Eli Saltz

Training Disadvantaged Preschoolers on Various Fantasy Activities: Effects on Cognitive Functioning and Impulse Control.

Preschool children were trained in 1 of 3 different types of fantasy activities over a school year. The effects of this training were evaluated over a variety of tasks measuring cognitive development and impulse control. The same basic experiment was replicated over 3 different years. Results indicated that physical enactment of fantasy experiences (viz., acting fairy tales or enacting previous experiences) had a sizable effect on many of these variables; while simply listening and discussing was often no more effective than the control condition that merely cut, pasted, etc. Evidence suggested that fantasy play remoter from reality was more facilitative for development than more realistically oriented fantasy play.

Does motoric imagery facilitate memory for sentences? A selective interference test

Previous studies have shown that motoric enactment of sentences facilitates later sentence retention for both children and adults. While some writers have attributed this effect to the storage of motoric images, other writers have suggested that enactment may stimulate visual imagery or verbal mediation, and that these latter mechanisms may be basic to the facilitated memory. The present study was designed to distinguish among motoric imagery, visual imagery, and verbal mediation by means of a series of selective interference tests. In Experiment 1, 112 subjects learned sentences with the aid of motoric enactment, visual imagery, or simply as verbal statements. Experiment 1a showed that both motoric enactment and visual imagery significantly facilitated retention compared to a verbal-only control group. Experiment 1b showed that the effects of motoric enactment on sentence recall were disrupted by a motoric competition task, but the effects of visual imagery on recall were not affected by the motoric competition task. On the other hand, the effects of motoric enactment on sentence recall were not affected by a visual-competition task, but the effects of visual imagery were affected by the visual-competition task. Experiment 2, involving 64 subjects, demonstrated that a verbal-only technique for sentence memory was disrupted by a verbal competition task, but that the verbal competition task did not affect the facilitative effects of motoric enactment. Similarly, a motoric competition task again disrupted the facilitative effects of motoric enactment of sentences, but had little or no effect on sentences learned by means of verbal-only instructions. The results of the two experiments are interpreted as supporting the contention that motoric enactment is effective in sentences recall because it leads to the storage of some type of motoric trace or image.

Competence, delinquency, and attempts to attain possible selves

The impact of impulsivity, possible selves, and social and communication skills on delinquent involvement in inner-city high school and incarcerated boys (aged 13-17, N = 230) was explored. Impulsivity, perceived attempts to attain possible selves, and balance in possible selves were hypothesized to directly influence delinquency. Social and communication skills were hypothesized to influence delinquency directly and indirectly through their effects on impulsivity, balance, and attempts to attain possible selves. These factors discriminated moderately well between high school and incarcerated youths. Impulsivity was an especially powerful predictor of self-reported delinquency among high school youths but not among incarcerated youths. The effect of other variables differed somewhat for different categories of delinquency (aggression, theft, hooliganism, and school truancy) and between subsamples, suggesting the importance of examining the subjective meaning of each of these behaviors for the individual in his social context.

A model of mother-child coping and adjustment to HIV.

An increasing proportion of newly diagnosed AIDS cases is being reported among African American urban women. Recent research regarding the psychosocial and behavioral impact of a mothers HIV status on her uninfected children as well as a growing body of clinical evidence suggest that these children are extremely vulnerable and at risk for problems in psychosocial adjustment. The present paper reports the results of research designed to examine the pathways by which a mothers HIV-positive status affects the psychosocial adjustment of her uninfected school-age child. The principal predictor variables of the model are family sociodemographic characteristics, social support available to mother and child, HIV-related symptom distress in the mother, coping strategies of both mother and child, emotional distress of the mother, and quality of the parent-child relationship. The dependent variable is the psychosocial adjustment of the child. Data were collected on 147 mother-child dyads using standardized questionnaires and personal interviews. Eighty-six percent of the mothers were African American and over 96% were on public assistance. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model of mother-child coping and adjustment. After adding three paths, the model had a good fit to the data (comparative fit index=0.94; root mean square estimate of error=0.06). Five model constructs accounted for 36% of the variance in child adjustment. The constructs in order of importance were maternal HIV-associated stressors, maternal emotional distress, child social support, child coping, and quality of parent-child relationship.

