Children's Task Research Articles

Attentional distraction and time perception in children

The purpose of the present study was to test the effect of attentional distraction on temporal bisection performance in 5‐ and 8‐year‐old children. During a first learning phase, children were trained to discriminate on a temporal bisection task a short standard duration (2 sec) from a long one (8 sec), presented as visual stimuli. Later, in a second testing phase, intermediate durations (3, 4, 5, 6, 7 s), including the standard durations, were presented. Children's task still was to report if it was a short standard duration or a long one. In addition, during the non‐standard duration, a distracter either did or did not appear. Results showed increasing proportions of “it is the long standard duration” (response “long”) with increasing stimulus durations in both distracter and non‐distracter conditions. However, psychophysical functions were flatter in the 5‐year‐olds than in the 8‐year‐olds, revealing their lower sensibility to time. Nevertheless, the 5‐year‐olds' proportion of long responses was higher under the distracter than in the non‐distracter condition. Consequently, the point of subjective equality (PSE), corresponding to the stimulus duration to which the subject produced 50% of responses of “long” was lower under the distracter condition as compared to the non‐distracter condition. Conversely, for the 8‐year‐olds, the PSE was significantly higher in the distracter than in the non‐distracter condition. Five‐year old children overestimated the time in the presence of an attentional distracter, whereas 8‐year olds tended to underestimate it. The leftward shift and the rightward shift of the PSE in the 5‐ and the 8‐year‐olds, respectively, were accounted for by limited‐capacity attention in the five‐year olds.

An Analysis of Children's Task Strategies for a Test of Reading Comprehension

This study demonstrates the contribution of children's test-taking strategies to performance on a test of reading comprehension. Participants were boys and girls ages 9 and 10 years (n = 30). Children's strategies were evident from observations during the task as well as from patterns of the items attempted in relation to task completion. Results of a correlational analysis were confirmed by an intervention to promote children's awareness of test-taking strategies. Task completion and task performance were enhanced, notably for children with initially less effective strategies. Findings suggest ways to account for children's test-taking strategies in order to enhance the usefulness of well-designed assessment matetrials in classroom settings.

Closely observed texts

This paper discusses a central theme of the novel What Maisie Knew by Henry James, namely the development of a child's consciousness and internal world in a hostile psychological environment. It explores the way in which the novel dramatizes the problems for a child, in such circumstances, of knowing and understanding her own experience and the adult world. The paper charts the difficulties for Maisie in negotiating a child's ordinary tasks and stages of psychic growth, and in particular the Oedipal situation. It also explores the parallel in the novel between the child's attempts to know and the attempts of the reader of fiction to know, and the use of reading as a metaphor for perception and learning.

A Lurian-Piagetian Approach to Assessment of Historically Disadvantaged Black Scholars in English Medium Schools

Piagetian and Lurian assessment procedures were employed to evaluate the neurocognitive processes of seven-year-old historically disadvantaged children (n=27), residents of traditionally Black areas who were identified as experiencing learning problems (LP group) in English medium schools. Comparisons were made with a reference group of Black children in the same schools (n=23) currently not experiencing learning problems (NLP). No significant differences were found between factors such as maternal education, occupational status, Home Screening Questionnaire or the amount of English spoken in the homes of the two groups. On Piagetian tasks of conservation and seriation, it was observed that the performances of the NLP group were age appropriate, while the LP children showed a developmental lag, despite the fact that no significant difference was observed on classification tasks. Using Majovski et als (1978) adaptation of Luria's tests, significant differences were noted on all tasks with the exception of Acoustic-Motor organisation and Higher Visual Functions. The results of the Lurian tasks indicated difficulties with basic skills but especially with the regulatory and directional aspects of language which manifested in lower level dysfunctions regarded as prerequisites for gaining higher level skills. The occurrence of different maturation rates and skills for the two groups as shown by Piagetian and Lurian tasks, was also supported by differences obtained on Goodenough's (1929) DAP test (p<.001). Significant correlations were found between conservation and seriation tasks with Lurian functions of motor, acoustic-motor, expressive language, arithmetic and reading /writing skills. The possibility is raised that Piagetian and Lurian approaches can offer greater insight into children's cognitive levels and task performance.

