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• The ability to switch per se is present from the age of 6 across perceptual tasks. • Perceptual switching rate increases between 6 and 10 years of age across tasks. • Perceptual switching rate across tasks differs in a task specific manner. • Perceptual switching rate is not predicted by executive functions or creativity. • Perceptual switching in children has task specific characteristics. The phenomenon of perceptual bistability provides insights into aspects of perceptual processing not normally accessible to everyday experience. However, most experiments have been conducted in adults, and it is not clear to what extent key aspects of perceptual switching change through development. The current research examined the ability of 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children (N = 66) to switch between competing percepts of ambiguous visual and auditory stimuli and links between switching rate, executive functions, and creativity. The numbers of switches participants reported in two visual tasks (ambiguous figure and ambiguous structure from motion) and two auditory tasks (verbal transformation and auditory streaming) were measured in three 60-s blocks. In addition, inhibitory control was measured with a Stroop task, set shifting was measured with a verbal fluency task, and creativity was measured with a divergent thinking task. The numbers of perceptual switches increased in all four tasks from 6 to 10 years of age but differed across tasks in that they were higher in the verbal transformation and ambigous structure-from-motion tasks than in the ambigous figure and auditory streaming tasks for all age groups. Although perceptual switching rates differed across tasks, there were predictive relationships between switching rates in some tasks. However, little evidence for the influence of central processes on perceptual switching was found. Overall, the results support the notion that perceptual switching is largely modality and task specific and that this property is already evident when perceptual switching emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambiguity aversion arises when a decision maker prefers risky gambles with known probabilities over equivalent ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities. This phenomenon has been consistently observed in adults across a large body of empirical work. Evaluating ambiguity aversion in young children, however, has posed methodological challenges because probabilistic representations appropriate for adults might not be understood by young children. Here, we established a novel method for representing risk and ambiguity with physical objects that overcomes previous methodological limitations and allows us to measure ambiguity aversion in young children. We found that individual 5-year-olds exhibited consistent choice preferences and, as a group, exhibited no ambiguity aversion in a task that evokes ambiguity aversion in adults. Across individuals, 5-year-olds exhibited greater variance in ambiguity preferences compared with adults tested under similar conditions. This suggests that ambiguity aversion is absent during early childhood and emerges over the course of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to evaluate how 3- to 5-year-old children ( N = 150) identify an object when they are confronted with conflicting evidence, notably when the available perceptual evidence is contradicted by the testimony of either a lone informant or a three-informant consensus. Results showed that (a) 5-year-olds were more likely than 3- or 4-year-olds to rely on the perceptual evidence, ignoring claims made by the informants; (b) the three-informant consensus had more impact than a single informant for all age groups; and (c) children were more likely to make a perception-based response if the stimulus was perceptually unambiguous rather than equivocal with respect to its identity. Moreover, when children’s task was to identify equivocal stimuli, they endorsed the three-informant consensus more than the lone informant. In contrast, when they needed to identify unambiguous stimuli, the number of informants did not influence children’s responses. Taken together, the results show that the tendency to resist testimony on the basis of perceptual evidence increases with age. Moreover, preschoolers monitor both the characteristics of their informants and the relative ambiguity of the perceptual stimuli when they need to weigh verbal testimony against perceptual evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilingual inhibitory control advantages are well established. An open question is whether inhibitory superiority also extends to visual perceptual phenomena that involve inhibitory processes. This research used ambiguous figures to assess inhibitory bilingual superiority in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old mono- and bilingual children (N = 141). Findings show that bilinguals across all ages are superior in inhibiting a prevalent interpretation of an ambiguous figure to perceive the alternative interpretation. In contrast, mono- and bilinguals revealed no differences in understanding that an ambiguous figure can have two distinct referents. Together, these results suggest that early bilingual inhibitory control superiority is also evident in visual perception. Bilinguals' conceptual understanding of figure ambiguity is comparable to that of their monolingual peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Converging developmental decision-making studies have demonstrated that until late adolescence, individuals prefer options for which the risk of a loss is low regardless of the final outcome. Recent works have shown a similar inability to consider both loss frequency and final outcome among adults. The current study aimed to identify developmental changes in feedback-monitoring ability to consider both loss frequency and final outcome in decision making under ambiguity. Children, adolescents, and adults performed an adapted version of the Soochow Gambling Task. Our results showed that children and adolescents presented an exclusive preference for options associated with infrequent punishment. In contrast, only adults seemed to consider both loss frequency and the final outcome by favoring the advantageous options when the frequency of losses was low. These findings suggest that the ability to integrate both loss frequency and final outcome develops with age. Moreover, the analysis of strategic adjustments following gains and losses reveals that adults switch less often after losses compared with children and adolescents. This finding suggests that psychological tolerance to loss may facilitate learning the characteristics of each option and improve the ability to choose advantageously. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In two experiments, we examined young children’s ability to delay a response to ambiguous input. In Experiment 1, 5- and 6-year-olds performed as poorly when they needed to choose between basing an interpretation on ambiguous input and delaying an interpretation as when making explicit evaluations of knowledge, whereas 7- and 8-year-olds found the former task easy. In Experiment 2, 5- and 6-year-olds performed well on a task that required delaying a response but removed the need to decide between strategies. We discuss children’s difficulty with ambiguity in terms of the decision-making demands made by different procedures. These demands appear to cause particular problems for young children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Lexical ambiguity resolution was investigated in 9- to 17-year-olds with language impairment (LI, n =20), autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) plus language impairment (ALI, n =28), ASD and verbal abilities within the normal range (ASO, n =20), and typically developing children (TD, n =28). Experiment 1 investigated knowledge of dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. The LI and ALI groups knew fewer subordinate meanings than did the ASO and TD groups. Experiment 2 used a modified version of the Gernsbacher, Varner, and Faust (1990) paradigm to investigate contextual facilitation and suppression of irrelevant meanings. All groups demonstrated contextual facilitation, responding quickly and more accurately to words following a biased context. However, children with ALI and LI did not use context as efficiently as did their peers without language deficit. Furthermore, for the LI and ALI groups, errors in the suppression condition reflected poor contextual processing. These findings challenge the assumptions of weak central coherence theory and demonstrate the need for stringent language controls in the study of autistic cognition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Assesses children's ability to make tentative interpretations of ambiguous messages. Ignorance check trials; Discrimination of ambiguous and informative clues.

Presents a study which assessed children's ability to detect interpretive ambiguity in text. Information on the central role of inferential processing text comprehension; Details on the developmental differences in children's recognition of interpretive ambiguity; Indepth look at the experiments performed; Results of these experiments.

• Four- to 6-year-olds can convey symbol-referent relations using legends. • Sensitivity to ambiguity contributes understanding of effective legends. • Executive Function skills contribute to legend evaluation, but not creation. • Children's legend creations can improve after seeing effective examples. Two studies were conducted to examine 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of how to convey symbol–referent relations using legends. Study 1 investigated children's ability to evaluate legends in terms of whether or not they clearly convey information (N = 74). In this study, 41% of children were successful, with performance uniquely differentiated by sensitivity to ambiguity and executive function. Study 2 investigated children's ability to create informative legends (N = 115), with 39% being successful. Nearly half of those who were unsuccessful improved after exposure to exemplars (relative to only 9% in the baseline group). Sensitivity to ambiguity uniquely differentiated their ability to create a legend and improve after exposure. These studies provide insight into children's developing understanding of how symbol meanings are effectively conveyed and the contributions of other cognitive factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]