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One way to increase art appreciation is to create congruency between the actions performed by the artist and the actions performed by the viewer. Leder, Bar, and Topolinski (2012) successfully created such a link by asking participants to make either stroking or stippling motions while viewing stroke-style and pointillist-style paintings. We carried out a direct replication of Leder et al. (2012) in Experiment 1 but failed to reproduce their results. In Experiment 2, we achieved the desired cross-over interaction between image and action but only when the relationship was made more transparent. Experiment 3 demonstrated that this effect requires a motor component and cannot be reproduced by simply hearing the sounds associated with drawing production. Experiment 4 investigated whether either an external manipulation or a self-report measure of awareness of the image–action match modulated the liking ratings, in addition to artwork familiarity and participants’ own hypotheses regarding the direction of the image–action effect. Participants who predicted that congruent relationships between what they saw and what they did would increase liking showed enhanced congruency effects. The links between historical production and contemporary exposure to art may then be an overt rather than covert process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Much social science research proceeds as though ethnic self-identification (the ethnic category to which persons assign themselves) is a stable characteristic, as true at one time of measurement as another. The purpose of this study was to test this assumption using longitudinal data acquired from the provincial Ministry of Education for every student in British Columbia who started Grade 7 in 1995 and who ever self-identified as Aboriginal. Contrary to expectation, nearly half of this sample did not consistently identify themselves as Aboriginal between 1993 and 2002. For students who changed their declarations over time, five distinct patterns of change in ethnic self-identification were observed. These different patterns were found to be related to the likelihood of dropping out of school. Students who consistently declared their Aboriginality each and every year had the highest school drop-out rate. In comparison, students who at first did not report themselves to be Aboriginal, but later began to consistently declare Aboriginal status had the lowest school drop-out rate. Potential accounts of these differences are offered, and suggestions for future research are advanced. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent studies with “late-signing” deaf children (deaf children born into families in which no-one uses a sign language) have indicated that they have difficulty performing tasks that require them to reason about other people''s false beliefs. However, virtually no research has so far investigated how far late signers’ difficulties with mental state understanding extend. This paper reports one study that uses an imitation paradigm to examine whether late signers may also have difficulty in interpreting other people''s actions in terms of their goals. Both late-signing (N =15) and second generation “native-signing” deaf children (N =19) produced a pattern of responses to this task that indicates that they can and readily do view the actions of others as goal-directed. We conclude that this form of mental state understanding (generally seen as a precursor to understanding false beliefs) is intact in late-signing deaf children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Existing data demonstrate a developmental trend in the way in which highly familiar faces are recognized, such that young children rely more on the outer facial features (the hairline, chin and ears) than the inner facial features (the eyes, nose and mouth) and adults demonstrate the reverse pattern. However, little is known about the developmental pattern of importance of inner and outer facial features for recognizing people who are not highly familiar. Here we report a study which attempts to describe this pattern. Using a two-alternative forced-choice procedure, we presented 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds and adults (N = 22 in each group) with the task of recognizing an experimentally familiarized face (initially seen in a short video) from a still picture of either the whole face, just the inner, or just the outer parts. The results showed that, for all ages, recognition was faster (and in most cases, more accurate) for outer features alone than for inner features alone (and was fastest for whole faces). These data demonstrate the importance of outer facial features for the recognition of relatively unfamiliar faces. Taken together with previous findings, they enhance our picture of the effects of age and experience with individual faces on recognition and configural processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Possession of a "theory of mind" (ToM)--as demonstrated by an understanding of the false beliefs of others--is fundamental in children's cognitive development. A key question for debate concerns the effect of language input on ToM. In this respect, comparisons of deaf native-signing children who are raised by deaf signing parents with deaf late-signing children who are raised by hearing parents provide a critical test. This article reports on two studies (N = 100 and N = 39) using "thought picture" measures of ToM that minimize verbal task-performance requirements. These studies demonstrated that even when factors such as syntax ability, mental age in spatial ability, and executive functioning were considered, deaf late signers still showed deficits in ToM understanding relative to deaf native signers or hearing controls. Even though the native signers were significantly younger than a sample of late signers matched for spatial mental age and scores on a test of receptive sign language ability, native signers outperformed late signers on pictorial ToM tasks. The results are discussed in terms of access to conversation and extralinguistic influences on development such as the presence of sibling relationships, and suggest that the expression of a ToM is the end result of social understanding mediated by early conversational experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We highlight two aspects of research into social learning that have been neglected in existing developmental research, namely: (1) The role of social learning in learning to use tools, and (2) Whether children's social learning involves copying the actions themselves ('blind' imitation or mimicry), or alternatively, the effects of those actions (emulation). In Part I of the paper we argue that the failure to distinguish between these different mechanisms is closely related to the lack of research on the social transmission of tool use and that both omissions limit our understanding of early social learning. We conclude Part I by outlining the requirements for an adequate study of these two issues. In Part II, we use this analysis to critically examine data from existing developmental research with children. We also assess the data currently available in the comparative literature which address these issues more directly. We conclude that children learn only what actions to perform via observation ('blind' imitation or mimicry), and not why those actions are effective (emulation). We close by identifying important potential pitfalls and unresolved questions for the future study of the social learning of actions on objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable debate about whether nonhuman primates learn to use tools via imitation, this type of learning by children has received surprisingly little attention. The findings of two studies that go some way toward filling this gap are reported here. Study 1 showed that when 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 68) were shown a correct solution to a tool-using task (which they could not solve spontaneously), all the children in both age groups managed at least a partial solution. When children were shown an incorrect solution followed by a correct solution, 2-year-olds again produced only a partial solution. By contrast, most 3-year-olds produced a full solution. Study 2 replicated this age change in a separate sample of children (N = 100) with a different tool-using task. Study 2 also showed that 3-year-olds benefit from observing an incorrect action when it can be contrasted with a correct action: they chose the more effective of the two actions. Taken together, the two studies indicate that by 3 years of age, children do not indiscriminately imitate actions on a tool, but selectively reproduce those actions that have a desired causal effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has frequently found that students use their information and communication technologies—such as smartphones and laptops—for non-academic uses in the classroom. These uses include sending messages as well as checking email and social media accounts. This study aimed to examine students' in-class information and communication technology use, their motivations for it, and perceptions of it, as well as their attitudes toward restriction and integration of information and communication technologies in the classroom. It was found that students most frequently engage in non-academic information and communication technology use when they feel that they would not miss any new class content, or when they feel disengaged. Students perceived that their non-academic information and communication technology use had costs, especially distraction. However, students also reported negative attitudes toward policies that would restrict their information and communication technology use in the classroom but had positive perceptions of attempts to integrate information and communication technology use. We propose that information and communication technology integration can be an effective method of increasing student engagement—and therefore decreasing non-academic information and communication technology use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on problems regarding social learning. Imitation as an index of infant memory and an indication of children's social learning; Goals versus outcomes in the behavioral reenactment paradigm; Chemistry of social learning.

ABSTRACT This study investigated how children's performance on a cognitive task was influenced by funny and serious task content, and by fun or important instructions. Eighty-four children in Grades 1 and 5 performed two versions of a paired-associates word-learning task, which paired nonsense words with novel definitions and illustrations. All children completed a version in which the definitions and illustrations were funny, and a version in which they were not, with either fun or important instructions. Results revealed significantly better performance on the funny than on the serious version, but only when the funny version was presented first. There were no significant effects of task instructions. The findings confirm that making children's cognitive tasks funnier can enhance task performance. Although there were no effects of expectations as created by task instructions, the enhancing effect of funny content was influenced by children's expectations as created by their prior experience with the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]