Children's Task Research Articles

Associations Between Event-Related Potentials and Measures of Attention and Inhibition in the Continuous Performance Task in Children With ADHD and Normal Controls

First, to differentiate between inattention and impulsivity based on type of errors made in the AX version of the Continuous Performance Task (CPT), and second, to investigate whether differences in performance between children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and normal controls also occur in specific forms of brain activity, namely event-related potentials (ERPs), presumably related to inattention and impulsivity or inhibition. Sixteen ADHD and 16 normal control children performed the CPT-AX. ERPs were recorded at occipital (Oz), parietal (Pz), central (Cz), and frontal (Fz) leads. The ADHD children had a higher CPT-Inattention score and showed smaller parietal positive waves at a latency of approximately 300 msec in reaction to target stimuli, target P3s, likewise indicating less attention. In contrast, they showed neither higher CPT-Impulsivity nor a smaller frontocentral negative wave at about 200 msec (N2); the N2 is generally seen as reflecting inhibition. A subgroup of children with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (n = 6) had smaller N2 waves than controls, however. The ADHD group studied showed deficits in attention but not in impulsivity (or inhibition).

Impaired visual perceptual performance on an object recognition task in children with cerebral visual impairment.

Visual perceptual ability and grating acuity were studied in 22 children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI). In most studies indicating visual perceptual impairments in CVI children, the evidence is weakened by the co-presence of reduced nonverbal, relative to verbal, intelligence, which in itself might account for the impaired performance on visual perceptual tasks. Our aim was to show that CVI children's performance on a visual perceptual task is weaker than can be expected from their nonverbal intelligence scores, thus demonstrating an impairment that is specific to visual perception. To this end, we used an object recognition task consisting of 60 line drawings depicting common objects in various aberrant ways. For each drawing, the age was established at which 9 out of 10 normal children could recognise the object depicted. This information was used to select the subset of drawings appropriate for each of the CVI subjects' nonverbal intelligence level, expressed as an age equivalent. Recognition performance on this subset of drawings was impaired in 16 children (72.7%), but was unrelated to visual acuity. We conclude that these children have a specific visual perceptual impairment, which is not reducible to any nonverbal intelligence impairments they might suffer.

Development of Anticipatory Orienting Strategies During Locomotor Tasks in Children

GRASSO, R., C. ASSAIANTE, P. PRÉVOST AND A. BERTHOZ. Development of anticipatory orienting strategies during locomotor tasks in children. NEUROSCI BIOBEHAV REV 22(4) 533–539, 1998.—Some basic problems related to the development of goal-directed locomotion in humans are reviewed here. A preliminary study is presented which was aimed at investigating the emergence of anticipatory head orienting strategies during goal-directed locomotion in children. Eight children ranging from 3.5 to 8 years had to walk along a 90° right corner trajectory to reach a goal, both in light and in darkness. The instantaneous orientation in space of the head, trunk, hips and left foot antero/posterior axes was computed by means of an ELITE four-TV camera, 100 Hz system. The results showed that predictive head orienting movements can occur also in the youngest children. The head starts to rotate toward the goal before the corner point of the trajectory is reached. In children, the head peak rotation coincides with the trajectory corner while in adults the peak is attained before. In children, the walking speed is largely decreased in darkness. The results suggest that feedforward control of goal-directed locomotion appears very early in gait development and becomes increasingly important afterwards.

Understanding mind and emotion: longitudinal associations with mental-state talk between young friends.

Developmental changes in children's understanding of mind and emotion and their mental-state talk in conversations with friends were examined in a longitudinal study of 50 children (M age at each time point = 3 years 11 months, 4 years 6 months, 5 years 0 months). Significant and related improvements over time were found for both theory-of-mind task performance and affective perspective taking. Associated with these cognitive developments were quantitative and qualitative changes in children's references to mental states in their conversations with friends. Individual differences in theory of mind, emotion understanding, and mental-state talk were strikingly stable over the 13-month period. Although there were no gender differences in children's task performances, girls showed more frequent and more developed mental-state talk than boys.

The Rhythm of Language: Fostering Oral and Listening Skills in Singapore Pre‐School Children Through an Integrated Music and Language Arts Program

The Expressive Language and Music Project (ELM) was initiated at the National Institute of Education in 1996. Its primary aim was to develop an integrated language and music program for preschool children in order to enhance their oral language competency in English. Twelve kindergarten children attended weekly sessions on campus, for a year, where they participated in a wide variety of language arts and musical activities (based on the Orff and Kodaly approaches to the teaching of music). The natural communicative setting and the creative use of resources and these activities, facilitated the children's task of acquiring English. At the end of the year all the children involved had made noticeable gains in language, music and social skills.

