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Descriptors:
Linguistics; English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Speech Communication; Multilingualism; Children; African Languages; Native Language; Pronunciation; Language Usage; French; Language Attitudes; Language Variation; Social Status

Abstract:
Monolingual English-speaking children in the United States express social preferences for speakers of their native language with a native accent. Here we explore the nature of children's language-based social preferences through research with children in South Africa, a multilingual nation. Like children in the United States, Xhosa South African children preferred speakers of their first language (Xhosa) to speakers of a foreign language (French). Thus, social preferences based on language are observed not only among children with limited exposure to cultural and linguistic variation but also among children living in a diverse linguistic environment. Moreover, Xhosa children attending school in English expressed social preferences for speakers of English over speakers of Xhosa, even when tested by a Xhosa-speaking experimenter. Thus, children's language-based social preferences do not depend exclusively on preferences for more familiar or intelligible speech but also extend to preferences for speech that may convey higher status in the child's society. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Infants; Social Behavior; Infant Behavior; Interpersonal Relationship; Nonverbal Communication; Child Development; Cognitive Ability

Abstract:
Young infants are sensitive to self-directed social actions, but do they appreciate the intentional, target-directed nature of such behaviors? The authors addressed this question by investigating infants' understanding of social gaze in third-party interactions (N = 104). Ten-month-old infants discriminated between 2 people in mutual versus averted gaze, and expected a person to look at her social partner during conversation. In contrast, 9-month-old infants showed neither ability, even when provided with information that highlighted the gazer's social goals. These results indicate considerable improvement in infants' abilities to analyze the social gaze of others toward the end of their 1st year, which may relate to their appreciation of gaze as both a social and goal-directed action. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Young Children; Geometric Concepts; Geometry; Spatial Ability; Testing; Cognitive Development; Mathematics Education; Task Analysis; Intuition

Abstract:
Geometry is one of the highest achievements of our species, but its foundations are obscure. Consistent with longstanding suggestions that geometrical knowledge is rooted in processes guiding navigation, the present study examines potential sources of geometrical knowledge in the navigation processes by which young children establish their sense of orientation. Past research reveals that children reorient both by the shape of the surface layout and the shapes of distinctive landmarks, but it fails to clarify what shape properties children use. The present study explores 2-year-old children's sensitivity to angle, length, distance and direction by testing disoriented children's search in a variety of fragmented rhombic and rectangular environments. Children reoriented themselves in accord with surface distances and directions, but they failed to use surface lengths or corner angles either for directional reorientation or as local landmarks. Thus, navigating children navigate by some but not all of the abstract properties captured by formal Euclidean geometry. While navigation systems may contribute to children's developing geometric understanding, they likely are not the sole source of abstract geometric intuitions. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Infants; Native Speakers; English (Second Language); Native Language; Video Technology; Second Language Learning; Toys; Games; Interaction; Young Children; Social Cognition; Cooperation

Abstract:
Infants learn from adults readily and cooperate with them spontaneously, but how do they select culturally appropriate teachers and collaborators? Building on evidence that children demonstrate social preferences for speakers of their native language, Experiment 1 presented 10-month-old infants with videotaped events in which a native and a foreign speaker introduced two different toys. When given a chance to choose between real exemplars of the objects, infants preferentially chose the toy modeled by the native speaker. In Experiment 2, 2.5-year-old children were presented with the same videotaped native and foreign speakers and played a game in which they could offer an object to one of two individuals. Children reliably gave to the native speaker. Together, the results suggest that infants and young children are selective social learners and cooperators and that language provides one basis for this selectivity. (Contains 1 figure and 1 footnote.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Blacks; Children; Race; Social Status; Racial Attitudes; Familiarity; Racial Identification; Foreign Countries; Multiracial Persons; Minority Groups; Group Dynamics; Social Influences; Whites; Age Differences; Gender Differences; Racial Differences

Abstract:
Minority-race children in North America and Europe often show less own-race favoritism than children of the majority (White) race, but the reasons for this asymmetry are unresolved. The present research tested South African children in order to probe the influences of group size, familiarity, and social status on children's race-based social preferences. We assessed South African children's preferences for members of their country's majority race (Blacks) compared to members of other groups, including Whites, who ruled South Africa until 1994 and who remain high in status. Black children (3-13 years) tested in a Black township preferred people of their own gender but not race. Moreover, Black, White, and multiracial children (4-9 years) tested in a racially diverse primary school showed in-group bias by gender but not by race: all favored people who were White. Relative familiarity and numerical majority/minority status therefore do not fully account for children's racial attitudes, which vary with the relative social status of different racial groups. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Evidence; Direct Instruction; Preschool Children; Teaching Methods; Discovery Learning; Evaluation Methods; Experiments; Observation

