Developmental Psychology

Petters, Dean David

doi: 10.1037/dev0000647pmid: 30489139

From his first attempts to explain attachment phenomena in the 1940s through his Attachment and Loss trilogy (Bowlby, 1969/1982, 1973, 1980), John Bowlby reformulated the theoretical underpinnings of attachment theory several times. He initially attempted to explain attachment phenomena in psychoanalytic terms. Then he invoked ethological theory in the explanation of how and why people behave as they do in close personal relationships. The mature theoretical framework that he presented between 1969 and 1982 in the attachment and loss trilogy retained strengths and insights, ultimately situating them within an overarching control systems framework. This article describes key stages in Bowlby’s theoretical development, with particular emphasis placed on the emergence of control systems theory as a cornerstone of the mature theory. It also compares Bowlby’s control systems approach to contemporary cognitive science approaches. It concludes by suggesting how Bowlby’s control systems formulation could evolve along the path opened up by contemporary work in computational modeling and how it could benefit by doing so.

Forbes, Samuel H.; Plunkett, Kim

doi: 10.1037/dev0000609pmid: 30489137

Previous research has highlighted the difficulty that infants have in learning to use color words. Even after acquiring the words themselves, infants are reported to use them incorrectly, or overextend their usage. We tested 146 infants from 5 different age groups on their knowledge of 6 basic color words, red, green, yellow, blue, black, and white, using an intermodal preferential looking task. The results showed that infants show reliable comprehension of color words as early as 19 months of age. No order of acquisition effects were observed. In addition, infants’ behavior in the task was facilitated by the provision of redundant noun information, “Look at the red car,” and even general referential noun phrases, “Look at the red one,” with greater looking to the target than when the color label was not presented in adjective position, “Look, red.” The findings indicate that color words may be learned with greater ease than previously thought, verifying recent parental reports showing similar findings. The findings also suggest that 19 month olds have already developed an expectation that color labels should occur in adjectival position.

Vilà-Giménez, Ingrid; Igualada, Alfonso; Prieto, Pilar

doi: 10.1037/dev0000604pmid: 30489138

Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive development. While beat gestures seem to have positive effects on the recall of information by preschoolers, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of observing beat gestures on the development of children’s narrative performance. We tested 44 5- and 6-year-old children in a between-subject study with a pretest–posttest design. After a pretest in which they were asked to retell the story of an animated cartoon they had watched, the children were exposed to a training session in which they observed an adult telling a total of 6 1-min stories under 2 between-subject experimental conditions: (a) a no-beat condition, where focal elements in the narratives were not highlighted by means of beat gestures; and (b) a beat condition, in which focal elements were highlighted by beat gestures. After the training session, a posttest was administered following the same procedure as the pretest. Narrative structure scores were independently coded from recordings of the pretest and posttest and subjected to statistical comparisons. The results revealed that children who were exposed to the beat condition showed a higher gain in narrative structure scores. This study thus shows for the first time that a brief training session with beat gestures has immediate benefits for children’s narrative discourse performance.

Loucks, Jeff; Price, Heather L.

doi: 10.1037/dev0000637pmid: 30407022

Executing actions in a specific order is a critical component of many action sequences that children must acquire, the majority of which are learned through observation and imitation of others. Although a wealth of evidence indicates that children can process and represent temporal order in memory, relatively little is known about the development of this ability and the cognitive mechanisms that support it in the context of imitation. The present research investigated 4- through 8-year-old children’s ability to learn the temporal order of novel, arbitrary action sequences via imitation. On Day 1, children observed and imitated four instances each for two different multistep sequences. One sequence was easy and the other was difficult, in terms of categorizing the items used in each instance. For one sequence, the experimenter also performed one instance in a deviant temporal order, which occurred either early or late in learning. Memory generalization for each sequence was assessed on Day 2. Results indicated significant effects of age and sequence difficulty on children’s ability to recall the individual actions as well as the standard order. Experiencing the deviant order also uniquely disrupted children’s ability to generalize the order. Experiencing the deviant early in learning globally lowered children’s memory for both sequences. Thus, children’s ability to learn temporal order develops slowly over childhood, is supported by foundational cognitive processes that operate in a hierarchical fashion, and is highly sensitive to variable temporal input. These results have implications for theories of imitation and cultural learning more broadly.

Rizzo, Michael T.; Li, Leon; Burkholder, Amanda R.; Killen, Melanie

doi: 10.1037/dev0000635pmid: 30474997

In a hidden inequality context, resource allocators and resource recipients are unaware that an unknowingly advantaged recipient possesses resources. The present study presented children aged 3–13 years (N = 121) with a hidden inequality vignette involving an accidental transgression in which one resource claimant, who unknowingly possessed more resources than another claimant, made an “unintentional false claim” to resources. This unintentional false claim resulted in depriving another recipient of needed resources. Results revealed that children’s ability to accurately identify the claimant’s intentions was related to how they evaluated and reasoned about resource claims, a previously understudied aspect of resource allocation contexts. Children’s attributions of intentions to the accidental transgressor mediated the relationship between age and evaluations of the accidental transgression and the relationship between age and assignment of punishment to the accidental transgressor. With age, children who negatively evaluated the unintentional false claim shifted from reasoning about lying to a focus on negligence on the part of the unintentional false claimant. This shift reflects an increasing understanding of the accidental transgressor’s benign intentions. These findings highlight how mental state knowledge and moral reasoning inform children’s comprehension of resource allocation contexts.