The Strategic Involvement of Children in Housework: An Australian Case of Two-Income Families

Two conflicting views emerged from the accounts of two-income parents about their children's participation in housework in an in-depth study conducted during 1991 in NSW, Australia. On the one hand, parents felt the need to socialise children through housework responsibilities and on the other hand their contribution was perceived essential due to a lack of resources. Parents strategically used discipline and, positive and negative reinforcement to integrate children in household division of labour. Parents assigned simple chores to the younger children, complex chores in the later years, and expected more advanced housework such as cooking family meals, lawn mowing, wood cutting, car washing, etc. from teenagers. Mother's time spent in the work-force increased children's task performance, especially girls, as they helped in twice as many tasks compared to boys. Even though parents believed that they should not pay children for housework they encouraged them to earn pocket money for chores such as tidying their own room, ironing, washing the family car, lawn mowing, etc. Children performed about 20 per cent of the household tasks and pitched-in when and where necessary.

Nebaigtų sakinių metodas jaunesniųjų moksleivių tyrimui ir auklėjimui

Straipsnyje aprašoma nebaigtų sakinių metodika – viena iš dažniausiai taikomų vertinant asmenybę ir nuostatas. Analizuojamas metodikos rengimas ir taikymas bandomajame tyrime. Atsižvelgdami į bandomojo tyrimo duomenų preliminarią analizę teigiama, jog nebaigtų sakinių metodas – jautrus instrumentas mokinių nuotaikoms, asmenybei, jos ypatumams tirti – gali būti taikoma kaip papildoma priemonė ir jaunesniųjų moksleivių tarpusavio santykiams, požiūriui į mokyklą, mokytojus ir mokymąsi atskleisti. Nebaigtų sakinių metodas turi tiek diagnostinio lankstumo ir interpretacinės vertės, kiek tyrėjas turi kiekybinės bei kokybinės analizės ir lyginimo, taip pat abiejų procesų vertinimo patirties. Reakcijų į nebaigtus sakinius interpretavimas reikalauja visų pirma gilaus testo psichometrinių ribotumų supratimo, antra, patvirtinančios informacijos iš kitų šaltinių (kaip antai, kiti testai, rašiniai, pokalbiai, stebėjimai), trečia, jautraus sveiko proto tyrėjo praktiko, kuris supranta pašalinių veiksnių ypatumus atsakinėjančiam individui ir tyrimo aplinkai, pripažįsta ir savo paties teorinį šališkumą, o tai gali inicijuoti neteisingas interpretacijas ir veikimo rekomendacijas. Formuluoti teisingas išvadas, remiantis nebaigtų sakinių metodu, galima tada, jei tyrėjas yra įgijęs praktinių įgūdžių daryti pagrįstus sprendimus pagal subjektyvias nuomones.

Congruence and predictive power of mothers' and teachers' ratings of mastery motivation in children with mental retardation.

The congruence between mothers' and teachers' ratings of mastery motivation among 3-year-old children with mental retardation was investigated. The extent to which maternal and teacher ratings of task persistence at entry to preschool are predictive of observed mastery behaviors at age 5 was tested. Results indicate that mothers rated their children's task persistence behaviors higher than did teachers. Further, once the child's cognitive level and teacher ratings were controlled for statistically, maternal ratings of the child's mastery behaviors were predictive of the child's task mastery performance 2 years subsequent. Implications for educational planning were discussed.

Competency criteria and the class inclusion task: modeling judgments and justifications.

Preschool age children's class inclusion task responses were modeled as mixtures of different probability distributions. The main idea: Different response strategies are equivalent to different probability distributions. A child displays cognitive strategy s if P (child uses strategy s, given the child's observed score X = x) = p(s) is the most probable strategy. The general approach is widely applicable to many settings. Both judgment and justification questions were asked. Judgment response strategies identified were subclass comparison, guessing, and inclusion logic. Children's justifications lagged their judgments in development. Although justification responses may be useful, C. J. Brainerd was largely correct: If a single response variable is to be selected, a judgments variable is likely the preferable one. But the process must be modeled to identify cognitive strategies, as B. Hodkin has demonstrated.

Do levels of interest have an effect on children's comprehension monitoring performance?

