The Development of Planning Ability in Children: The Role of Meta-Planning, Transfer, and Individual Differences

Research on the development of planning ability has been plagued by a lack of consensus regarding what is, or is not, planning. Haith (1997) has argued that "planning" should not be attributed to a child unless: (1) a goal has been chosen, or at least understood as the specific end-state, (2) there was more than one way of arriving at the particular goal, (3) more than one step is necessary for goal attainment, with options available for how one might progress at each step, and (4) there has been an element of conscious reflection on options for implementing the plan and the likely outcomes of each option. The present study utilized a task that met all four of Haith's criteria to assess the development of planning in children. It was found that children younger than 5 years of age did not plan their task moves spontaneously, but that 4-year-olds could benefit from planning if prompted to do so, and that the benefits of planning on the first planning task transferred to a second planning task a week later. It was also found that individual differences in planning were related to a measure of general reflectiveness and monitoring

If You’re Funny and You Know It: Personality, Gender, and People’s Ratings of Their Attempts at Humor

In seven studies (n = 1,133), adults tried to create funny ideas and then rated the funniness of their responses, which were also independently rated by judges. People were relatively modest and self-critical about their ideas. Extraversion (r = .12 [.07, .18], k =7) and openness to experience (r = .09 [.03, .15], k = 7) predicted rating one’s responses as funnier; women rated their responses as less funny (d = -.28 [-.37, -.19], k = 7). The within-person correlation between self and judge ratings was small but significant (r = .13 [.07, .19], k = 7), so people had some insight into their ideas’ funniness

If You’re Funny and You Know It:Personality, Gender, and People’s Ratings of Their Attempts at Humor

In seven studies (n = 1,133), adults tried to create funny ideas and then rated the funniness of their responses, which were also independently rated by judges. People were relatively modest and self-critical about their ideas. Extraversion (r = .12 [.07, .18], k =7) and openness to experience (r = .09 [.03, .15], k = 7) predicted rating one’s responses as funnier; women rated their responses as less funny (d = -.28 [-.37, -.19], k = 7). The within-person correlation between self and judge ratings was small but significant (r = .13 [.07, .19], k = 7), so people had some insight into their ideas’ funniness

Self-Rated Humor

Data files and R code for our analyses of self-rated humor. The CSV files contain additional data (e.g., item-level personality scale responses for the NEO-FFI, HEXACO-100, and BFI-10) that may be of interest

Children's understanding of counterfactual emotions: Age differences, individual differences, and the effects of counterfactual-information salience

The present study investigated developmental trends in the effects of the salience of counterfactual alternatives on judgments of others' counterfactual-thinking-based emotions. We also examined possible correlates of individual differences in the understanding of these emotions. Thirty-four adults and 102 children, 5-8 years of age, were presented scenarios in which characters would be expected to experience regret. In one version of each scenario, the regret-relevant counterfactual alternative was made more salient than was the case with the other version. Adults consistently judged that a character for whom a counterfactual course of events would have resulted in a better outcome would feel worse than a character for whom an alternative course of events would not have resulted in a more positive outcome. The majority of the children's judgments were not affected by the counterfactual alternatives. However, the judgments of the oldest children (the 8-year-olds) were significantly more adult-like in the high-salience than in the low-salience condition. Although the three predictors examined in the present study (verbal ability, working memory capacity, second-order false belief task performance) together accounted for significant variance in performance on the emotions judgment task, no single predictor alone accounted for significant unique variance in performance. The importance of different social cognitive abilities for understanding people's affective responses is discussed. © 2009 The British Psychological Society