Elizabeth S. Nilsen

The Relations between Children's Communicative Perspective-Taking and Executive Functioning.

Two experiments investigated childrens communicative perspective-taking ability. In Experiment 1, 4- to 5-year-old children were tested on two referential communication tasks, as well as on measures of inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Results document childrens emergent use of the perspective of their speaking partner to guide their communicative behaviors in both a production and comprehension task. In Experiment 2, 3- to 4-year-old children used a speakers perspective to guide their interpretation of instructions. In both experiments, egocentric interpretations of speaker requests were negatively correlated with childrens inhibitory control skills. Results of these studies demonstrate that young children can differentiate between information that is accessible to the speaker versus privileged knowledge, and use this information to guide their communicative behaviors. Furthermore, the results suggest that childrens inhibitory control skills allow them to inhibit their own perspective, enabling them to make use of their communicative partners perspective.

Preschoolers’ sensitivity to referential ambiguity: evidence for a dissociation between implicit understanding and explicit behavior

Four-year-olds were asked to assess an adult listeners knowledge of the location of a hidden sticker after the listener was provided an ambiguous or unambiguous description of the sticker location. When preschoolers possessed private knowledge about the sticker location, the location they chose indicated that they judged a description to be unambiguous even when the message was ambiguous from the listeners perspective. However, measures of implicit awareness (response latencies and eye movement measures) demonstrated that even when preschoolers had private knowledge about the sticker location, ambiguous messages led to more consideration of an alternative location and longer response latencies than unambiguous messages. The findings demonstrate that children show sensitivity to linguistic ambiguity earlier than previously thought and, further, that they can detect linguistic ambiguity in language directed to others even when their own knowledge clarifies the intended meaning.

Word-learning performance in beginning readers.

This investigation examined word-learning performance in beginning readers. The children learned to read words with regular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., snake) more easily than words with irregular spelling-sound mappings (e.g., sword). In addition, there was an effect of semantics: Children learned to read concrete words (e.g., elbow) more successfully than abstract words (e.g., temper). Trial-by-trial learning indicated that children made greater use of the regularity and semantic properties at later trials as compared with early trials. The influence of cognitive skills (paired associate learning and phonological awareness) on word-learning performance was also examined. Regression analyses revealed that whereas paired associate learning skills accounted for unique variance in the childrens learning of both regular and irregular words, phonological awareness accounted for unique variance only in the acquisition of regular words.

Cognitive flexibility supports preschoolers’ detection of communicative ambiguity

To become successful communicators, children must be sensitive to the clarity/ambiguity of language. Significant gains in children’s ability to detect communicative ambiguity occur during the early school-age years. However, little is known about the cognitive abilities that support this development. Relations between cognitive flexibility and ambiguity detection were assessed in preschool- (4- to 5-years-old, n = 40) and school-age (6- to 7-years-old, n = 36) children. Children rated the quality of clues (unambiguous/ambiguous) to the location of hidden stimuli provided by a videotaped speaker. Cognitive flexibility was assessed through a task requiring children to sequentially sort toys. Both age groups rated ambiguous clues as less helpful than unambiguous clues; however, school-age children were better able to detect ambiguity. Cognitive flexibility was related to preschool (but not school-age) children’s communicative ambiguity detection, when controlling for age and receptive language. Results suggest that cognitive flexibility may be particularly important for the initial development of ambiguity detection.

Social Communication is Predicted by Inhibitory Ability and ADHD Traits in Preschool-Aged Children: A Mediation Model.

Objective: Given the role inhibitory control plays in both ADHD and communication, this study examined whether inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive traits mediate the impact of weak inhibitory ability upon the knowledge and application of pragmatic rules early in development. Method: Participants were 36 typically developing preschoolers and their caregivers. ADHD traits were assessed per caregiver report. Inhibition was assessed in children using a distraction task. Pragmatic language was assessed by asking children about hypothetical social situations (knowledge) and by asking caregivers to report on children’s actual communicative behaviors (application). Results: Individual differences in inhibition predicted both facets of pragmatic language development. Hyperactive-impulsive behaviors were a significant mediator of this relationship—but only with regard to children’s ability to effectively apply pragmatic rules in everyday life. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that social communication difficulties in some young children are a downstream consequence of hyperactive-impulsive behaviors that arise from poorly developed inhibitory control.