Social understanding, attachment security of preschool children and maternal mental health

Studies on children's social understanding tend to assume that understanding the minds and emotions of others are theoretically and methodologically indistinct. This study, however, aimed to assess differential effects, with particular reference to the quality of the attachment relationship and maternal mental health. The participants were 45, 40‐month‐old children who were assessed on tasks of social understanding (false belief, Bartsch & Wellman, 1989, and emotion understanding, Denham & Auerbach, 1995); attachment security was assessed by a story completion task (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990), and maternal mental health was assessed by Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI) (Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961). The hypotheses were (a) that insecure children would have mothers scoring higher on the BDI than secure children and poorer performances on the social understanding tasks; (b) that insecure children need not be any worse than secure children in mind appraisal, rather, it was anticipated that their difficulties would be with emotion appraisal. It was found that, relative to secure children, insecure children had lower verbal mental ages, poorer performances on emotion understanding and had mothers scoring higher in depression. Interestingly, no significant effects were found for mind understanding. A regression analysis showed that verbal mental age and attachment were significant predictors of the child's emotion task performance whilst depression and SES were not. In the light of these results, this paper considers the need for a move towards an integration of theories and methods.

Relation‐based intervention with at‐risk mothers: Outcome in the second year of life

AbstractIt has been shown that the UCLA home visiting/mother–infant group intervention made a significant positive impact during the child's first 2 years of life on two indices of the mother's support and on three areas of mother–child and child development: (1) The mother's responsiveness to the needs of her child and the related development of his or her security of attachment; (2) the mother's encouragement of her child's autonomy and the related development of his or her autonomy; and (3) the mother's encouragement of her child's task involvement and the related development of his or her task orientation. By child age 2 years, the mothers experiencing the intervention, in comparison with those that did not, also used verbally persuasive as opposed to coercive intrusive methods of control and their children responded more positively to these controls. Mothers who did not experience the help of the intervention had significantly more difficulty controlling their child if it was a boy as opposed to a girl. They used the least appropriate methods of control, and the boys responded more negatively to these controls.The nature of the development of the mother's use of appropriate controls and the child's response to that control was elucidated by determining on the total sample where 12‐month antecedents influenced the indices of control either independently of or in interaction with the intervention status. The child's endurance in the test situation was an independent predictor of mother‐appropriate control and the child's positive response to that control, while the absence of maternal intrusiveness further enhanced the impact of the intervention on that control. ©2001 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.

Principles and practical grouping for the use of drill and practice programs

Abstract A previous paper showed that young children performed better when working as individuals rather than in pairs on a drill and practice program. This paper reports an analysis of behaviour and talk for individuals and single sex pairs using a computer‐based drill and practice activity to explain differences in performance. Results indicated that individuals were more likely to be task‐focused and to complete tasks successfully than children working in pairs. Differences were found in off‐task activity, behaviours and type of talk. Grouping and verbal interaction are discussed in relation to the type of task/program that children are asked to undertake, and how both task and peer presence may constrain the child's task focus and performance when reinforcing pre‐existing knowledge.

Young children's use of syntactic cues to learn proper names and count nouns.

In 6 experiments, 144 toddlers were tested in groups ranging in mean age from 20 to 37 months. In all experiments, children learned a novel label for a doll or a stuffed animal. The label was modeled syntactically as either a count noun (e.g., "This is a ZAV") or a proper name (e.g., "This is ZAV"). The object was then moved to a new location in front of the child, and a second identical-looking object was placed nearby. The children's task was to choose 1 of the 2 objects as a referent for the novel word. By 24 months, both girls (Experiment 2) and boys (Experiment 5) were significantly more likely to select the labeled object if they heard a proper name than if they heard a count noun. At 20 months, neither girls (Experiments 1 and 6) nor boys (Experiment 1) demonstrated this effect. By their 2nd birthdays, children can use syntactic information to distinguish appropriately between labels for individual objects and those for object categories.

