Search

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and the cognitive reflection test, and collected demographics, previous mathematics grades, self-reported and official statistics grades, and statistics module details. Data reuse potential is broad, including testing links between anxieties and statistics/mathematics education factors, and examining instruments’ psychometric properties across different languages and contexts. Data and metadata are stored on the Open Science Framework website [https://osf.io/mhg94/].

Recent reviews have highlighted the tendency in the comparative literature to make claims about species' relative evolutionarily adaptive histories based on studies comparing different species tested with procedurally and methodologically different protocols. One particularly contentious area is the use of the object-choice task, used to measure an individual's ability to use referential cues, which is a core attribute of joint attention. We tested human children with versions of the object-choice task that have been previously used with dogs and nonhuman primates to see if manipulating the setup would lead to behavioral changes. In Study 1, we compared the responses of 18-month-olds and 36-month-olds when tested with and without a barrier. The presence of a barrier between the child and the reward did not suppress performance but did elicit more communicative behavior. Moreover, the barrier had a greater facilitating effect on the younger children, who displayed more communicative behavior in comparison with older children, who more frequently reached through the barrier in acts of direct prehension. In Study 2, we compared the behavior of 36-month-olds when the reward was within reaching distance (proximal) and when it was out of reach (distal). The children used index-finger points significantly more in the distal condition and grabbed more in the proximal condition, showing that they were making spatial judgments about the accessibility of the reward rather than just grabbing per se. We discuss the implications of these within-species differences in behavioral responses for cross-species comparisons. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In this study, we investigated the processes of coordination, adaptation, and calibration during the development of colour naming and colour constancy, and we tested whether colour term knowledge is related to colour constancy. We measured category membership and prototypes with 163 Munsell chips in preschool children (3- to 4-year-old) under neutral, green, and red illuminations, and compared their results to those of adults. We introduced an index of colour term maturity based on the similarity of children's colour term use to adults, and a colour category constancy index that quantifies the variation in colour categorisation that is specific to illumination changes. Results showed that illumination changes affected children's consistency of colour categorisation, but only to a small extent. However, colour term maturity and illumination-specific effects on consistency strongly varied in this age range. Correlations between colour term maturity and illumination-specific consistency indicated that colour constancy increases with colour term acquisition; but those results depended on the type of illumination changes (between neutral, green, and red). Together, our findings suggest that children progressively fine-tune and recalibrate the meaning of colour terms through processes of coordination and adaptation that are also involved in the calibration of colour constancy.

Understanding the development of cognition in infants and toddlers informs many aspects of our understanding of human cognition. Designing research to address such questions with infants and toddlers provides a number of logistical and theoretical challenges. These challenges inspire innovative experimental methods and techniques. This entry outlines some of the key methods and innovations used to investigate early cognitive development in this special population. The entry also covers some of the research considerations and best practices to successfully study this fascinating and important topic.

Although an abundant literature documents preliterate children's word learning success from shared storybook reading, a full synthesis of the factors which moderate these word learning effects has been largely neglected. This meta-analysis included 38 studies with 2,455 children, reflecting 110 effect sizes, investigating how reading styles, story repetitions, tokens and related factors moderate children's word comprehension, while adjusting for the number of target words. Dialogic reading styles, tokens, and the number of words tested all moderated word learning effects. Children's age, who read the story, and time between story and test were not moderators. We identify story repetition and word types as topics which merit further research. These results provide information to guide researchers and educators alike to the factors with the greatest impact on improving word learning from shared storybook reading. (PsycINFO Database Record

We investigated how the visibility of targets influenced the type of point used to provide directions. In Study 1, we asked 605 passersby in three localities for directions to well-known local landmarks. When that landmark was in plain view behind the requester, most respondents pointed with their index fingers, and few respondents pointed more than once. In contrast, when the landmark was not in view, respondents pointed initially with their index fingers, but often elaborated with a whole-hand point. In Study 2, we covertly filmed the responses from 157 passersby we approached for directions, capturing both verbal and gestural responses. As in Study 1, few respondents produced more than one gesture when the target was in plain view and initial points were most likely to be index finger points. Thus, in a Western geographical context in which pointing with the index finger is the dominant form of pointing, a slight change in circumstances elicited a preference for pointing with the whole hand when it was the second or third manual gesture in a sequence.

Two experiments tested how the number of illustrations in storybooks influences 3.5-year-old children's word learning from shared reading. In Experiment 1, children encountered stories with two regular-sized A4 illustrations, one regular-sized A4 illustration, or one large-sized A3 illustration (in the control group) per spread. Children learned significantly fewer words when they had to find the referent within two illustrations presented at the same time. In Experiment 2, a gesture was added to guide children's attention to the correct page in the 2-illustration condition. Children who saw two illustrations with a guiding gesture learned words as well as children who had seen only one illustration per spread. Results are discussed in terms of the cognitive load of word learning from storybooks.