Browsing by Subject "Cognitive development"
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Item The art of convention : cognitive foundations of cultural learning(2013-12) Clegg, Jennifer Marie; Legare, Cristine H.While much research has explored the role of imitation in children’s learning of instrumental skills (Call et al., 2005; Carpenter et al., 2002; Gleissner et al., 2000; Lyons et al., 2007; Whiten et al., 2009), very little is known about the link between imitation and the acquisition of cultural conventional behavior. New research suggests that children rely on a variety of social and contextual cues when determining when to imitate with high or low fidelity and that these cues may reflect children’s interpretation of a task as either instrumental or conventional (Herrmann et al., 2013). Previous work examining children’s imitation has primarily used either unfamiliar, causally opaque object manipulation tasks (Herrmann et al., 2013) or complex instrumental tasks that make use of materials used in novel ways (Lyons et al., 2007; Williamson & Meltzoff, 2011), but research has yet to explore children’s imitation when presented with a causally accessible and familiar instrumental task. Drawing from an oft-observed classroom craft, the present study examined children’s reasoning about a necklace-making task when they were presented with either a conventional or an instrumental framing for the task and the cognitive consequences of this reasoning.Item Children’s psychological and moral attributions to a humanoid robot(2015-08) Lopez-Mobilia, Gabriel; Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Echols, Catherine H; Markman, Arthur B; Reeves, Lauretta; Stone, Peter HIn the near future, sophisticated social robots will become increasingly interwoven into our lives. Researchers have recently begun to examine people’s anthropomorphic conceptions of such robots, and a few have stressed the unique consequences that these technological agents may have for the psychological development of children developing around them. In the current set of studies, children were introduced to a humanoid robot, “Robbie the Robot.” Across the two studies, participants witnessed Robbie perform a harmful action, destroying a block tower that a child had purportedly built and was saving for later. Of primary interest in these two studies was whether children would hold Robbie the Robot morally accountable for the destructive act. It was predicted that judgments of moral accountability would depend on several different factors: whether the robot appeared to initiate its own actions, the age of the participant, and whether children attributed psychological properties, specifically intentional agency, to the robot. In Study 1, children were assigned to one of two experimental conditions: a controlled condition in which a confederate appeared to control the robot’s actions with a device that was tethered to the robot, and an autonomous condition in which the robot appeared to move of its own accord. Results revealed that children were significantly more likely to attribute psychological properties to the robot in the autonomous condition compared to the controlled condition. Compared to 7-year-olds, 5-year-olds were more likely to attribute psychological properties to the robot overall. In addition, results indicated that increasing cues to the robot’s autonomy indirectly affected moral accountability judgments through an increase in children’s attributions of intentions. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that children’s attributions of psychological agency, but not psychological experience, would increase after watching the robot commit a moral act. Overall, Study 2 results did not support this prediction, but key results from the first study were replicated and elucidated by the inclusion of a wider array of psychological properties as well as a measure of children’s judgments of the robot’s cuteness. Implications are discussed for human interaction with social robots and other rapidly evolving technologies, such as autonomous vehicles.Item Cognitive development's effects on development of loyalty in sports fans(2013-12) Reifurth, Katherine Rose Nakamoto; Todd, JanSport fans develop strong loyalties to their favorite teams, but there has been little research conducted on when this loyalty is formed. Previous research suggests that loyalty can form at very young ages, but it is difficult to classify young children based on age due to their rapid development over short periods of time. This is why it is necessary to use cognitive development stages to classify groups of young subjects in order to accurately group their predictive actions and abilities. Very little research has been done on sport loyalty development, especially using cognitive development as a categorizing tool. It is this report’s suggestion that more research must be done on this subject to truly understand the implications of this measurement tool and its effects on the development of loyalty.Item Development of anthropomorphism and moral concern for nonhuman entities(2011-12) Lopez-Mobilia, Gabriel; Woolley, Jacqueline D.; Langlois, Judith; Legare, CristineRecent research has revealed that some adults tend to anthropomorphize more than others and that such people reason differently about nonhuman entities. Specifically, individuals who tend to anthropomorphize show greater concern for nonhuman entities and are more likely to be concerned for the environment. The proposed study extended this line of work to children, examining developmental patterns in anthropomorphism and behavior toward nonhuman entities. In one task children were asked whether or not different kinds of nonhuman entities (dogs, trees, robots, dolls) were capable of a range of psychological states (e.g., thinking, feeling). In a separate task with vignettes children were asked to judge the morality