Judith H. Danovitch

Circumscribed Interests in Higher Functioning Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Exploratory Study

Circumscribed interests are a fascinating and an understudied phenomenon in some individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Research in this area is likely to contribute to our understanding of ASDs and to advancing developmental knowledge on learning processes used to adapt to the demands of everyday social life. This study reports on a survey of special interests in 96 children and adolescents with higher functioning ASD. The survey included listing of up to three special interests for each child, and the rating of level of interference of a given interest upon childrens activities when by themselves and when in contact with family members, peers, and other adults. This information was collected for both preschool and elementary school years. Special interests were classified into eight categories in terms of their nature (rather than topic), which included the ways through which the interest was manifest and pursued. Results indicated that circumscribed interests (a) are the norm rather than the exception in this population (75% and 88% of the sample for the younger and the older age periods, respectively), (b) most frequently involve verbal learning and memorization of facts (65% and 81% for the younger and the older age periods, respectively), (c) often involve an element of interest in letters and numbers in the preschool years (35% of the sample), (d) greatly interfere with activities pursued by oneself or with others, and (e) level of interference is predictive of lower social and communicative adaptive behavior later in life. Given the ubiquity of circumscribed interests in this population, their verbal nature, and the passion that children with ASD invest in these pursuits, we suggest the need for studies that will trace the longitudinal course of learning profiles from early childhood and possible interventions that may address these areas.

Brain rCBF and performance in visual imagery tasks: Common and distinct processes

The present study was designed to discover whether variations in normalised regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in different brain areas predict variations in performance of different imagery tasks. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to assess brain activity as 16 participants performed four imagery tasks. These tasks were designed so that performance was particularly sensitive to the participants ability to form images with high resolution, to generate images from distinct segments, to parse imaged forms into parts while inspecting them, or to transform (rotate) images. Response times and error rates were recorded. Multiple regression analyses revealed that variations in most brain areas predicted variations in performance of only one task, thus demonstrating that the four tasks tap largely independent imagery processes. However, we also found that some underlying processes were recruited by more than one task, particularly those implemented in the occipito‐parietal sulcus, the medial frontal cortex, and Area 18.

How familiar characters influence children's judgments about information and products.

Children are exposed to advertisements and products that incorporate familiar characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder, virtually from birth. How does the presence of these characters influence childrens judgments about information and products? Three experiments (N=125) explored how 4-year-olds evaluate messages from familiar characters and how their trust in a familiar characters testimony relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed objective and subjective claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a perceptually similar but unfamiliar character even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Children also preferred low-quality products bearing a familiar characters image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time (whereas control groups preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of the time when they did not include a character image). These findings suggest that young children are powerfully influenced by familiar characters encountered in the media, leaving them vulnerable to advertising messages and clouding their judgments about products.

Neural evidence for enhanced attention to mistakes among school-aged children with a growth mindset

Individuals who believe intelligence is malleable (a growth mindset) are better able to bounce back from failures than those who believe intelligence is immutable. Event-related potential (ERP) studies among adults suggest this resilience is related to increased attention allocation to errors. Whether this mechanism is present among young children remains unknown, however. We therefore evaluated error-monitoring ERPs among 123 school-aged children while they completed a child-friendly go/no-go task. As expected, higher attention allocation to errors (indexed by larger error positivity, Pe) predicted higher post-error accuracy. Moreover, replicating adult work, growth mindset was related to greater attention to mistakes (larger Pe) and higher post-error accuracy. Exploratory moderation analyses revealed that growth mindset increased post-error accuracy for children who did not attend to their errors. Together, these results demonstrate the combined role of growth mindset and neural mechanisms of attention allocation in bouncing back after failure among young children.

Children Show Selective Trust in Technological Informants

Although children are often exposed to technological devices early in life, little is known about how they evaluate these novel sources of information. In two experiments, children aged 3, 4, and 5 years old (n = 92) were presented with accurate and inaccurate computer informants, and they subsequently relied on information provided by the previously accurate computer to identify novel objects and answer questions about unfamiliar facts. In a third experiment, 4- and 5-year-olds also expressed a preference for using the accurate computer to find answers on their own and for explaining the inaccurate computers errors as a function of problems with the device, rather than errors on the part of the human user. These results suggest that young children use prior history of accuracy as a domain-general means of evaluating informants and that children can apply this understanding outside of interactions with other people.

