Sabina Pauen

The role of functional information for infant categorization

This report examines whether knowledge about function influences the formation of artifact categories in 11-12- month old infants. Using an object-examination task, a set of artificial stimuli was presented that could either be grouped according to overall similarity or according to similarity in one functionally relevant part. Experiment 1 revealed that infants categorized the objects according to overall similarity but not part similarity under control conditions. Experiment 2 showed that after having seen the experimenter demonstrating the functional use of the critical part, infants later categorized the stimuli according to part similarity. When the same actions were performed without producing any effect, infants failed to categorize according to the critical part. This set of findings suggests that 11-12-month old infants use functional information as a cue to categorization.

Cognitive development in very vs. moderately to late preterm and full-term children: Can effortful control account for group differences in toddlerhood?

BACKGROUND Preterm birth is thought to have an adverse impact on cognitive development and self-regulation. AIM Examining the effect of very vs. moderately to late premature birth on cognitive development and effortful control, as well as evaluating whether effortful control explains the link between preterm birth and poorer cognitive development. SUBJECTS Fifty-eight very preterm children (<32 weeks gestation or <1500 g birth weight), 88 moderately to late preterm children (≥32 weeks gestation and ≥1500 birth weight) and 86 full-term children (≥38 weeks gestation and ≥2500 g birth weight) were examined at the corrected age of 24 months. OUTCOME MEASURES Observational and parent-report measures of effortful control as well as the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID II, Mental Scale) as a measurement of cognitive development were analyzed. RESULTS Very preterm and moderately to late preterm children showed significantly lower cognitive performance compared to full-term children. Lower effortful control scores (on observational measures, but not on parent-reports) were merely found for very preterm children compared to full-term children. Observational measures of effortful control partially mediated the effects of very preterm birth on cognitive performance, but did not explain the effects of moderately to late preterm birth on cognitive performance. CONCLUSION Preterm birth in general is related to poorer cognitive performance in toddlerhood. In addition, effortful control mediates the effects of very preterm birth on cognitive development. Findings suggest that different mechanisms link moderately to late premature birth to poor cognitive development.

Entwicklungspsychologie im Kindes- und Jugendalter

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The role of social interaction and pedagogical cues for eliciting and reducing overimitation in preschoolers

price are net prices, subject to local VAT. Prices indicated with * include VAT for books; the €(D) includes 7% for Germany, the €(A) includes 10% for Austria. Prices indicated with ** include VAT for electronic products; 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria. All prices exclusive of carriage charges. Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. R. Siegler, N. Eisenberg, J. DeLoache, J. Saffran S. Pauen (Hrsg.) Entwicklungspsychologie im Kindesund Jugendalter

Negative reactivity in toddlers born prematurely: Indirect and moderated pathways considering self-regulation, neonatal distress and parenting stress

The tendency to imitate causally irrelevant actions is termed overimitation. Here we investigated (a) whether communication of a model performing irrelevant actions is necessary to elicit overimitation in preschoolers and (b) whether communication of another model performing an efficient action modulates the subsequent reduction of overimitation. In the study, 5-year-olds imitated irrelevant actions both when they were modeled by a communicative and pedagogical experimenter and when they were modeled by a non-communicative and non-pedagogical experimenter. However, children stopped using the previously learned irrelevant actions only when they were subsequently shown the more efficient way to achieve the goal by a pedagogical experimenter. Thus, communication leads preschoolers to adapt their imitative behavior but does not seem to affect overimitation in the first place. Results are discussed with regard to the importance of communication for the transmission of cultural knowledge during development.

Cross-modal mapping of visual and acoustic displays in infants: The effect of dynamic and static components

High negative reactivity in early childhood interferes with later academic and behavioral adjustment. Thus, investigating the origins of high negative affectivity in early childhood is of high relevance for understanding emotional morbidity after preterm birth. The present work explored (1) direct prematurity-related consequences for negative reactivity, (2) self-regulatory deficits as a mechanism indirectly relating prematurity to negative affectivity and (3) the implications of the interplay between procedural distress in the neonatal period and parenting stress for preterm childrens negative reactivity. The sample was comprised of 146 preterm children (very vs. moderately to late preterm) and 86 healthy full-term children, both free of major neurological impairment. Assessment involved negative affect and parenting stress (parent-report; 12, 24 months corrected age, CA), effortful control (behavioral battery, parent report; 24 months CA) and the number of potentially distressing neonatal intensive care procedures as well as severity of illness during the neonatal period (retrospective chart review). There was no direct link from prematurity to a disposition for high negative reactivity in early childhood nor was prematurity indirectly associated with higher negative reactivity through lower levels of effortful control. The relation between neonatal pain and distress and negative affectivity depended on the level of parenting stress with low parenting stress at the end of the first year of childrens life buffering the negative influence of neonatal distress. The present findings underscore the importance of complex interactions among environmental factors in processes of emotional plasticity after preterm birth thereby providing critical suggestions for follow-up care.

