Children's Interpretation Research Articles

MANUAIS ESCOLARES PARA UM ENSINO PRÁTICO

Resumo Este artigo indaga sobre o lugar dos manuais escolares no ensino das noções de higiene nas escolas primárias paulistas, ensino que, segundo as orientações e os programas aprovados nas primeiras décadas do século 20, deveria conferir primazia à dimensão prática. Para tanto, toma como fontes manuais escolares que abordam temáticas ligadas a higiene e saúde, em suas articulações com os programas de ensino e com fotografias que põem em cena aspectos das aulas de puericultura nos grupos escolares. A análise proposta visa a capturar, para além dos enunciados presentes nos manuais e dos modos como se articulam no sentido de produzir a interpretação por parte dos pequenos leitores, indícios das práticas escolares engendradas com o intento de conformar os gestos de cuidado com o corpo e a saúde.

Threat interpretation and parental influences for children with asthma and anxiety

Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in children with asthma yet very little is known about the cognitive and parent factors that may underpin this relationship. The present study investigated interpretation biases in children with asthma and anxiety and their parents, and whether parent-child discussions influenced children's interpretations. Eighty-nine parent-child dyads were included across four groups: children with asthma and anxiety, children with anxiety only, children with asthma only and healthy children (aged between 8 and 13 years old). Interpretation bias was assessed using ambiguous scenarios. Children with anxiety showed an interpretation bias in the general threat scenarios, whereas children with asthma showed an interpretation bias in the asthma threat scenarios. Parental predictions of their child's responses showed similar results. Parent-child discussions increased avoidance for children with anxiety and no asthma across all scenarios, but only for children with asthma and anxiety in the asthma threat scenarios. The results provide partial support for a cognitive theory of asthma and anxiety in children and suggest that parents play a role in influencing children's thinking styles. Treatment programs could thus aim to target and modify interpretation biases in children with anxiety, and include parents as part of treatment.

Parents' beliefs about children's emotions, children's emotion understanding, and classroom adjustment in middle childhood

AbstractTo explore how parental socialization of emotion may influence children's emotion understanding, which then guides children's interpretations of emotion‐related situations across contexts, we examined the pathways between socialization of emotion and children's adjustment in the classroom, with children's emotion understanding as an intervening variable. Specifically, children's emotion understanding was examined as a mediator of associations between mothers' beliefs about the value and danger of children's emotions and children's adjustment in the classroom within an SEM framework. Classroom adjustment was estimated as a latent variable and included social, emotional, and behavioral indices. Covariates included maternal education, and child gender and ethnicity. Participants were a diverse group of 201 third‐graders (116 African American, 81 European American, 4 Biracial; 48.8% female), their mothers, and teachers. Results revealed that emotion‐related beliefs (value and danger) had no direct influence on classroom adjustment. However, children whose mothers endorsed the belief that emotions are dangerous demonstrated less emotion understanding and were less well‐adjusted in the classroom. Mothers' belief that emotions are valuable was not independently associated with emotion understanding. Findings point to the important role of emotion understanding in children's development across contexts (family, classroom) and developmental domains (social, emotional, behavioral) during the middle childhood years.

Children's and adults' interpretation of covariation data: Does symmetry of variables matter?

In a series of 3 experiments, the authors investigated the influence of symmetry of variables on children's and adults' data interpretation. They hypothesized that symmetrical (i.e., present/present) variables would support correct interpretations more than asymmetrical (i.e., present/absent) variables. Participants were asked to judge covariation in a series of data sets presented in contingency tables and to justify their judgments. Participants in Experiments 1 and 2 were elementary school children (Experiment 1: n = 52 second graders, n = 44 fourth graders; Experiment 2: n = 50 second graders). Participants in Experiment 3 were adults (n = 62). In Experiment 1, children in the symmetrical variables condition performed better than those in the asymmetrical variables condition. Children in the symmetrical variables condition judged more data patterns correctly and they more frequently justified their choices by referring to the complete table. Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that this effect was caused by differences in question format. Even when question format was held constant, second graders performed better with symmetrical variables. Experiment 3 showed that adults' data interpretation is also affected by symmetry of variables. Collectively, these results indicate that symmetry of variables affects interpretation of covariation data. The authors argue that symmetrical variables provide a context for meaningful comparison. With asymmetrical variables, the importance of the comparison is less salient. Thus, the symmetry of variables should be considered by researchers as well as educators. (PsycINFO Database Record

The class inclusion question: a case study in applying pragmatics to the experimental study of cognition.

