Social interaction and conceptual change pave the way away from children’s misconceptions about the Earth

Throughout development, children undergo moments of abrupt conceptual transitions, often replacing intuitive knowledge with grounded scientific theories. This typically also creates a situation of social conflict, as different children may hold at the same time substantially different theories and explanations about the same phenomenon. The main objective of this work is to understand whether social interaction and exchange of arguments and reasoning may be a catalyzer for conceptual development. Dyads of 7-year-old children with different conceptual understanding of the Earth were asked to reach a consensus about its astronomic and geometric properties. Our results show that mere minutes of deliberation can result in substantial changes in children?s conceptual representations, and moreover, that this transition was consistently in the direction of reasoned and scientific opinions. These results provide empirical evidence and suggest specific ways in which peer interaction can be used effectively to promote conceptual change in school settings, in a knowledge domain at the center of this era?s post truth and science denial crisis.Fil: de la Hera, Diego Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentin

Peer tutoring of computer programming increases exploratory behavior in children

There is growing interest in teaching computer science and programming skills in schools. Here we investigated the efficacy of peer tutoring, which is known to be a useful educational resource in other domains but never before has been examined in such a core aspect of applied logical thinking in children. We compared (a) how children (N = 42, age range = 7 years 1 month to 8 years 4 months) learn computer programming from an adult versus learning from a peer and (b) the effect of teaching a peer versus simply revising what has been learned. Our results indicate that children taught by a peer showed comparable overall performance—a combination of accuracy and response times—to their classmates taught by an adult. However, there was a speed–accuracy trade-off, and peer-taught children showed more exploratory behavior, with shorter response times at the expense of lower accuracy. In contrast, no tutor effects (i.e., resulting from teaching a peer) were found. Thus, our results provide empirical evidence in support of peer tutoring as a way to help teach computer programming to children. This could contribute to the promotion of a widespread understanding of how computers operate and how to shape them, which is essential to our values of democracy, plurality, and freedom.Fil: de la Hera, Diego Pablo. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Zanoni Saad, María Belén. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Peer audience effects on children’s vocal masculinity and femininity

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this ‘self-presentation’ is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children (26 females, aged 8–10 years) were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched to the participant's age and sex, is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests (rugby and ballet, respectively). Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed

Redox modulation of homomeric ρ1 GABAC receptors

The activity of many receptors and ion channels in the nervous system can be regulated by redox-dependent mechanisms. Native and recombinant GABA A receptors are modulated by endogenous and pharmacological redox agents. However, the sensitivity of GABAC receptors to redox modulation has not been demonstrated. We studied the actions of different reducing and oxidizing agents on human homomeric GABAρ1 receptors expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes. The reducing agents dithiothreitol (2 mM) and N-acetyl-l-cysteine (1 mM) potentiated GABA-evoked Cl- currents recorded by two-electrode voltage-clamp, while the oxidants 5-5′- dithiobis-2-nitrobenzoic acid (500 μM) and oxidized dithiothreitol (2 mM) caused inhibition. The endogenous antioxidant glutathione (5 mM) also enhanced GABAρ1 receptor-mediated currents while its oxidized form GSSG (3 mM) had inhibitory effects. All the effects were rapid and easily reversible. Redox modulation of GABAρ1 receptors was strongly dependent on the GABA concentration; dose-response curves for GABA were shifted to the left in the presence of reducing agents, whereas oxidizing agents produced the opposite effect, without changes in the maximal response to GABA and in the Hill coefficient. Our results demonstrate that, similarly to GABAA receptors and other members of the cys-loop receptor superfamily, GABA C receptors are subjected to redox modulation.Fil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Calvo, Daniel Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentin

Teaching, naturally

Teaching is one of mankind's most important achievements. It allows cumulative human culture to exist and enables us to have a history. Despite its significance, it has not been studied much in the cognitive sciences. We review two exceptions to this neglect. Both make claims about teaching as being natural to humans. The first view is that teaching is a natural cognitive ability. This view pays much attention to teaching and little to the learner. A second view is that humans are naturally attuned as learners to teachers' ostensive, pedagogical communications. This view largely neglects the teacher. We propose ways to integrate and expand these two theories that also take into account the dynamic bi-directional nature of the teacher–learner dyad. One is to consider the mutuality or its lack in the ostensive communications between the both the teacher and the learner. A second way is to include the neurosciences to investigate interactions between teachers' and learners' brains during teaching sessions. A third way is to explore a different information flow in such a way that the teacher learns when she teaches, thus suggesting that there are situations where the teacher and learner are one and the same person.Fil: Strauss, Sidney. Tel Aviv University; IsraelFil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

