Journal of experimental child psychology
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J Exp Child Psychol · May 2014
Formal and informal home learning activities in relation to children's early numeracy and literacy skills: the development of a home numeracy model.
The purpose of this study was to propose and test a model of children's home numeracy experience based on Sénéchal and LeFevre's home literacy model (Child Development, 73 (2002) 445-460). Parents of 183 children starting kindergarten in the fall (median child age=58 months) completed an early home learning experiences questionnaire. Most of the children whose parents completed the questionnaire were recruited for numeracy and literacy testing 1 year later (along with 32 children from the inner city). ⋯ Parental reports of formal home numeracy practices (e.g., practicing simple sums) predicted children's symbolic number system knowledge, whereas reports of informal exposure to games with numerical content (measured indirectly through parents' knowledge of children's games) predicted children's non-symbolic arithmetic, as did numeracy attitudes (e.g., parents' enjoyment of numeracy). The home literacy results replicated past findings; parental reports of formal literacy practices (e.g., helping their children to read words) predicted children's word reading, whereas reports of informal experiences (i.e., frequency of shared reading measured indirectly through parents' storybook knowledge) predicted children's vocabulary. These findings support a multifaceted model of children's early numeracy environment, with different types of early home experiences (formal and informal) predicting different numeracy outcomes.
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J Exp Child Psychol · Oct 2013
The role of the efficiency of novel actions in infants' goal anticipation.
In two experiments, we recorded infants' eye movements to test whether the efficiency of the action influences infants' ability to anticipate the outcome of an ongoing action performed by abstract figures. In Experiment 1, we found that predictive eye movements were elicited by both nonefficient and efficient actions, but anticipation of the outcome occurred much earlier in the efficient action condition. ⋯ We found that when automatic extrapolation was prevented and the goal was not salient, infants showed predictive gaze shifts only in the efficient action condition. Taken together, our findings support the importance of teleological inferences in anticipating the goals of ongoing actions.
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J Exp Child Psychol · May 2013
The effects of social comparison on social emotions and behavior during childhood: the ontogeny of envy and Schadenfreude predicts developmental changes in equity-related decisions.
Social comparison can elicit emotions such as envy, which can affect social interactions. The emergence and development of such social emotions through ontogeny, and their influence on social interaction, are unknown. We tested 182 children from 7 to 13 years of age with a novel monetary reward-and-punishment task measuring envy and Schadenfreude (i.e., gloating or taking delight in someone else's misfortune). ⋯ We found an age-related increase in inequity aversion and decrease in spite. Crucially, age-related changes in both envy and Schadenfreude predicted the developmental change in equity-related decisions. These findings shed light on the development of social emotions and demonstrate their importance in the development of prosocial behavior in children.
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Research suggests that emotions influence children's ability to discern fantasy from reality; however, reasons for this association remain unknown. The current research sought to better understand the mechanisms underlying children's distinctions by examining the roles discrete emotions and context have in 3- to 5-year-olds' evaluations of fantasy and reality. In Study 1, children's fantasy-reality distinctions of images depicting happy, frightening, or sad events were obtained under two conditions: Children responded freely or were motivated to respond accurately. ⋯ When motivated to respond accurately, children's accuracy improved for fantasy but not for reality. Study 2 examined real events exclusively and found that children may lack the knowledge that frightening, but not happy or sad, real events can occur. The findings provide new insight into how emotions affect children's fantasy-reality distinctions.
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J Exp Child Psychol · Jun 2012
Comparative StudyCounterfactually mediated emotions: a developmental study of regret and relief in a probabilistic gambling task.
Regret and relief are related to counterfactual thinking and rely on comparison processes between what has been and what might have been. In this article, we study the development of regret and relief from late childhood to adulthood (11.2-20.2 years), and we examine how these two emotions affect individuals' willingness to retrospectively reconsider their choice in a computerized monetary gambling task. We asked participants to choose between two "wheels of fortune" that differed in the amount of gain and loss expected and the probability of winning. ⋯ Regret affects participants' willingness to modify their initial choice, but this desire is stronger for adults than for children. In children, the experience of regret seems to be dissociated from the willingness to reconsider a choice. This study provides the first evidence that the ability to experience counterfactually mediated emotions, such as regret and relief, and the ability to take them into consideration continue to develop during late childhood and adolescence.