For more than 70 years, Piaget’s class-inclusion task (given, e.g., five asters and three tulips, the child is asked whether “there are more asters or more flowers”) has been the object of experimental investigation. Inclusion is of considerable importance for cognitive science as it is a key concept for logical operations and knowledge representation. It is shown that the question can be characterised by a kind of privative ambiguity which is at the source of the younger children’s answer, “more asters”. A relevance-theoretic explanation of children’s interpretation of the question and of the subsequent responses is expounded. This account can explain the effect of all the factors that are known to influence performance (e.g., role of collections, counting, typicality, qualification, syntax, etc.), a review of which is presented. It is further tested experimentally. The development of performance is explained on the basis of the way children disambiguate the question. This study exemplifies the two ways in which pragmatic analysis is pertinent to the study of children’s (as well as adults’) reasoning and judgement, namely in explaining and predicting participants’ comprehension of the statements and questions, and in taking into account attribution processes that occur in the experimental setting.

Children's Comprehension of Sentences with Focus Particles and the Role of Cognitive Control: An Eye Tracking Study with German-Learning 4-Year-Olds.

Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities.

Instrumental and Conventional Interpretations of Behavior Are Associated With Distinct Outcomes in Early Childhood.

Four tasks (N = 191, 3- to 6-year-olds) examined the effect of instrumental versus conventional language cues on children's imitative fidelity of a necklace-making activity, their memory and transmission of the activity, and their perceptions of functional fixedness. Children in the conventional condition imitated with higher fidelity, transmitted more of the modeled behavior, and showed higher levels of functional fixedness than children in the instrumental condition. There were no differences in children's memory of the activity between conditions demonstrating that memory alone does not explain differences in imitative fidelity. The data demonstrate that children's interpretation of behavior as instrumental or conventional has wide-ranging implications for what children imitate, what they transmit to others, and how they reason about objects' functions.

The reliability and validity of a short food frequency questionnaire among 9-11-year olds: a multinational study on three middle-income and high-income countries.

The main aim of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of a food frequency questionnaire with 23 food groups (I-FFQ) among a sample of 9-11-year-old children from three different countries that differ on economical development and income distribution, and to assess differences between country sites. Furthermore, we assessed factors associated with I-FFQ's performance. This was an ancillary study of the International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the Environment. Reliability (n=321) and validity (n=282) components of this study had the same participants. Participation rates were 95% and 70%, respectively. Participants completed two I-FFQs with a mean interval of 4.9 weeks to assess reliability. A 3-day pre-coded food diary (PFD) was used as the reference method in the validity analyses. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, intraclass correlation coefficients and cross-classifications were used to assess the reliability of I-FFQ. Spearman correlation coefficients, percentage difference and cross-classifications were used to assess the validity of I-FFQ. A logistic regression model was used to assess the relation of selected variables with the estimate of validity. Analyses based on information in the PFDs were performed to assess how participants interpreted food groups. Reliability correlation coefficients ranged from 0.37 to 0.78 and gross misclassification for all food groups was <5%. Validity correlation coefficients were below 0.5 for 22/23 food groups, and they differed among country sites. For validity, gross misclassification was <5% for 22/23 food groups. Over- or underestimation did not appear for 19/23 food groups. Logistic regression showed that country of participation and parental education were associated (P⩽0.05) with the validity of I-FFQ. Analyses of children's interpretation of food groups suggested that the meaning of most food groups was understood by the children. I-FFQ is a moderately reliable method and its validity ranged from low to moderate, depending on food group and country site.