The Metacognitive Abilities of Children and Adults

Metacognition, or the capacity to reflect upon one’s own knowledge, is a key trait in our cognitive repertoire which is developed during childhood. Here, a direct comparison of metacognitive ability in children (N = 188; 6–9 years old) and adults, (N = 47) using a single perceptual task, was made. Results showed that 6–9 years old children have a level of metacognitive access similar to that of adults. Further, a signal detection theory model was applied in order to distinguish metacognitive ability from the propensity towards risk taking, two factors that have so far been confounded in studies. Children presented a suboptimal tendency towards risky decisions and a natural predisposition to overconfidence that can be partially mitigated by imposing a conservative normative strategy.Fil: Salles, Alejo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Cálculo; ArgentinaFil: Ais, Joaquin. Centro de Educación Médica e Investigaciones Clínicas "Norberto Quirno"; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Semelman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Centro de Educación Médica e Investigaciones Clínicas "Norberto Quirno"; Argentin

Age and gender dependent development of theory of mind in 6 to 8-years old children.

The ability to attribute different mental states to distinct individuals, or Theory of Mind (ToM), is widely believed to be developed mostly during preschool years. How different factors such as gender, number of siblings or coarse personality traits affect this development is not entirely agreed upon. Here, we introduce a computerized version of the scaled ToM suite of tasks introduced by Wellman and Liu (2004), which allows us to meaningfully test ToM development on children 6 to 8-years old. We find that kids this age are still not entirely proficient in all ToM tasks, and continue to show a progression of performance with age. By testing this age range, too, we are able to observe a significant advantage of girls over boys in ToM performance. Other factors such as number of siblings, birth order, and coarse personality traits show no significant relation with the ToM task results. Finally, we introduce a novel way to quantify the scaling property of the suite involving a sequence of set inclusions and also, a comparison between specially tailored sets of logistic models. These measures confirm the validity of the scale in the 6 to 8-years old range

Language, gesture, and judgment: Children's paths to abstract geometry

As infants, children are sensitive to geometry when recognizing objects or navigating through rooms; however, explicit knowledge of geometry develops slowly and may be unstable even in adults. How can geometric concepts be both so accessible and so elusive? To examine how implicit and explicit geometric concepts develop, the current study assessed, in 132 children (3–8 years old) while they played a simple geometric judgment task, three distinctive channels: children’s choices during the game as well as the language and gestures they used to justify and accompany their choices. Results showed that, for certain geometric properties, children chose the correct card even if they could not express with words (or gestures) why they had made this choice. Furthermore, other geometric concepts were expressed and supported by gestures prior to their articulation in either choices or speech. These findings reveal that gestures and behavioral choices may reflect implicit knowledge and serve as a foundation for the development of geometric reasoning. Altogether, our results suggest that language alone might not be enough for expressing and organizing geometric concepts and that children pursue multiple paths to overcome its limitations, a finding with potential implications for primary education in mathematics.Fil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Shalóm, Diego Edgar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Spelke, Elizabeth S.. Harvard University; Estados UnidosFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Young children are natural pedagogues

Young children are sensitive to ostensive cues (OC), a specific set of communication signals which denote a learning context. This endows human communication with a protocol – termed natural pedagogy – adapted to transmit knowledge. It remains unknown whether children spontaneously communicate in this protocol. Here, we show that children display a broad repertoire of ostensive signals during pedagogically relevant moments of their discourse. We introduce an experimental setup where an adult actor plays erroneously a simple inference game which the child has previously learned how to play. This naturally shifts the child from a student to a teacher's role in the educational dialog. In Study 1 (n = 31), we examine children's use of ostensive cues and gestures as they develop their explanations (3–5 and 6–8-years old). We demonstrate that all children use non-verbal behaviors specifically during moments of pedagogical relevance and the dynamics’ use of ostensive signals change through childhood. In Study 2 (n = 16), the adult pupil minimizes all reception to non-linguistic OC and gestures. This resulted in a decrease of children's frequency of OC during pedagogical episodes but did not affect other gesturing behavior. In Study 3 (n = 15) we show that decreasing ostension during children's history of instruction does not decrease their own ostension while teaching. This rejects the hypothesis that children teach by simple imitation of their learning experience and showed instead, that they can diagnose the sources of the adult pupil's failure and adjust their own teaching accordingly. Together, these results demonstrate that children are spontaneously tuned in the emitter side of natural pedagogy.Fil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Zylberberg, Ariel Dario. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; ArgentinaFil: Ais, Joaquin. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Semelman, Mariano. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentin