Differences in the weighting and choice of evidence for plausible versus implausible causes.

Individuals have difficulty changing their causal beliefs in light of contradictory evidence. We hypothesized that this difficulty arises because people facing implausible causes give greater consideration to causal alternatives, which, because of their use of a positive test strategy, leads to differential weighting of contingency evidence. Across 4 experiments, participants learned about plausible or implausible causes of outcomes. Additionally, we assessed the effects of participants' ability to think of alternative causes of the outcomes. Participants either saw complete frequency information (Experiments 1 and 2) or chose what information to see (Experiments 3 and 4). Consistent with the positive test account, participants given implausible causes were more likely to inquire about the occurrence of the outcome in the absence of the cause (Experiments 3 and 4) than those given plausible causes. Furthermore, they gave less weight to Cells A and B in a 2 × 2 contingency table and gave either equal or less weight to Cells C and D (Experiments 1 and 2). These effects were inconsistently modified by participants' ability to consider alternative causes of the outcome. The total of the observed effects are not predicted by either dominant models of normative causal inference or by the particular positive test account proposed here, but they may be commensurate with a more broadly construed positive test account.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Psychological Association via http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a003554

Age-related changes in sustained attention for older children from high poverty communities in the USA

Sustained attention influences academic achievement because maintaining focus on a task for an extended period supports the acquisition of new skills. Investigating the development of sustained attention has been an important topic in educational and psychological research. This study includes secondary analysis of data collected as part of a larger project that provided opportunities for children to learn chess after school. This study analysed data related to sustained attention, which was measured by the Continuous Performance Task across one academic year in a predominantly African American sample. This sample consists of 149 participants (n = 66 females, M age = 9.57 years, SD = 0.89 years) attending schools in high poverty communities in the USA. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine changes in sustained attention in ethnic minority students from high poverty areas using a longitudinal design. A repeated-measures ANOVA was used to conduct statistical analysis. The results indicated that participants’ performance on the sustained attention task improved significantly from the beginning to the end of the school year. Although past studies have examined changes in sustained attention in children using this same task, no studies have used a repeated-measures design in ethnic minority samples. These findings demonstrate the possibility that sustained attention improves continuously in children, despite the difficulties associated with growing up in high poverty environments

Efficiency of Executive Function: A Two-Generation Cross-Cultural Comparison of Samples From Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

Although Asian preschoolers acquire executive functions (EFs) earlier than their Western counterparts, little is known about whether this advantage persists into later childhood and adulthood. To address this gap, in the current study we gave four computerized EF tasks (providing measures of inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning) to a large sample ( n = 1,427) of 9- to 16-year-olds and their parents. All participants lived in either the United Kingdom or Hong Kong. Our findings highlight the importance of combining developmental and cultural perspectives and show both similarities and contrasts across sites. Specifically, adults' EF performance did not differ between the two sites; age-related changes in executive function for both the children and the parents appeared to be culturally invariant, as did a modest intergenerational correlation. In contrast, school-age children and young adolescents in Hong Kong outperformed their United Kingdom counterparts on all four EF tasks, a difference consistent with previous findings from preschool children.A joint-council award to the authors funded this research (ES/K010225/1:Economic and Social Research Council, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong). Thinking Games website development supported by the Institute of Educational Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A110932 to the University of Cambridge. Electronic access to dataset: http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851984/

Under What Conditions Can Recursion Be Learned? Effects of Starting Small in Artificial Grammar Learning of Center-Embedded Structure

It has been suggested that external and/or internal limitations paradoxically may lead to superior learning, that is, the concepts of starting small and less is more (Elman,; Newport,). In this paper, we explore the type of incremental ordering during training that might help learning, and what mechanism explains this facilitation. We report four artificial grammar learning experiments with human participants. In Experiments 1a and 1b we found a beneficial effect of starting small using two types of simple recursive grammars: right-branching and center-embedding, with recursive embedded clauses in fixed positions and fixed length. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 100). In Experiment 3 and 4, we used a more complex center-embedded grammar with recursive loops in variable positions, producing strings of variable length. When participants were presented an incremental ordering of training stimuli, as in natural language, they were better able to generalize their knowledge of simple units to more complex units when the training input “grew” according to structural complexity, compared to when it “grew” according to string length. Overall, the results suggest that starting small confers an advantage for learning complex center-embedded structures when the input is organized according to structural complexity

INSTRUCT Lab

INSTRUCT lab open acces

Invited talks and lectures

A collection of invited talks and lectures by Prof Michelle Ellefso

The Influence of Pretend Play on Children’s and Language and Pre-Literacy Skills

The role of pretend play on children’s cognitive development has garnered interest recently. This study examines theefficacy of a pretend play intervention on the self-regulation and language skills of four- to five-year-olds. Pretend playincludes a pretender projecting a mental representation onto reality. The sample consisted of 60 children who wererandomized into two groups: (a) Pretend play; and (b) Art activities. The intervention included sixteen 30-minute sessionsover 13 weeks, in groups of six children. Each session included: (1) storybook reading; (2) role-playing; and (3) review.During storybook reading explicit phonological awareness and vocabulary instruction were provided for 18 words in eachbook. Role-playing involved giving children props to partake in pretend play. Review consisted of revising the PA andvocabulary of the target words. The improvements that occurred in the children’s self-regulation and language skillscontribute to a better understanding of pretend play in educational settings

An Exploratory Study of the Influence of Pretend Play on Children’sSelf-Regulation and Language Skills

Recently, there has been increased interest regarding how pretend play contributes to children’s cognitive develop-ment. This study examines the efficacy of a pretend play intervention on self-regulation and language skills of 4- to 5-year-oldsand explores parents’ perceptions about children’s engagement in pretend play. The small-scale intervention includes eight 30-minute sessions over 6 weeks, in groups of five children. Each session included: (1) shared storybook reading; (2) role-playing;and (3) review. During shared story-book reading the children were read two books with explicit phonological awareness andvocabulary instruction for 18 words in each book. Role-playing included providing the children with props, which allow forengagement in pretend play activities. Several measures were used pre- and post-intervention to evaluate children’s self- reg-ulation and language skills. The improvements that occurred in the intervention are considered alongside other cognitive andeducational factors to better understand the role of pretend play in educational settings