Camilla Gobbo

How knowledge is structured and used by expert and novice children

This research contrasts the knowledge structures of expert and novice children in the domain of dinosaurs, as well as how this knowledge is used. Several measures were developed to assess differences in knowledge structures, such as how frequently children use connecting words in their production protocols and the frequency with which they switch topics in their discussion of a dinosaur. How children use their knowledge was assessed by measures such as the frequency with which they infer new implicit information about unknown dinosaurs and the frequency with which they make semantic comparisons, especially about unknown dinosaurs. These differences in the structure and use of knowledge provide a possible explanation of why expert children can better use and access their knowledge because it is more cohesive and integrated, than can novice children.

Assessing the effects of misinformation on children's recall : How and when makes a difference

In two experiments children aged between 4 and 5 years and 7 and 8 years, respectively, participated in a real-life event and were exposed to misleading questions immediately afterwards. The effects of variables relating to both the presentation of the misinformation and to the assessment of suggestibility were examined both immediately and following delays of 1 week (Experiment 1) or both 1 week and 1 month (Experiment 2). Older children were less suggestible than younger. Children were less suggestible when suggestibility was assessed in recall questions rather than misleading questions, less suggestible when information was central rather than peripheral and when the misinformation contradicted rather than supplemented the original event, and less suggestible over time in the absence of further suggestions. Providing cues had a small effect in enhancing resistance to the misinformation, but only when children were tested immediately. Embedding suggestions in a narrative context and repeating suggestions within a session led to greater suggestibility for both age groups, and repeating suggestions following a 1-month delay had a particularly marked effect for the younger children. These findings are consistent with the view that suggestibility effects depend on the strength of the memory trace for the original information as well as that for the suggestion. How suggestibility is assessed is, however, also important and childrens responses to misleading questions may not reflect their memory for the original event. Copyright

Knowing in Advance: The Impact of Prior Event Information on Memory and Event Knowledge.

We examined the influence of newly acquired information on childrens memory and general representation of a personally experienced event. Thirty-five children between the ages of 5 and 7 years participated in the novel event (Visiting the Pirate). The day before participating, children were: (1) provided with new information specific to the up-coming event; (2) engaged in a discussion generally related to the event topic based on existing knowledge; or (3) discussed an unrelated topic. Advance information specific to the event led to better recall and, in particular, to better integration of the experience into a general event representation both soon after the event and at a follow-up interview 4 months later, whereas general discussion of the topic without the event specific information neither enhanced memory reports nor facilitated the integration of event information. Providing information in advance can have significant effects on memory and knowledge acquisition although many variables, including those relating to the specific content of the information, will affect this relation.

On Metamemory-Memory Relationship: Strategy Availability and Training

In the present study, a metamemory assessment procedure measuring a general level of metamemory was proposed. The procedure used a storyplot type of structure. On the basis of the metamemory score, different age group children were divided into high and low metamemory subgroups. In Experiment 1, the performance of high metamemory and low metamemory children differed significantly when the demand of the memory task fell within childrens knowledge of memory, supporting the validity of the procedure. It did not differ in Experiment 2, when the memory task required the use of a more sophisticated strategy, where knowledge was not tapped through the metamemory task. Moreover, while telling children which strategy had to be used did not differentiate the performance of the two metamemory groups, giving children a practice training on the use of the strategy (Experiment 3) differentiated high and low metamemory children in terms of their ability to generalise the use of the strategy through a near-transfer memory task.

Poster Session Abstracts

A random sample of therapists (N=161) working in the field of trauma were surveyed to study levels of stress. Therapists were assessed on measures of general life stress, burnout, and traumatic stress. Twenty-four percent were experiencing high levels of general life stress, 16% reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, 26% felt ineffective in terms of personal accomplishment at work and 14% were experiencing high levels of traumatic stress similar to clients with post traumatic stress disorder. Relationships between measures and demographic variables were reported, a profile of traumatised therapists was identified, and implications of these findings of therapists were presented.

Comprehension of two types of negative comparisons in children

English-speaking and Italian-speaking children between the ages of 6 years 8 months and 9 years 10 months were asked to solve instructional relation problems (i.e., to complete a picture on the basis of a sentence). Sentences contained either marked or unmarked adjectival forms in one of three types of comparative construction:positive comparative (e.g., “bigger” “più grande”),negative-equative constructions as explicit negative forms (e.g., “not as big as,” “non è grande come”), orcomparative-with-less constructions e.g., “less big,” “meno grande”) as implicit negative forms. Subjects had to focus on either the grammatical subject or the grammatical object of a sentence to complete, the picture. Three findings were consistent with predictions derived by considering syntactic and pragmatic differences between explicit and implicit types of negative comparisons. First, comprehension depended on the type of comparative construction, with the poorest comprehension for the implicit comparative-with-less construction. Second, the effect of the marked adjective depended on the type of comparison. Third, in all three types of comparison, accuracy was greater when the question was focused on the grammatical subject instead of the grammatical object.

Understanding coexistence of internal states in children and adults

We investigated the conceptualization of suffering and well-being states pertaining to physical and psychological domains by examining childrens and adults’ acceptance of coexistence of two co-occurring internal states. Children and adults decided whether pairs of states may coexist, justified their answers, and reported whether they had personal experience of that. The pairs of states could involve same valence and different domain, different valence and different domain, and different valence and same domain. The results showed that acceptance, plausibility, complexity, and causality of justifications vary depending on age and/or type of state co-occurrence. The role of factors like cognitive processing, personal experience, and asymmetric organization of the constructs of valence and domain is discussed, in light of the applied relevance of the findings.