The Development of Natural Language Concepts.

SALTZ, ELI; SOLLER, ELAINE; and SIGEL, IRVING E. The Development of Natural Language Concepts. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 1191-1202. In order to examine the developmental trends in the acquisition of natural language concepts children 5-6, 8-9, and 11-12 years of age (24 children per age) were asked to select which of 70 different pictures were instances of each of 6 different concepts. A careful analysis of the choices suggested 2 major developmental trends at work. First, younger children tended to acquire fragmented subconcepts which were strongly tied to specific stimulus contexts. With age, concept integration developed. Second, younger children were heavily dependent on perceptual attributes in identifying concepts. With age, functional and abstract attributes became more important. The results were related to hypotheses suggested by Saltz and Sigel (1967) concerning developmental factors in concept learning.

Let's pretend: The role of motoric imagery in memory for sentences and words ☆

Abstract A number of theories suggest that for young children, concepts should have an important motoric (or sensory-motor) component. A levels-of-processing theory is proposed which predicts that processing on motoric imagery should facilitate memory for both isolated words and for sentences. Experiment 1 examined the effects of motoric enactment (viz., pretend play) of sentences on memory for the sentences. Motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (5 to 7 years of age) and adults, though, contrary to expectations, the effects were weaker for the children than for the adults. Further, it was found that motoric imagery affected the initial acquisition, but was not important as a retreival cue. Experiment 2 examined the effects of motoric imagery on free recall of lists of unrelated words. Under these conditions, motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (7 to 9 years of age) and adults equally; in contrast, visual imagery instructions had no effect on memory. These results indicate that motoric imagery may facilitate memory under conditions in which visual imagery has no effect. Theoretical implications are explored for previous experiments on pretend play which suggest that training for pretent enactment can facilitate cognitive development.

Helping behavior: The cry for help

If an “injured” workman called out for help, 81% of the college Ss helped him. If the workman groaned in pain but did not call out, only 29% helped. The difference was significant and could not be accounted for by differences in judgments of amount of pain felt by the workman in the two conditions.

Information Structure in Sentences: New Information

New information in sentences is theorized as being marked by surface-structure word order and by word stress. Experiment 1 tested these theories by giving subjects active and passive sentences with stress on either the agent or patient of the sentences. Subjects decided what questions the sentences would be replies to. The question-answering element of the sentence is the new information in the sentence. Experiment 2 tested only the word-order theory of new information structure in sentences by giving subjects written active and passive sentences. The results are in agreement with word stress and passivization marking new information, but not with the theory that there is an information ordering in active sentences.

Concept conservation under positively and negatively evaluated transformations.

Concept conservation was tested as a function of degree of rated evaluative (i.e., good-bad) similarity between a concept and its transform. A group of 40 Ss, 8-years old, given problems in which both the standards and the transforms were positively rated, conserved significantly better than a second group of 40 Ss given the same positively rated standards but negatively rated transforms (p < .01). Similarly, the greater the rated similarity between positive-rated standard and negative-rated transform, the more likely Ss were to conserve (p < .01). The results do not appear to support an all-or-none, stage formulation of the ability to conserve.

Development of Natural Language Concepts. IV. The Relationship Between Semantic Organization and Learning.

Abstract In Experiment 1, 30 subjects at each of three age levels were shown pictures of unfamiliar “animals”. They were told two semantic attributes for each animal (e.g., kind and strong) and were asked to learn these sets so that, when shown a picture, the appropriate attributes could be recalled. The results indicated that the dimensional structure of the attributes had a strong effect on new learning for young children. Incongruent pairs of attributes (e.g., kind and ugly) were difficult to learn compared to congruent (e.g., kind and beautiful) or unrelated (e.g., kind and tall) sets. These results indicate: (a) Attribute structure is a factor in new learning; (b) 6-year-olds tend to organize the verbal labels for attributes into bipolar dimensions, rather than into independent clusters of attributes. The latter findings require reexamination of the meaning of previous word-association data which had been interpreted as indicating that 6-year-olds tend not to organize meanings bipolarly. Experiment 2 showed that the disruptive effects of incongruence on new learning disappears by college age.