A Clinical Comparative Study Evaluating the Effect of Epilepsy Versus Adhd on Timed Cognitive Tasks in Children

Both children with epilepsy and children with ADHD may be characterized by slowing on reaction-time measurement. This is of particular interest, as neuropsychological assessment is often requested in the differential diagnosis between children with short non-convulsive epileptic seizures and children with ADHD. In this study we attempt to identify patterns of impairment on timed tasks that are specific for epilepsy, relative to ADHD. This study was an open, controlled parallel-group clinical investigation which included two groups of patients: 60 children with ADHD and 60 children with epilepsy. These children were compared with a control group (n =30) on two types of timed cognitive tasks: tasks with low information load (simple reaction-time measurement) and tasks with high information load (multiple decision reaction-time measurement). The simple reaction-time measurements show significant differences between ADHD and controls (all except for visual RT non-dominant hand) and between epilepsy and controls (only one test). No significant differences were found between epilepsy and ADHD. The two tests with high information load show significant slowing compared with the controls for epilepsy on the Binary Choice Reaction-Time Test and for ADHD on the Visual Searching Test. On both tests also the differences between epilepsy and ADHD are significant. The two tests in combination have a relatively satisfactory potential to classify the children with ADHD (75% correct classification) and the children with epilepsy (55% correct classification). We may conclude that complex reaction-time tests (i.e., timed tasks with high information load) have potential for assessing the differential impact of ADHD and epilepsy on attentional function. These tasks specifically reveal general slowing for children with epilepsy and slowing as an effect of failures of inhibitory self control on unstructured tasks for ADHD.

Visual behaviour of ADHD children during an attention test: an almost forgotten variable. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

The goal of this study was to examine whether looking away behaviour of ADHD children interferes with their test performance. ADHD and normal children carried out two continuous performance tests (CPTs): one with a regular interstimulus interval (ISI), and the other with an irregular ISI. Children were instructed to push a response button when a target stimulus was presented on the monitor. The children's visual behaviour was recorded and scored offline. A micro-analysis of the visual behaviour indicated that ADHD children timed their looking away behaviour in the regular CPT: i.e. they looked away from the monitor and back in the interval between two succeeding stimuli. As a result they did not miss stimuli. Timing of looking away was less possible in the CPT with the irregular ISI. In this condition, looking away interfered with the ADHD children's task accuracy. In sum, looking away behaviour had a negative effect on the accuracy of test performance of ADHD children when stimuli were unpredictable. Looking away behaviour was not associated with the slower reaction times of the ADHD children. Hence, the often reported slowness of ADHD children is not to be explained by their visual behaviour.

Parent–Child Interaction as a Power Contest

We explored parental use of child derogation as a means of power assertion. Parents interacted with children (own and unrelated) after a judgment task in which competitive ideation was primed or unprimed. Evaluations included (a) face-to-face verbal derogation versus praise and (b) judgments of children's task performance. When primed, fathers with low perceived power (as measured by the Parent Attribution Test) were more likely than other fathers to derogate the performance of both related and unrelated children. Similar trends were found for mothers. Results were interpreted as suggesting that parents with low perceived power use child derogation as a means of attempted power repair.

Visual Behaviour of ADHD Children During an Attention Test: An Almost Forgotten Variable

The goal of this study was to examine whether looking away behaviour of ADHD children interferes with their test performance. ADHD and normal children carried out two continuous performance tests (CPTs): one with a regular interstimulus interval (ISI), and the other with an irregular ISI. Children were instructed to push a response button when a target stimulus was presented on the monitor. The children's visual behaviour was recorded and scored offline. A micro‐analysis of the visual behaviour indicated that ADHD children timed their looking away behaviour in the regular CPT: i.e. they looked away from the monitor and back in the interval between two succeeding stimuli. As a result they did not miss stimuli. Timing of looking away was less possible in the CPT with the irregular ISI. In this condition, looking away interfered with the ADHD children's task accuracy. In sum, looking away behaviour had a negative effect on the accuracy of test performance of ADHD children when stimuli were unpredictable. Looking away behaviour was not associated with the slower reaction times of the ADHD children. Hence, the often reported slowness of ADHD children is not to be explained by their visual behaviour.

How Children Solve Environmental Problems: Using computer simulations to investigate systems thinking

Two computer simulations were developed and used to investigate systems thinking and environmental problem solving in children. Ninety-two primary school children (aged 8 years and 11 years) interacted with computer simulation of either a deforestation problem or a water depletion problem. The children's task was to manipulate the simulation thereby enabling it to run for as long as possible before resources—water or trees—were exhausted. This could be achieved via a number of strategies and their use by the two groups of children was compared. Through efficient use of resources and recycling strategies, the older children outperformed the younger children. Magical thinking was more prevalent among the 8-year-olds. The results also suggest that seemingly isomorphic environmental problems may not be interpreted as such.

