Robin N. Campbell

Testing face processing skills in children

We describe a set of face processing tests suitable for use with children aged from 4 to 10 years, which include tests of expression, lipreading and gaze processing as well as identification. The tests can be administered on paper or using a computer, and comparisons between the performance on computer- and paper-based versions suggest that format of administration makes little difference. We present results obtained from small samples of children at four different age groups (Study 1, computer-based tests), and larger samples at three age groups (Study 2, paper-based tests) from preschool to 10 years of age. The tests were found to be developmentally sensitive. There were quite strong correlations between performance on different tests of the same face processing ability (e.g. gaze processing), and generally rather weaker correlations between tests of different abilities.

Lexical Acquisition Strategies in the Preschool Child

Rachel was a subject in one of the studies we shall be reporting in this chapter. This sentence was taken from a natural play session in the nursery Rachel was attending. She was informing another playmate (who had not taken part in our study) that calling the novel toy animal a cow 1 was incorrect—an overextension, in other words. What information had allowed Rachel to make this inference? What inference had Rachel made? Was patas (a nonsense word in our study) a label for all unknown toy animals or all unknown toys? Or had she progressed further in mapping out the meaning of this new lexical item? If Rachel had identified a range of items for which she regarded this new lexical item as appropriate, what hypotheses had she developed in the process? Were these hypotheses similar to those used by her peers who participated in the same study?

Conservation Accidents Revisited

McGarrigle and Donaldsons (1975) claim that the Genevan conservation test procedure underestimates the childs cognitive competence is examined. Experiment 1 reports a successful replication of their original work. We then consider several objections to McGarrigle and Donaldsons claim that the tasks they used did in fact test the childs ability to conserve number. Firstly, as only four counters were used in their study the childs judgment of numerosity could have been perceptually rather than conceptually based (Winer 1974). Secondly, teddy may have acted as a distracting agent leading the child to ignore the post-transformational state of the arrays and to answer the experimenters post-transformational question (correctly) by mere repetition of his earlier response. In experiment 2 a procedure which is free from these objections, but otherwise similar to McGarrigle and Donaldsons procedure, is employed, together with appropriate comparison conditions. This procedure results in a decrease in the overall incidence of conservation responses, but fails to eradicate the difference between accidental and intentional transformation of the arrays (p < 0.001). In the final part of the paper we consider the implications of these and McGarrigle and Donaldsons results for our understanding of the social psychology of the conservation task.

The ability of three- to four-year-old children to use a map in a large-scale environment

This paper reports a study which investigated the ability of three- and four-year-old children to use a map as a spatial representation. Recent research has demonstrated that young children can use simple maps to find a location in an experimental room or follow a route in a large-scale environment. The aim of this study was to extend previous research by asking young children to use a map when finding an object in a large-scale maze. Four hiding places were used which varied in terms of their spatial relations to nearby landmarks and the degree to which the children had to re-orientate themselves within the maze. The data collected from 36 children revealed a significant improvement in the childrens performance with age. The ability of the threeyear-old children and the four-year-old children to use a map was dependent on the location of the hiding place inside the maze.

The Relationship between Comprehension and Production and Its Ontogenesis

It is a commonplace psycholinguistic observation that comprehension and production are not equivalent functions. In considering the development of these functions in the young child we have evidence that points in several directions, whether we look at phonology, syntax or lexis. In the realm of lexis — to which our observations will be confined — Huttenlocher (1974) and Benedict (1979) have shown that one-year-olds comprehend several words that they do not produce. However, when such words do begin to be produced their ranges of application often exceed the comprehension ranges — a result confirmed by Thomson & Chapman (1977). Although now such words are produced more freely than they are comprehended, it is not said that this development presents a case of production leading comprehension, since in the data so far examined comprehension is conventionally accurate while production is typically overextended. This neatly illustrates the fact that in describing the development of these functions we are dealing with two dinstinct ideals:- (a) coincidence of the ranges of application of a word in comprehension and production, and (b) correspondence of the ranges with the adult range.

Ancient and medieval experiments on child language: a comment on Bonvillian, Garber and Dell (1997)

A recent paper published by Bonvillian, Garber & Dell (1997) examines one ancient and two medieval studies of childrens language development, whereby children were allegedly isolated from hearing any spoken language in order to discover what, if any, language the children would come to produce. Bonvillian et al. consider studies attributed to Psamtik I, an Egyptian Pharaoh in the seventh century BC; to James IV of Scotland in the fifteenth century AD; and to Akbar the Great, Mogul Emperor in India, in the sixteenth century AD. Bonvillian et al. conclude, correctly, that the Akbar study did take place. However, their contention that the Akbar study indicates that a system of gestural communication is a precursor to language is, in our view, unwarranted. Here, we criticize the paper by Bonvillian et al. on three grounds: it fails to mention previously published research on the topic; it fails to mention another medieval study attributed to Frederick II, King of Sicily, in the thirteenth century ad; and its contention that gestural communication is a precursor to language is not supported by reference to the primary sources on Akbars study.

Contextual salience and colour adjectives

first guesses about whether those names refer to objects or substances? Recent research on children’s categorization suggests that children differentiate concrete objects from non-solid substances (Dickinson 1988, Soja, Carey & Spelke 1991) and that their initial hypotheses about the meanings of new words are affected by this knowledge of ontological categories. Our hypothesis is that in the absence of explicit information about the functional characteristics of referents, children in these studies may have drawn on perceptual information like shape to infer whether new names referred to whole ’objects’ or to ’substances’. Seventy-two 3and 4-year-olds