Speed and direction changes induce the perception of animacy in 7-month-old infants.

Children as well as adults make certain links between the visual and the acoustic domain. For example, higher pitched sounds are typically associated with visual stimuli that are brighter, smaller, and higher in space than those associated with sounds of lower pitch. The present study explored the existence of such links in infancy. More specifically, we investigated the relation between visuospatial height and auditory pitch in 7- to 12-month-olds, varying systematically the format of stimulus presentation. Presenting dynamic visual and acoustic stimuli led to positive findings relying on anticipatory looking measures: While listening to an ascending tone, infants looked longer where they had previously seen an upwards moving circle. While listening to a descending tone, they looked longer where they had previously seen a downwards moving circle. When static tones were combined with static visual stimuli in the same kind of display, no corresponding findings were obtained. Thus, the present work suggests that preverbal infants do not generally associate spatial location and pitch but do so systematically when dynamic stimuli are presented.

Cognitive development in 7- to 24-month-old extremely/very-to-moderately/late preterm and full-term born infants: The mediating role of focused attention

A large body of research has documented infants’ ability to classify animate and inanimate objects based on static or dynamic information. It has been shown that infants less than 1 year of age transfer animacy-specific expectations from dynamic point-light displays to static images. The present study examined whether basic motion cues that typically trigger judgments of perceptual animacy in older children and adults lead 7-month-olds to infer an ambiguous object’s identity from dynamic information. Infants were tested with a novel paradigm that required inferring the animacy status of an ambiguous moving shape. An ambiguous shape emerged from behind a screen and its identity could only be inferred from its motion. Its motion pattern varied distinctively between scenes: it either changed speed and direction in an animate way, or it moved along a straight path at a constant speed (i.e., in an inanimate way). At test, the identity of the shape was revealed and it was either consistent or inconsistent with its motion pattern. Infants looked longer on trials with the inconsistent outcome. We conclude that 7-month-olds’ representations of animates and inanimates include category-specific associations between static and dynamic attributes. Moreover, these associations seem to hold for simple dynamic cues that are considered minimal conditions for animacy perception.

The Effects of a “Family” Analogy on Class Inclusion Reasoning by Young Children

The present study analyzed the links between prematurity, attention, and global cognitive performance in infancy and early childhood. At 7 months, focused attention (FA) was examined with an object examination task in 93 preterm infants (39 of them born extremely/very preterm, 54 born moderately/late preterm, and 38 infants born full-term). Global cognition was assessed at 7 and 24 months with the Bayley-II cognitive scale. Groups did not differ with respect to global cognitive performance but FA of infants born extremely/very preterm was significantly lower than in infants born moderately/late preterm. FA correlated significantly with both prematurity and cognitive performance at 7 months of age but not with global cognition in childhood. Findings point to a subtle adverse effect of prematurity on early attention and reveal evidence for the mediating role of FA on the effect of prematurity on cognition.

Event-related potentials for 7-month-olds' processing of animals and furniture items.

This paper investigates the role of analogies in logical reasoning as an important aspect of scientific thinking. In particular, we studied the role of analogical reasoning in the solution of Piagetian concrete operational tasks. Halford (1993) has suggested that 4- to 5-year olds should be able to solve Piagetian class inclusion tasks on the basis of analogies to the relational structure of the nuclear family. This idea was tested in two studies. Analogy effects on class inclusion reasoning were indeed found. These effects were strengthened by the provision of hints to use an analogy and by deeper initial processing of the relational structure of the analogy. The family analogy was applied equally to sets of natural kinds and artifacts. These results suggest that children use familiar relational structures as a basis for logical reasoning. It seems likely that analogies will be core to scientific reasoning as well.