Phonetic awareness: Knowledge of orthography–phonology relationships in the character acquisition of Chinese children.

This study investigated the development of phonetic awareness, meaning insight into the structure and function of the component of Chinese characters that gives a clue to pronunciation. Participants were 113 Chinese 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders enrolled in a working-class Beijing, China elementary school. The children's task was to represent the pronunciation of 60 semantic phonetic compound characters. As anticipated, both character familiarity and character regularity strongly influenced performance. Children as young as 2nd graders are better able to represent the pronunciation of regular characters than irregular characters or characters with bound phonetics. Phonetic awareness continues to develop over the elementary school years, as is shown by the increasing influence of phonetic regularity on the performance of children in higher grades and the increasing percentage of phonetic-related errors among older children.

Children's Illness Drawings and Asthma Symptom Awareness

This study examines the relationship between children's abilities to perceive their symptoms of asthma via several previously researched subjective and objective procedures compared with their performance on a standardized children's drawing task and scale criteria. Results indicated that girls verbalized significantly more emotions about their drawings and were better able to detect airflow changes in their small airways than boys. The Gabriels Asthma Perception Drawing Scales (GAPDS) is a promising clinical tool for assessing children's perceptions and emotions about asthma via nonverbal methods. Varying methods of measuring asthma symptom awareness are not highly correlated; thus, more than one methodology is appropriate for use with children.

The Effects of Family Characteristics and Time Use on Teenagers' Household Labor

Studies suggest that contributions to housework are minimal. However much of this research focuses on young adolescents, utilizes data regarding tasks, and ignores chores children more often perform. We address these gaps by analyzing longitudinal time-use data collected from teens on the types of household chores they are most likely to perform. We examine gender inequity in teens' contributions to household labor and how it changes over high school. We also explore how teens' household contributions vary by family structure, and by teens' involvement in school and paid work. We find that girls devote more time to household tasks than boys and that this gender gap increases during high school. Teens' efforts are greater in larger families and in single parent families. Lastly. high school males spend more time on extracurricular and leisure activities than girls, who work longer hours in both unpaid and paid labor Key Words: divorce, family, gender housework inequality, time-use. Researchers investigating contributions to household work in the past 10-15 years generally seem to concur with Shelton and John (1996) that participation in household labor typically occasional and their time investment small (p. 311). Most studies of household inputs, however, focus on young children or early adolescents (Bianchi & Robinson, 1997; Crouter, Manke, & McHale, 1995; Peters & Haldeman, 1987). The contribution of older teenagers, who are more capable of sharing the work at home as a result of increased maturity and skills, has received much less attention. (For an exception, see Call, Mortimer, & Shanahan, 1995.) In addition, researchers typically have measured contributions to household work by surveying the time they spend on an array of chores, many of which may actually be more appropriate for adults than children. Tasks that children are more likely to assume are often omitted from consideration. These problems are evident, for example, in studies employing data from the National Survey of Families and Households (Blair, 1992a, 1992b; Demo & Acock, 1993), where the household division of labor is assessed with a list that includes adult tasks like paying bills and driving, but excludes such children's tasks as babysitting siblings and caring for pets. Therefore, the household contributions made by offspring may be underestimated. To address these gaps in past research that may have led to underestimates of inputs, we focus on the household labor of teenagers as they approach adulthood. The analyses are aimed at examining longitudinally, across the high school years, the extent to which teens participate in an array of household chores-some of which may be unique to children-as well as identifying the factors that produce variability in teens' time investments. Both individual and contextual factors have been linked to variations in household work. Gender is the key individual factor associated with variations in time devoted to housework for both adults (Blair & Lichter, 1991; Shelton, 1991) and children (Antil, Goodnow, Russell, & Cotton, 1996). Researchers have found that, similar to married couples, household chores among children are also sex typed. Girls spend more time on a greater number of tasks than boys (Blair, 1992b; McHale, Bartko, Crouter, & Perry-Jenkins 1990; White & Brinkerhoff, 1981). Therefore, a central issue in this analysis is to determine whether a gender gap in household labor exists for teens as well and whether that gap changes as teens approach adulthood. Concerning contextual factors, research on housework has focused on a number of family structure characteristics, including maternal employment, marital status, and family size, but often in isolation (Benin & Edwards, 1990; Demo & Acock, 1993; Hilton & Haldeman, 1991; Peters & Haldeman, 1987). …

