, infants were familiarized with different pictures of horse‐zebra pairs that varied in size, orientation and location on the stimulus card, but maintained the same left‐right relation between the animals. They were then tested with two novel stimuli, each showing a new horse‐zebra pair in a new size and location, with the familiar left‐right relation between the animals maintained in one pair and reversed in the other. A visual preference for the latter was observed. Expt 2 demonstrated that infants were able to distinguish the familiarization exemplars both from one another and from the test‐phase stimuli with the familiar spatial relation between the animals. These data thus supported the view that infants in Expt 1 extracted and categorized the left‐right relations between the animals seen during familiarization. The ability of infants to represent left‐right spatial relations is discussed in terms of the developme

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00665.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Because genetic influences may change across the life‐span, the finding of genetic influences on activity level (AL) at one age may leave some doubt about such influences at another. Previous research exploring the importance of genetic contributions to individual differences in motor activity across age have been clouded by subjective errors that may arise when assessments of AL rely on human judgement. The present study is a longitudinal extension of an initial study demonstrating genetic influences on mechanically assessed AL in 7‐month‐old twins (Saudino&Eaton, 1991). The motor activity of 35‐month‐old twins (37 MZ pairs, 16 DZ pairs) was re‐evaluated with motion recorders and parent ratings over a two‐day period. Despite a lack of phenotypic stability, mechanically assessed AL continued to show a genetic influence during early childhood (RMZ= .76,RDZ= .51). Moreover, the MZ‐DZ pattern for concordance on AL change (RMZ= .75 vs.RDZ= .52) was consistent with the presence of a genetic influence on devel

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00666.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

When a letter is drawn on the forehead, it is often perceived cutaneously as a mirror reversal of the experimenter‐defined stimulus. The occurrence of this phenomenon was examined in 3‐ and 5‐year‐old deaf and hearing boys using a reliable behavioural technique that did not require verbal instruction. Hearing 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds and deaf 3‐year‐olds showed mirror‐reversal tendencies that were quite consistent with those reported previously in adults and 4‐year‐olds. However, this phenomenon was not observed in deaf 5‐year‐olds. The difference was considered to be related to the fact that deaf 5‐year‐olds were in the process of acquiring a considerable vocabulary in a signed language as their first language. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to possible explanations of the mirror‐reversal phenomenon and the characteristics of the acquisi

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00667.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Early Child Development in the French Tradition: Contributions from Current Research.Edited byA. Vyt, H. Bloch&M. BornsteinChildren's Understanding. The Development of Mental Models.ByGraeme S. HalfordBeyond Modularity.ByAnnette Karmiloff‐Smi

ISSN:0261-510X    

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-835X.1995.tb00668.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1995

数据来源: WILEY