Children’s success at detecting circular explanations and their interest in future learning

These studies explore elementary-school-aged children’s ability to evaluate circular explanations and whether they respond to receiving weak explanations by expressing interest in additional learning. In the first study, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds (n = 53) heard why questions about unfamiliar animals. For each question, they rated the quality of single explanations and later selected the best explanation between pairs of circular and noncircular explanations. When judging single explanations, 8- and 10-year-olds, and to some extent 6-year-olds, provided higher ratings for noncircular explanations compared to circular ones. When selecting between pairs of explanations, all age groups preferred noncircular explanations to circular ones, but older children did so more consistently than 6-year-olds. Children who recognized the weakness of the single circular explanations were more interested in receiving additional information about the question topics. In Study 2, all three age groups (n = 87) provided higher ratings for noncircular explanations compared to circular ones when listening to responses to how questions, but older children showed a greater distinction in their ratings than 6-year-olds. Moreover, the link between recognizing circular explanations as weak and interest in future learning could not be accounted for solely by individual differences in verbal intelligence. These findings illustrate the developmental trajectory of explanation evaluation and support that recognition of weak explanations is linked to interest in future learning across the elementary years. Implications for education are discussed.

Does a Male Nurse Know about Football? American and Egyptian Children’s Understanding of Gender and Expertise

Abstract Three experiments explore how American (n=102) and Egyptian (n=73) preschoolers’ inferences about expertise are affected by an expert’s gender and occupation. Children viewed a nurse and a car mechanic in a gender stereotypical (female nurse, male mechanic) or counterstereotypical (female mechanic, male nurse) presentation and indicated who would know more about profession-related information and gender-stereotypical activities. American children inferred expert knowledge primarily based on the expert’s profession, regardless of gender. Egyptian children also made correct attributions about professional expertise, but they were more likely to be influenced by an expert’s gender than their American counterparts. Additionally, both American and Egyptian children were less likely to attribute stereotypical male knowledge to a male in a counterstereotypical profession. These results suggest that culturally mediated stereotypes affect preschool children’s social cognitive judgments. Implications for the development of gender stereotypes are discussed.

Intelligence and Neurophysiological Markers of Error Monitoring Relate to Children's Intellectual Humility

This study explored developmental and individual differences in intellectual humility (IH) among 127 children ages 6-8. IH was operationalized as childrens assessment of their knowledge and willingness to delegate scientific questions to experts. Children completed measures of IH, theory of mind, motivational framework, and intelligence, and neurophysiological measures indexing early (error-related negativity [ERN]) and later (error positivity [Pe]) error-monitoring processes related to cognitive control. Childrens knowledge self-assessment correlated with question delegation, and older children showed greater IH than younger children. Greater IH was associated with higher intelligence but not with social cognition or motivational framework. ERN related to self-assessment, whereas Pe related to question delegation. Thus, children show separable epistemic and social components of IH that may differentially contribute to metacognition and learning.

Understanding When and How Explanation Promotes Exploration

Receiving and generating explanations is fundamental to children’s acquisition of scientific concepts. Explanations not only support conceptual change, but they can also promote further exploration and learning. For explanations to lead to exploration, children must first recognize when the explanations that they encounter are faulty or unsatisfactory. Recognizing gaps in explanatory knowledge is a powerful motivator for children’s interest in seeking out additional information to fill those gaps. However, not all children react to explanations in the same way. The likelihood of engaging in exploration may reflect individual differences in children’s background knowledge and their willingness to incorporate new information into their existing beliefs. Children’s responses to explanations may also be influenced by their prior experiences at home, and in their society. Understanding when and how explanations lead to exploration has important implications for education, particularly in the sciences.

Adults’ and Children’s Understanding of How Expertise Influences Learning

Adults and children use information about expertise to infer what a person is likely to know, but it is unclear whether they realize that expertise also has implications for learning. We explore adults’ and children’s understanding that expertise in a particular category supports learning about a closely related category. In four experiments, 5-year-olds and adults (n = 160) judged which of two people would be better at learning about a new category. When faced with an expert and a nonexpert, adults consistently indicated that expertise supports learning in a closely related category; however, children’s judgments were inconsistent and were strongly influenced by the description of the nonexpert. The results suggest that although children understand what it means to be an expert, they may judge an individual’s learning capacity based on different considerations than adults.