of actions that led to a negative consequence for a nonhuman target. The main prediction was that children who attributed more psychological properties to nonhuman entities would be more likely to exhibit concern for nonhuman targets in the moral stories. Overall, the results failed to capture a general relation between psychological attributions and moral judgments, perhaps owing to methodological shortcomings but perhaps also because children in our sample did not appear to exhibit general tendencies to anthropomorphize as adults have in previous research.Item Infants' use of luminance information in object individuation(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Woods, Rebecca JindaleeRecent research suggests that by 4 months of age infants are able to individuate objects using form features, such as shape and size, but surface features, such as pattern and color, are not used until later in the first year (Wilcox, 1999). The current study sought to investigate two possible explanations for this developmental hierarchy. The visual maturation hypothesis suggests that the order in which infants use features to individuate objects corresponds to the order in which they are most readily processed by the developing visual system. A second hypothesis, the information processing biases hypothesis, suggests that infants are biased to attend to form features because form features provide information that is relevant to reasoning about object interactions. One way to test these hypotheses is to investigate infants' ability to individuate objects based on luminance. Luminance is detected at birth, so, according to the visual maturation hypothesis, luminance, like shape and size, will be used to individuate objects early in the first year. However, luminance is a surface property, so according to the information processing biases hypothesis, luminance, like pattern and color, will be used to individuate objects late in the first year. In the current study, 7-month-old (Experiment 1) and 11-month-old (Experiment 2) infants' use of luminance information in an object individuation task was investigated. The narrow-screen event-monitoring paradigm developed by Wilcox and Baillargeon (1998a) was used. Infants saw an event in which a ball moved behind a screen and a second ball emerged from behind the opposite edge of the screen. In one condition, the balls were identical, suggesting the presence of one object (same-luminance condition), and in another condition, the balls differed in luminance, suggesting the presence of two objects (different-luminance condition). The screen was either too narrow (narrow-screen event) or sufficiently wide (wide-screen event) to occlude two objects simultaneously. Seven-month-olds looked equally at each event, whereas 11.5-month-old's looked longer at the narrow-screen event in the different-luminance condition. These results suggest that 11.5-month-olds, but not 7.5-month-olds used luminance information to conclude that two distinct objects were involved in the event, thus supporting the information processing biases hypothesis.Item Language brokering among Latino middle school students : relations with academic achievement, self-efficacy, and acculturative stress(2010-05) Tedford, Sara Louise; Suizzo, Marie-Anne; Carlson, Cindy I.; Keith, Timothy Z.; Kim, Su Yeong; Valencia, Richard R.Child language brokers frequently translate in adult-level situations. Research has suggested that through translating, brokers may develop advanced language, cognitive, and social skills (De Ment, Buriel, and Villanueva, 2005; McQuillan and Tse, 1995), and these may lead to greater academic achievement and self-efficacy (Buriel, Perez, De Ment, Chavez,and Moran, 1998). Additionally, language brokers have been found to increase in biculturalism as they translate for people of different cultures (Acoach and Webb, 2004; Buriel et al., 1998). Brokers might experience reduced acculturative stress, for which biculturalism has been found to be a protective factor (Bacallao and Smokowski, 2005). Despite its possible benefits, brokering has been associated with negative emotions and behavioral problems for some children (Chao, 2006; Weisskirch and Alva, 2002). The mixed results of language brokering studies may partially be related to the age of participants, with translating appearing to be a more positive experience for older adolescents (Orellana and Reynolds, 2008). The purpose of this study was to test relations among language brokering, academic achievement, academic self-efficacy, social self-efficacy, and acculturative stress. I proposed and tested if language brokering was associated with more positive outcomes. In addition, I tested if older brokers had more positive outcomes than younger brokers. Participants included 207 Latino middle school students, aged 10 to 14 years, who completed self-report surveys. Measures included a background demographics questionnaire and scales for language brokering, academic self-efficacy, social self-efficacy, and acculturative stress. Achievement was measured with grades from school records. Results were non-significant for the relation of language brokering with achievement and social self-efficacy when controlling for other predictor variables. In contrast to expectations, translating for more people was associated with decreased academic self-efficacy and greater acculturative stress. Further analysis revealed that language brokering for parents and grandparents was associated with greater acculturative stress, while translating for other people was not. Although translating was associated with more acculturative stress, and older children reported less acculturative stress, age was not found to moderate the relation of language brokering and acculturative stress. Limitations, implications, and suggestions for future directions in language brokering research and clinical work are presented.