The use of turning tasks in clinical gait analysis for children with cerebral palsy

BackgroundTurning while walking is a crucial component of locomotion that is performed using an outside (step) or inside (spin) limb strategy. The aims of this paper were to determine how children with cerebral palsy perform turning maneuvers and if specific kinematic and kinetic adaptations occur compared to their typically developing peers. MethodsMotion capture data from twenty-two children with cerebral palsy and fifty-four typically developing children were collected during straight and 90° turning gait trials. Experimental data were used to compute spatio-temporal parameters, margin of stability, ground reaction force impulse, as well as joint kinematics and kinetics. FindingsBoth child groups preferred turning using the spin strategy. The group of children with cerebral palsy exhibited the following adaptations during turning gait compared to the typically developing group: stride length was decreased across all phases of the turn with largest effect size for the depart phase (2.02), stride width was reduced during the turn phase, but with a smaller effect size (0.71), and the average margin of stability during the approach phase of turning was reduced (effect size of 0.98). Few overall group differences were found for joint kinematic and kinetic measures; however, in many cases, the intra-subject differences between straight walking and turning gait were larger for the majority of children with cerebral palsy than for the typically developing children. InterpretationIn children with cerebral palsy, turning gait may be a better discriminant of pathology than straight walking and could be used to improve the management of gait abnormalities.

‘What makes her succeed?’ Children's interpretations of their peers' successes in learning situations

ABSTRACTPrevious research has shown that observing peers' success in learning is important for the development of children's belief in themselves as learners. However, in research, these observations are seldom made in actual classroom learning activities. This study investigated how children explain factors that lead to their peers' successes in classroom learning activities. Seventeen elementary school children from first, second and third grade participated in a ‘detective course’ in which they needed to capture moments of success using a mobile camera device. The pictures were used for photo-elicitation interviews (n = 28) in order to find out children's views on the reasons for their peers' successes in learning situations. Pictorial data (n = 361) were coded with data-driven categories to see what kind of situations children considered successful. The results show that the reasons given for peers' successes dealt with situation-specific information, such as mastery and quality of performance. Findings indicate that children explain peers' successes through the actions that their peers made during the situations, rather than by comparison between the abilities of their classmates. The results provide information for practitioners and teachers on how to promote children to use the example of their peers to recognise and explain successful learning situations in the classroom.

Children's interpretation of conjunction in the scope of negation in English and Mandarin: New evidence for the semantic subset maxim

ABSTRACTWe tested 3- to 5-year-old English- and Mandarin-speaking children on their interpretation of sentences like The elephant didn't eat both the carrot and the capsicum. These sentences are scopally ambiguous. Adult English speakers favor a weak interpretation of such sentences, with negation taking scope over conjunction (i.e., the elephant probably ate one of the vegetables, but not both). In contrast, adult Mandarin speakers favor a strong interpretation of the corresponding Mandarin sentences, with conjunction taking scope over negation (i.e., the elephant ate neither vegetable). The semantic subset maxim (Notley, Zhou, Jensen, &amp; Crain, 2012) predicts that children acquiring all human languages should initially prefer the strong (subset) reading of such sentences. In contrast, the question–answer requirement model (Gualmini, Hulsey, Hacquard, &amp; Fox, 2008; Hulsey, Hacquard, Fox, &amp; Gualmini, 2004) predicts that children should initially prefer the scope reading that constitutes a good true answer to a question under discussion in the context. We designed a task in which the weak reading of our sentences corresponded to a good true answer to the question under discussion. We found that children across languages nonetheless preferred to assign a strong interpretation to our test sentences, providing empirical support for the semantic subset maxim.

Predicting Children's Recall of a Dental Procedure: Contributions of Stress, Preparation, and Dental History

SummaryWe examined the extent to which three predictors of children's recall, selected on the basis of their theoretical significance, contributed to the prediction of children's recall for the details of dental operative procedures in a diverse sample of 28 children (54–140 months of age). Parents provided information regarding their children's dental histories and preparation for the dental visit. We obtained behavioral indices of stress from video recordings of the procedures and interviewed the children shortly after treatment to assess their memory. In a significant model predicting open‐ended recall, measures of prior dental experience and parent discussion emerged as unique predictors, although stress did not add to the prediction. The results attest to the importance of incorporating measures of individual differences in investigations of children's reports of their personal experiences. We discuss the importance of children's interpretations in understanding memory for stressful events.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Assessing children's interpretations of the Aboriginal Children's Health and Well-Being Measure (ACHWM).

BackgroundThere are emerging opportunities to improve the health of Aboriginal children and youth. The Aboriginal Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) was developed to enable Aboriginal communities to obtain group-level data from the perspectives of their children 8 to 18 years of age. The survey was developed in collaboration with children, based on the Medicine Wheel framework. The purpose of this study was to ensure that children and youth interpreted the ACHWM questions consistently and accurately and to establish the face validity of the survey.MethodsChildren and parents/caregivers from the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve (Canada) participated in a detailed interview process as they completed the ACHWM, in 2012. Each participant worked through their thought process verbally, to enable the interviewer to identify questions that were misinterpreted or inconsistently interpreted. Questions were revised based on feedback from the participants, and reviewed with new participants until a stable version was established. The resulting version was reviewed by health care providers and community members to further ensure cultural relevance and face validity within the community.ResultsA total of 18 interviews, with 9 children and 9 caregivers, were required to achieve a stable version of the survey. The children ranged in age from 8 to 18 years. Revisions were required for 19 questions. Most of these revisions were minor linguistic changes. In addition, 6 questions were deleted due to consistent problems and 4 questions were created to address gaps identified during the process. Community members confirmed the appropriateness of the measure for their community and communicated their pride in their youth’s role in the development of this survey.ConclusionsThe result was a 58-question version of the ACHWM that was consistently interpreted and culturally appropriate, and had face validity confirmed by experts from the community, children and their parents/caregivers. The ACHWM is ready to be assessed for relevance to other Aboriginal communities.

Children mix direct and indirect speech: evidence from pronoun comprehension.

This study investigates children's acquisition of the distinction between direct speech (Elephant said, "I get the football") and indirect speech (Elephant said that he gets the football), by measuring children's interpretation of first, second, and third person pronouns. Based on evidence from various linguistic sources, we hypothesize that the direct-indirect distinction is acquired relatively late. We also predict more mistakes for third person pronouns compared to first and second person pronouns. We tested 136 Dutch-speaking children between four and twelve in a referent selection task and found that children interpret pronouns in direct speech predominantly as in indirect speech, supporting our hypothesis about a late acquisition of the direct-indirect distinction. In addition, we found differences between I, you, and he that deviate from a simple first and second vs. third person split. We discuss our results in the light of cross-linguistic findings of direct-indirect mixing.

On the acquisition of maximality in free relative clauses and plural definite descriptions

Plural definite descriptions (e.g. 'the things on the plate') and free relative clauses (e.g. 'what is on the plate') have been argued to share the same semantic properties, despite their syntactic differences: both are non-quantificational expressions referring to the maximal element of a given set (e.g. the set of things on the plate). Experimental support for this semantic analysis is provided by the first investigation ever of children's interpretation of both constructions. A Truth-Value Judgment task, an Act-Out task, and a corpus study of children's linguistic input show that children are aware that the two constructions are different from quantificational nominals (e.g. 'all the things on the plate', 'some of the things on the plate') very early on (4 years old), despite the major difference in frequency in the input. Children acquire the adult interpretation of both constructions at the very same time, around 6-7 years old. We suggest that this relative delay depends on children's difficulties with the concept of the maximal element of a set or its association with specific linguistic constructions.

Erratum to: Shared Cognition in Childhood Anxiety: Interpretation Bias in Preschool Children and Their Parents

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error. The abstract as published does not reflect the final results described in the body of the paper. The corrected abstract is given below. The authors regret the inconve- nience caused to the readers. Abstract Although interpretation bias has been associated with the development and/or maintenance of anxiety, its origins remain unclear. The present study is the first to examine the potential intergenerational transmission of this bias from parents to their preschool-aged children via par- ental story-telling. A community sample of 50 parent-child pairs was recruited. Parents completed measures of their own trait anxiety and interpretation bias, their child's anxiety symptoms, and a written story-stem measure, to capture the way parents tell their children stories. Inter- pretation bias was assessed in preschool-aged children (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years 8 months) using an extended story-stem paradigm. Young children's interpretation bias was not significantly associated with their own anxiety symptoms. Neither was there evidence for a significant association between parent and child in- terpretation bias or between parent anxiety and the number of stories they ended in a threatening way. However, a significant positive association was found between the number of stories parents ended in a threatening way on the written stories measure and their child's interpretation bias. There was some indication that this effect was stronger for younger children than older children. The results suggest that parental verbal information via storytelling could play a role in the development of interpretation bias in young children.

Children's Interpretations of Ambiguous Provocation From Their Siblings: Comparisons With Peers and Links to Relationship Quality

AbstractThis study investigated how six‐ to eight‐year‐old children interpret ambiguous provocation from their siblings. In particular, we examined how children's attributions of their siblings' intent (1) differed from those for their peers, (2) varied as a function of the structural features of the sibling relationship, and (3) were associated with the affective qualities of the sibling relationship. A total of 121 children were presented with ambiguous provocation scenarios in which three groups of agemates were described as the perpetrators of harm (siblings, friends, and disliked peers). Scenarios were designed to assess children's attributions of hostile, instrumental, and accidental intent. Children attributed more hostile intent to disliked peers than to siblings and less hostile intent to friends than to siblings. Accidental and instrumental intent attributions were equally likely for friends and siblings but less common for disliked peers. Children attributed more hostile intent to older siblings, and more instrumental intent to laterborn siblings who were chronologically younger. Children's attributions of siblings' intent were related to both parents' and children's reports of the affective features of siblings' interactions. Results provide new insight into how children's construals of others' actions are grounded in the unique features of their relationships with particular interaction partners.

Nutritional components and children's interpretations of packaged food

Recent policy recommendations encourage efforts to support children's healthy dietary choices, particularly in light of concerns over the marketing of foods to children and the link between diet and noncommunicable disease. This study conducted focus groups with children to examine what is salient to them when identifying the health qualities of packaged foods. Twelve focus groups of 4–6 participants (divided by age and gender) were conducted with children in grades 1–6. When asked to consider how to make ‘healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ packaged food choices, children focused primarily on sugar, salt, fat, fibre, and calories. Sugar was deemed unhealthy across the grades, but was re-categorized as healthy in forms other than white sugar (e.g., honey, brown sugar). Fibre was designated as healthy. Sodium and fat signalled an unhealthy food for grades 1–2, but was deemed acceptable in ‘lower’ amounts for grades 3–6 children. Calories were interpreted as ‘less healthy’ when associated with fat and sugar, and ‘healthier’ when viewed as energy. Boys were more concerned with fat and calories compared to girls who did not favour any particular nutritional component. Although children may not be expected to use nutritional components to classify foods as ‘healthy’ or ‘less healthy’, and previous research demonstrates they are not developmentally ready to navigate such abstract concepts, this study shows that children nonetheless use nutritional components to support their packaged food choices. The research raises questions about how to help children make ‘healthy’ packaged food choices under current food labelling practices.

Exploring the role of conventionality in children's interpretation of ironic remarks.

Irony comprehension in seven- and eight-year-old children with typically developing language skills was explored under the framework of the graded salience hypothesis. Target ironic remarks, either conventional or novel/situation-specific, were presented following brief story contexts. Children's responses to comprehension questions were used to determine their understanding of the components of irony: speaker meaning, speaker attitude, and speaker intent. It was hypothesized that conventional remarks would be easier to comprehend than novel/situation-specific remarks because they are more likely to be familiar to the children. Results indicated that children demonstrated better comprehension of speaker meaning for conventional remarks than for novel/situation-specific remarks but no significant differences were found for inferring speaker attitude or speaker intent.

Why do child-directed interactions support imitative learning in young children?

Child-directed cues support imitation of novel actions at 18 months, but not at two years of age. The current studies explore the mechanisms that underlie the propensity that children have to copy others at 18 months, and how the value of child-directed communication changes over development. We ask if attentional allocation accounts for children's failure to imitate observed actions at 18 months, and their success at two years of age, and we explore the informational value child-directed contexts may provide across ontogeny. Eighteen-month-old (Study 1) and two-year-old (Study 2) children viewed causally non-obvious actions performed by child-directed (Study 1 & 2), observed (Study 1 & 2), or non-interactive (Study 2) actors, and their visual attention and imitative behaviors were assessed. Results demonstrated that child-directed contexts supported imitative learning for 18-month-old children, independent of their effects on proximal attention. However, by two years of age, neither directness nor communication between social partners was a necessary condition for supporting social imitation. These findings suggest that developmental changes in children's propensity to extract information from observation cannot be accounted for by changes in children's interpretation of what counts as child-directed information, and are likely not due to changes in how children allocate attention to observed events.