Gender Differences in Reaction to Public Achievement Feedback

In this series of studies the author examined the achievement and interest of 226 first-grade pupils (6-7 years old) in performing a task and the changes in achievement and interest interventions, including various rewards. The children's task was to put a circle round the differences on the drawings they were given. The task was the same for all the children, but they were divided into four groups in respect of reward: Group 1 = not rewarded, Group 2 = rewarded by token, Group 3 = rewarded by a 'lucky dip' (contingent, salient, tangible reward), Group 4 = rewarded by public achievement feedback. After completing the first task, the children could choose whether to go to play in the school-yard or to ask for another similar exercise. The degree of intrinsic motivation is shown by the spontaneous activities performed without any rewards. The achievement was the number of correctly identified details in the first task. The results showed that in Groups 3 and 4 the intrinsic motivation was significantly reduced, while the quantitative indices of achievement rose. The series of experiments revealed gender differences: public feedback on achievement brought about a significant increase in achievement in both boys and girls, while, if feedback was withdrawn, the boys lost interest in the task significantly more than the girls. The author interprets this as being due to the greater social inclination and empathy typical of females, in contrast with males' typically greater inclination towards facts and higher motivation to achieve.

Event-Related Potentials Elicited by a Visual Continuous Performance Task in Children of Alcoholics

RODRÍGUEZ HOLGUÍN, S., M. CORRAL AND F. CADAVEIRA. Event-related potentials elicited by a visual continuous performance task in children of alcoholics. ALCOHOL 19(1) 23–30, 1999.—Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from a group of young children of alcoholics (HR; n = 17, 7 females) with a high-density family-history of alcoholism and from a control group (CN; n = 19, 10 females), ages 7–15 years old, during a visual continuous performance task. The P3 peak amplitude and the mean amplitude at five latency windows (300–800 ms) were measured at frontal (F3-Fz-F4), central (C3-Cz-C4) and parietal (P3-Pz-P4) electrodes. Data were analyzed using a mixed-model risk-group by stimulus-type (matching vs. nonmatching) by Electrode ANCOVA, with age as a covariate, for each of the scalp regions. The risk-group by stimulus-type interactions were significant at the parietal region for the P3 peak amplitude and for the 300–400 ms mean amplitude, although there were no risk-group main differences. The HR group manifested smaller differences between the amplitude of the matching and nonmatching condition than the CN group. These results suggest a deficient electrophysiological differentiation between relevant and irrelevant information and are discussed in relation to previous reports and to the characteristics of the sample.

Early fraction calculation ability.

Three- to 7-year-olds' ability to calculate with whole-number, fraction, and mixed-number amounts was tested using a nonverbal task in which an amount was displayed and then hidden (J. Huttenlocher, N. C. Jordan, & S. C. Levine, 1994). Next, an amount was added to or subtracted from the hidden amount. The child's task was to determine the hidden amount that resulted from the transformation. Although fraction problems were more difficult than whole-number problems, competence on all problem types emerged in the early childhood period. Furthermore, there were striking parallels between the development of whole-number and fraction calculation. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that early representations of quantity promote learning about whole numbers but interfere with learning about fractions (e.g., R. Gelman, 1991; K. Wynn, 1995, 1997).

Early fraction calculation ability.

Three- to 7-year-olds' ability to calculate with whole-number, fraction, and mixed-number amounts was tested using a nonverbal task in which an amount was displayed and then hidden (J. Huttenlocher, N. C. Jordan, & S. C. Levine, 1994). Next, an amount was added to or subtracted from the hidden amount. The child's task was to determine the hidden amount that resulted from the transformation. Although fraction problems were more difficult than whole-number problems, competence on all problem types emerged in the early childhood period. Furthermore, there were striking parallels between the development of whole-number and fraction calculation. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that early representations of quantity promote learning about whole numbers but interfere with learning about fractions (e.g., R. Gelman, 1991; K. Wynn, 1995, 1997).