Bass, Ilona; Gopnik, Alison; Hanson, Mason; Ramarajan, Dhaya; Shafto, Patrick; Wellman, Henry; Bonawitz, Elizabeth

doi: 10.1037/dev0000642pmid: 30570296

Natural pedagogy emerges early in development, but good teaching requires tailoring evidence to learners’ knowledge. How does the ability to reason about others’ minds support early pedagogical evidence selection abilities? In 3 experiments (N = 205), we investigated preschool-aged children’s ability to consider others’ knowledge when selecting evidence in the service of teaching. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that 4-year-olds reliably selected evidence to rectify others’ false beliefs, and provided causal explanations in their teaching, whereas 3-year-olds did not. In Experiment 2, we tie children’s evidence selection abilities to theory of mind (ToM) development, above and beyond effects of age and numerical conservation abilities. In Experiment 3, we employed a 6-week training of children’s pedagogical evidence selection with a new teaching task, and further explored the relationship between these skills and children’s ToM abilities. We qualitatively replicated our results from Experiment 2 and report tentative evidence for a link between the pedagogical training and improvements in ToM. Together, our findings suggest important connections between reasoning about others’ minds and evidential reasoning in natural pedagogy during early childhood.

Ahl, Richard E.; Duong, Shirley; Dunham, Yarrow

doi: 10.1037/dev0000643pmid: 30525834

Previous research has found that even young children accurately assign wealth labels (e.g., rich or poor) to real-world wealth symbols, such as pictures of houses. However, it is unclear whether children spontaneously consider individuals’ wealth status when predicting how they will behave toward others. In Study 1, children (n = 100, ages 4–5 and 7–8) predicted that residents of “rich” houses would be likelier to share toys than residents of “poor” houses. This effect was driven by children who viewed rich-house residents as owning more toys. Study 2 (n = 50) suggested that such children were not merely associating attractive objects with attractive behaviors. Rather, it seems that they possessed a conceptual understanding of wealth, which they used to make behavioral predictions. The belief that the rich are likely to share may relate to broader wealth-based preferences and may be elicited more frequently in children who spontaneously notice others’ wealth status.

O’Leary, Allison P.; Sloutsky, Vladimir M.

doi: 10.1037/dev0000645pmid: 30525831

It is often argued that metacognition includes 2 components: monitoring and control. However, it is unclear whether these components can operate independently, or whether they always operate as part of a hierarchy. The current study attempts to address this issue. In Experiment 1 (N = 90), age-related differences were assessed to examine the developmental trajectories of monitoring and control in 5- and 7-year-old children and adults. In Experiment 2 (N = 90) and Experiment 3 (N = 90), a scaffolding approach was taken with the same age groups to investigate correspondences in intervention-related changes in monitoring and control. Several dissociations between monitoring and control were found: In Experiment 2, strategy instruction affected metacognitive control, but not metacognitive monitoring, whereas in Experiment 3, performance feedback affected metacognitive monitoring, but not metacognitive control. These findings suggest that the monitoring and control components of metacognition can operate independently, challenging simple feed-forward models of metacognition.

Rapp, Diotima J.; Engelmann, Jan M.; Herrmann, Esther; Tomasello, Michael

doi: 10.1037/dev0000639pmid: 30525833

Reputational concerns are known to promote cooperation. Individuals regularly act more prosocially when their behavior is observable by others. Here, we investigate 4- and 5-year-old (N = 144) children’s reputational strategies in a competitive group setting. The aim of the current study was to explore whether children’s sharing behavior is affected by the future possibility of being singled out publicly as the most generous or, alternatively, the least generous member of the group. Children were told that they could share stickers with other children and that the picture of either the (1) most generous or (2) least generous donor would be displayed publicly. In both conditions, children shared significantly more than in a control condition. Moreover, 5-year-old, but not 4-year-old children’s sharing was affected more by the possibility of being presented as the most generous than being presented as the least generous member of the group. This study is the first to show that children as young as 4 invest in their future reputation and that by age 5 children flexibly apply different reputational strategies depending on context.

Laninga-Wijnen, Lydia; Gremmen, Mariola C.; Dijkstra, Jan Kornelis; Veenstra, René; Vollebergh, Wilma A. M.; Harakeh, Zeena

doi: 10.1037/dev0000611pmid: 30550323

This study examined the role of academic status norms in friendship selection and influence processes related to academic achievement across the 2nd year of secondary school (SNARE project; N = 1,549 students from 70 classes; Mage = 13.69 years). Academic status norms were operationalized as the class-level correlation between academic achievement and 4 types of peer status: popularity, acceptance, unpopularity, and rejection. Longitudinal social network analyses indicated that the unpopularity and popularity norm play a role in friendship selection processes (but not influence processes) related to academic achievement. In line with our hypotheses, the unpopularity norm in the classroom strengthened similarity-based friendship selection among low-achieving adolescents and predicted greater avoidance of academically similar friends among high-achieving adolescents. Also, the popularity norm strengthened friendship selection among similar peers, both among low and high achievers. Acceptance and rejection norms did not play a role in friendship processes. In sum, the average achievement of popular and unpopular peers shapes friendship preferences in the classroom, which may have important implications for adolescent academic development.