Abstract:
Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children's exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a naive adult demonstrated the function, and at baseline. Preschoolers in the pedagogical condition focused almost exclusively on the target function; by contrast, children in the other conditions explored broadly. In Experiment 2, we show that children restrict their exploration both after direct instruction to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction given to another child; they do not show this constraint after observing direct instruction given to an adult or after observing a non-pedagogical intentional action. We discuss these findings as the result of rational inductive biases. In pedagogical contexts, a teacher's failure to provide evidence for additional functions provides evidence for their absence; such contexts generalize from child to child (because children are likely to have comparable states of knowledge) but not from adult to child. Thus, pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information. (Contains 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Maps; Kindergarten; Geometric Concepts; Geometry; Young Children; Mathematical Concepts; Mathematical Logic; Navigation; Gender Differences; Spatial Ability

Abstract:
Geometrical concepts are critical to a host of human cognitive achievements, from maps to measurement to mathematics, and both the development of these concepts, and their variation by gender, have long been studied. Most studies of geometrical reasoning, however, present children with materials containing both geometric and non-geometric information, and with tasks that are open to multiple solution strategies. Here we present kindergarten children with a task requiring a focus on geometry: navigation in a small-scale space by a purely geometric map. Children spontaneously extracted and used relationships of both "distance" and "angle" in the maps, without prior demonstration, instruction, or feedback, but they failed to use the "sense" information that distinguishes an array from its mirror image. Children of both genders showed a common profile of performance, with boys showing no advantage on this task. These findings provide evidence that some map-reading abilities arise prior to formal instruction, are common to both genders, and are used spontaneously to guide children's spatial behavior. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Preschool Children; Navigation; Verbal Communication; Spatial Ability; Cognitive Processes; Language

Abstract:
Language has been linked to spatial representation and behavior in humans, but the nature of this effect is debated. Here, we test whether simple verbal expressions improve 4-year-old children's performance in a disoriented search task in a small rectangular room with a single red landmark wall. Disoriented children's landmark-guided search for a hidden object was dramatically enhanced when the experimenter used certain verbal expressions to designate the landmark during the hiding event. Both a spatial expression ("I'm hiding the sticker at the red/white wall") and a non-spatial but task-relevant expression ("The red/white wall can help you get the sticker") enhanced children's search, relative to uncued controls. By contrast, a verbal expression that drew attention to the landmark in a task-irrelevant manner ("Look at this pretty red/white wall") produced no such enhancement. These findings provide further evidence that language changes spatial behavior in children and illuminate one mechanism through which language exerts its effect: by helping children understand the relevance of landmarks for encoding locations. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Numbers; Infants; Brain; Number Concepts; Cognitive Processes; Cognitive Development; Neurological Organization; Responses; Child Development

Abstract:
Behavioral research suggests that two cognitive systems are at the foundations of numerical thinking: one for representing 1-3 objects in parallel and one for representing and comparing large, approximate numerical magnitudes. We tested for dissociable neural signatures of these systems in preverbal infants by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as 6-7.5-month-old infants (n = 32) viewed dot arrays containing either small (1-3) or large (8-32) sets of objects in a number alternation paradigm. If small and large numbers are represented by the same neural system, then the brain response to the arrays should scale with ratio for both number ranges, a behavioral and brain signature of the approximate numerical magnitude system obtained in animals and in human adults. Contrary to this prediction, a mid-latency positivity (P500) over parietal scalp sites was modulated by the ratio between successive large, but not small, numbers. Conversely, an earlier peaking positivity (P400) over occipital-temporal sites was modulated by the absolute cardinal value of small, but not large, numbers. These results provide evidence for two early developing systems of non-verbal numerical cognition: one that responds to small quantities as individual objects and a second that responds to large quantities as approximate numerical values. These brain signatures are functionally similar to those observed in previous studies of non-symbolic number with adults, suggesting that this dissociation may persist over vast differences in experience and formal training in mathematics. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Spatial Ability; Nonverbal Ability; Numbers; Geometric Concepts; Deafness; Adolescents; Linguistic Input

Abstract:
We studied the cognitive abilities of a 13-year-old deaf child, deprived of most linguistic input from late infancy, in a battery of tests designed to reveal the nature of numerical and geometrical abilities in the absence of a full linguistic system. Tests revealed widespread proficiency in basic symbolic and non-symbolic numerical computations involving the use of both exact and approximate numbers. Tests of spatial and geometrical abilities revealed an interesting patchwork of age-typical strengths and localized deficits. In particular, the child performed extremely well on navigation tasks involving geometrical or landmark information presented in isolation, but very poorly on otherwise similar tasks that required the combination of the two types of spatial information. Tests of number- and space-specific language revealed proficiency in the use of number words and deficits in the use of spatial terms. This case suggests that a full linguistic system is not necessary to reap the benefits of linguistic vocabulary on basic numerical tasks. Furthermore, it suggests that language plays an important role in the combination of mental representations of space. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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