Communicative Perspective-Taking Performance of Adults With ADHD Symptoms:

Objective: The ability to take the perspective of one’s conversational partner is essential for successful communication. Given the significant cognitive and attention resources required to use another’s perspective, the authors assessed whether adults who report symptoms of ADHD would have difficulty using their conversational partner’s visual perspective to guide their interpretations. Method: Adults with high (clinical range) or low (nonclinical range) self-reported ADHD symptoms participated in a communication task that required perspective-taking. Results: Eye movement measures revealed that individuals with high ADHD symptoms fixated on objects obscured from their partners’ view more often than did those participants with low ADHD symptoms, and the degree to which this “egocentric” object was considered correlated with the degree of inattention symptoms. However, overt behavior (object choice) was not impacted by ADHD symptomatology. Conclusion: Individuals with high levels of ADHD symptoms, especially inattention, are less efficient in their ability to use another’s perspective during conversation.

What’s That You’re Saying? Children With Better Executive Functioning Produce and Repair Communication More Effectively

ABSTRACT Young children often provide ambiguous referential statements. Thus, the ability to identify when miscommunication has occurred and subsequently repair messages is an essential component of communicative development. The present study examined the impact of listener feedback and children’s executive functioning in influencing children’s ability to repair their messages. Children (ages 4–6 years) completed a referential communication task, in which they described target pictures among an array of similar distractors for a confederate. Stimuli were designed such that children frequently provided ambiguous descriptions. Subsequently, the listener provided the children with feedback (detailed or vague) that they misunderstood the statement. Children also completed executive functioning tasks (working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility). Children with larger working memory capacities and better cognitive flexibility provided more effective initial descriptions of the targets. Children with better cognitive flexibility were also more effective at repairing their statements in response to feedback. Although children provided more effective repairs following detailed feedback (vs. vague feedback), this effect did not significantly interact with the cognitive skills of children. However, limited evidence emerged suggesting that cognitive flexibility may be more important when the listener provides vague feedback.

Depressive symptoms and use of perspective taking within a communicative context

Objective: The ability to take the perspective of ones conversational partner is essential for successful communication. We assessed whether individuals who report high levels of depressive symptoms have more difficulty with navigating this interpersonal task. Method: Undergraduate students participated in a computerised communication task that, on some trials, required perspective taking (N=125). Results: When participants were grouped according to their self-reported depressive symptoms, the “dysphoric group” (BDI ≥ 16, n=37) showed more errors than a “non-dysphoric group” (BDI ≤ 10, n=56) on trials requiring participants to use the perspective of the speaker, but not on control trials where perspective taking was not required. The dysphoric group demonstrated slower response times overall. Conclusions: Individuals with moderate to high levels of depressive symptoms are more challenged by using a speakers perspective to interpret statements.

Ratings of Everyday Executive Functioning (REEF): A Parent-Report Measure of Preschoolers' Executive Functioning Skills.

Executive functioning (EF) facilitates the development of academic, cognitive, and social-emotional skills and deficits in EF are implicated in a broad range of child psychopathologies. Although EF has clear implications for early development, the few questionnaires that assess EF in preschoolers tend to ask parents for global judgments of executive dysfunction and thus do not cover the full range of EF within the preschool age group. Here we present a new measure of preschoolers’ EF—the Ratings of Everyday Executive Functioning (REEF)—that capitalizes on parents’ observations of their preschoolers’ (i.e., 3- to 5-year-olds) behavior in specific, everyday contexts. Over 4 studies, items comprising the REEF were refined and the measure’s reliability and validity were evaluated. Factor analysis of the REEF yielded 1 factor, with items showing strong internal reliability. More important, children’s scores on the REEF related to both laboratory measures of EF and another parent-report EF questionnaire. Moreover, reflecting divergent validity, the REEF was more strongly related to measures of EF as opposed to measures of affective styles. The REEF also captured differences in children’s executive skills across the preschool years, and norms at 6-month intervals are reported. In summary, the REEF is a new parent-report measure that provides researchers with an efficient, valid, and reliable means of assessing preschoolers’ executive functioning.

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility.

ABSTRACT Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers’ words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers’ affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age childrens ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers’ affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers’ believability, “weird” speech), but not general characteristics (speakers’ friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.