This study examines the effect of interest levels on the comprehension monitoring ability of 8- and 9-year-old children. Two groups participated in the study; they were matched for single-word reading and vocabulary skills, but differed in comprehension skill. Two tests were carried out which required the children to read a number of brief passages, some of which contained embedded problems. The children's task was to identify the problems. Test 2 was game-like in nature and the children reported finding it more interesting than Test 1. Interest level was found to affect test performance in the poor comprehenders' comprehension monitoring: a significant improvement in their performance was found at high interest levels (Test 2). However, the performance of the good comprehenders was independent of interest level. This study suggests that the comprehension-monitoring deficit in the poor comprehenders is not irreversible, and is likely to be related to poor motivation and low levels of interest. The implications for remedial education are discussed.

Role of parental motivational practices in children's academic intrinsic motivation and achievement.

In a longitudinal study of children at ages 9 and 10 years, the role of parental motivational practices in children's academic intrinsic motivation and achievement was tested. Two types of motivational practices were assessed: mothers'encouragement of children's task endogeny and provision of task-extrinsic consequences. Structural equations path models for general-verbal and math academic areas supported the 2 predictions that children's academic intrinsic motivation is positively related to encouragement of task endogeny and negatively related to provision of task-extrinsic consequences. Academic intrinsic motivation at age 9 years predicted motivation and achievement at age 10 years. Moreover, through age 9 year motivation, the motivational practices indirectly affected age 10 year motivation and achievement

Children's metalinguistic knowledge of syntactic constituents: Effects of age and schooling.

This study used the school cutoff methodology to examine the development of chiIdren's metalinguistic knowledge of the syntactic subject of a sentence. Two groups of children matched in age and background variables but differing in amount of schooling were tested at ages 5, 6, and 7. The children's task was to listen to a sentence and repeat either the subject or the subject and verb. The subject was a pronoun, a proper name, a 2-word sequence, or a 3-word sequence. Children at the age of 5 had difficulty accurately repeating the pronominal and longest subjects. Children's ability to isolate the pronoun improved as they became older, not as they became more schooled; in contrast, children's ability to handle the longest subjects improved as the children acquired more schooling

Role of child-mother interaction in predicting competence of children with epilepsy.

Child-mother interaction in two problem-solving situations was observed in 59 children with epilepsy aged 7-13 years and was related to their psychosocial adjustment in school and in an independent problem-solving activity. Mothers' support for their child's task completion, the availability of affective expressions in the interaction, and the child's self-reliance in interacting with the mother were significantly correlated with the adjustment measures. Factor scores based on the ratings of child-mother interaction accounted for significant increments in the adjustment measures after child age, gender, IQ, epilepsy variables, and family life stress were partialled out. The results support the view that child-parent relationships are important predictors of adjustment for children with epilepsy.

Emotional and Cardiovascular Responses to Adults' Angry Behavior and to Challenging Tasks in Children of Hypertensive and Normotensive Parents

Emotional and Cardiovascular Responses to Adults' Angry Behavior and to Challenging Tasks in Children of Hypertensive and Normotensive Parents

Emotional and Cardiovascular Responses to Adults' Angry Behavior and to Challenging Tasks in Children of Hypertensive and Normotensive Parents

Cardiovascular, overt-motor, and verbal-reported responses to interadult emotional expressions, including anger, and to challenging task situations were examined in a sample of 49 10-14-year-old children of hypertensive (EH) and normotensive parents (NT). Sons of EH parents showed greater systolic blood pressure reactivity to interadult anger and to the digit span task than sons of NT parents. A consistent pattern was not found for girls. Marital distress and overt maternal anger expression predicted verbal-reported and overt-motor responses to interadult anger. Family history of EH and sex did not predict these responses. Implications include (a) heightened systolic blood pressure response to stress may be found in sons of EH parents before they are diagnosed to have EH disorders, (b) relations between family history of EH and cardiovascular response may be sex moderated, and (c) vulnerability to stress may be related to specific familial histories and backgrounds.

Why Siblings Are Important Agents of Cognitive Development: A Comparison of Siblings and Peers

This study explored older siblings' and peers' influence on young children's cognitive development. Although we anticipated many similarities in siblings' and peers' influence, our principal goal was to test the hypothesis that siblings are unique agents of cognitive development. Young children, their older siblings, and an older, familiar peer first participated in an unstructured building session where each built their own construction. Then, one of the older children taught the younger child how to copy a model windmill. Finally, the younger child was given an individual posttest in which he or she copied the windmill. Although there were many similarities in older siblings' and peers' guidance, the results highlighted the uniqueness of the sibling relationship. In the unstructured building session, young children were more likely to observe, imitate, and consult their older siblings than their older peers, and older siblings were more likely than older peers to provide them with guidance spontaneously. In the teaching session, older siblings provided more explanations and positive feedback and gave learners more control of the task than older peers. However, older siblings' behavior was not independent from the learners', as young children often prompted the siblings' explanations and pressured them into giving them more control of the task. These differences in teaching and learning strategies affected young children's task mastery; Children taught by siblings obtained higher posttest scores than children taught by peers. The discussion interprets these findings within the context of shared and unique functions of siblings and peers in cognitive development and highlights the role of the learner in promoting his or her own development.

Mother–Child Interaction on a Spatial Concept Task as Mediated by Maternal Notions about the Task and the Child

This study examined how task context and task difficulty may affect the nature of mother–child instructional interactions. It also assessed the role of maternal views about these two factors. Mothers interacted with their 3-year-olds on a matching task tapping spatial relation concepts. Sixty-four dyads received either an easy or difficult version of the matching task presented either as a school-readiness task or as a board game. Mothers' awareness of the task concepts, their notions about task difficulty, and their ideas about their child's task-related abilities had as strong an effect on their teaching, and thus on their child's successful task completion, as did the actual task difficulty or task context. Thus, how and what mothers teach may well be influenced in significant ways by their judgments of task difficulty and child competence as well as the actual task requirements. These results have implications for how educators structure programs designed for adult-child dyads. Mothers will teach in a...

Profiles of Children's Learning Behavior

Abstract Children from two primary grade classrooms were observed in three different instructional settings: Teacher Directed/Large Group; Teacher and Child Directed/Large and Small Group; and Child Directed. Aspects of the children's cognitive functioning, materials use, language behavior, peer interaction, and task involvement were recorded. Three questions were investigated: (a) Do children in the same lesson behave alike? (b) Do children change their behavior from one lesson type to another? (c) What effects do lesson types have on these five aspects of children's behavior? The results revealed a homogeneity of behavior among children within lesson type and a shift in behavioral modality from one lesson type to another. These results are consonant with Barker's (1968) critique of human ecology and Stodolsky's (1989) study of the influence of subject matter. Children's learning behaviors were congruent with lesson type, too. Larger group, more teacher directed lessons resulted in a more passive-respons...

Differential calculation abilities in young children from middle- and low-income families.

This study examined the performance of 42 middle- and 42 low-income kindergarten children on arithmetic calculations presented in a nonverbal format as well as in 3 different verbal formats. On the nonverbal task, the child was shown an initial set of disks, which was then hidden with a cover. The set was transformed by adding or removing disks. After the transformation, the child's task was to construct an array of disks that contained the same number of disks as in the final hidden set. A significant interaction between income level and task format was obtained. Although middle-income children performed better than low-income children on each of the verbal calculation tasks, the 2 income groups did not differ in performance on the nonverbal calculation task. The findings suggest that the nonverbal task format is less sensitive to socioeconomic variation than are the verbal task formats. A number of contextual variables can affect a young child's performance on arithmetic tasks, including the amount of verbal understanding required by the task, the nature of the quantitative terminology used in the task, and the availability of object referents (Gelman & Gallistel, 1978; Gelman & Massey 1987). In fact, our work on the development of calculation abilities in young children has shown that children's performance on addition and subtraction problems varies according to the nature of the task (Levine, Jordan, & Huttenlocher, 1992). In this prior study, middle-class children between 4 and 6 years of age were given identical addition and subtraction calculations in three different formats: nonverbal problems, story problems, and number-fact problems. On the nonverbal calculation task, the child was shown a set of physical referents that were then hidden with a box used as a cover. The hidden set was transformed either by adding or subtracting elements through an opening in the side of the box. After the transformation, the child's task was to construct an array with the same number of elements that were in the final set. The child was never allowed to see the entire set that the experimenter had produced. This ensured that an addition or

The development of a knowledge-based system supporting the diagnosis of reading and spelling problems

In this paper we argue that the quality of decision making in psychoeducational practice is likely to profit considerably from directives derived from a so-called normative diagnostic-prognostic framework, and that a computerized decision-support system is a promising tool for facilitation of the actual use of such directives. Accordingly, we describe the design and function of a knowledge-based system that is intended to support the initial stages of decision making in diagnosis of reading and spelling problems: (a) specifying the child's task performance in concrete behavioral terms, (b) identifying behavioral syndromes in these learning behaviors, and (c) generating candidate explanations, or diagnostic hypotheses, for these behaviors and syndromes. The systematic and formal foundation of the description of learning-behavior problems required for accomplishing these stages is provided by the facet definition approach. We present a mapping sentence that serves to define reading and spelling problems and that at the same time is used as a vehicle for communication between user and system. In order to show the latter function of the facet definition in the user interface of the system, a prototypical implementation of the system is described. Finally, some problems in constructing the required knowledge bases are discussed.