A Picture-Book Recommender System for Extensive Reading on an E-Book System

In this paper, we demonstrate a picture-book recommender system to promote extensive reading in English. Extensive reading refers to the independent reading of a large quantity of material for information or pleasure and is known to be effective for acquisition of a second language. The recommender system is implemented on an e-book system that shows digital learning materials (e.g., textbooks and slides) on student’s device. Activities on the e-book system are recorded as learning logs. The recommender system suggests picture books in English based on contents of English textbooks. Specifically, we implement two recommendation strategies: (1) term-based recommendation and (2) grammar-based recommendation. In the future, we use learning logs and loan records of picture books to investigate the influence of picture books on acquisition of English and to enable personalized recommendations for each student

Evidence of means–end behavior in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus)

The present study explores to what extent Asian elephants show “means–end” behavior. We used captive Asian elephants (N = 2) to conduct four variations of the Piagetian “support” problem, which involves a goal object that is out of reach, but rests on a support within reach. In the first condition, elephants were simultaneously presented with two identical trays serving as the “support”, with the bait on one tray and the other tray left empty. In the next two conditions, the bait was placed on one tray, while additional bait was placed beside the other tray. In the last condition, both trays contained bait, but one of the trays had a small gap which prevented the elephants from reaching the reward. Subjects were required to choose and pull either tray with their trunk and to obtain the bait (i.e. goal). Results showed that one elephant performed all of the support problems significantly above chance after several sessions, suggesting that the elephant was capable of understanding that pulling the tray was the “means” for achieving the “end” of obtaining the bait. This study showed that elephants show means–end behavior when subjected to a Piagetian “support” task, and indicates that such goal-directed behavior occurs in species other than primates

Eye Contact Affects Object Representation in 9-Month-Old Infants.

Social cues in interaction with others enable infants to extract useful information from their environment. Although previous research has shown that infants process and retain different information about an object depending on the presence of social cues, the effect of eye contact as an isolated independent variable has not been investigated. The present study investigated how eye contact affects infants' object processing. Nine-month-olds engaged in two types of social interactions with an experimenter. When the experimenter showed an object without eye contact, the infants processed and remembered both the object's location and its identity. In contrast, when the experimenter showed the object while making eye contact with the infant, the infant preferentially processed object's identity but not its location. Such effects might assist infants to selectively attend to useful information. Our findings revealed that 9-month-olds' object representations are modulated in accordance with the context, thus elucidating the function of eye contact for infants' object representation

Discriminability of picture book typeface in children

Humans are surrounded by various typefaces, and the preliminary corpus analysis suggests that typefaces commonly used in picture books differ from others, which implies that familiar typefaces differ between children and adults. Thus, this study investigated whether children can easily recognize fonts considered familiar to them. Japanese-speaking children (aged 7–8 years) performed a hiragana-character discrimination task, which includes different (e.g., あ–お) and same (e.g.,あ–あ) character–pair conditions. It involves various typefaces familiar to children (i.e., picture book typefaces) or adults; the study indexed discriminability using averaged reaction times to the character–pair conditions. Accuracy was sufficiently high for all typefaces (>90%), and no significant difference existed in response times between any typeface. The results suggested that children can stably discriminate characters regardless of whether or not a font is commonly used in picture books

Children passively allow other’s rule violations in cooperative situations

Recent studies in developmental psychology have revealed the developmental origins of cooperation. Although such studies regard cooperation as a pro-social behavior, studies on adults have found a negative aspect: cooperation sometimes promotes unethical behavior. Adults also exhibit altruistic cheating, even though their cheating might not actually benefit them. However, the development of negative aspects of cooperation remains unclear. Our study examined whether 7-year-old children engage in negative aspects of cooperation from two aspects using a peeking paradigm. Specifically, Experiment 1 examined children’s negative aspects of cooperation from the perspective of collaboration and Experiment 2 examined altruistic behavior. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that children kept the cheating of a collaborative partner secret even though they did not actively cheat themselves. In Experiment 2, children also kept the partner’s cheating secret even when violations did not provide any reward to themselves, if the predefined reward was high. In contrast, children did not keep the cheating secret if the predefined reward was low. Overall, our findings suggest that even 7-year-olds tend to act as if cooperating is more important than following rules that are compatible and exhibit negative aspects of cooperation

An example of stimulus presentation in test trials of Experiment 1.

<p>“IDS” indicates infant-directed speech and “ADS” indicates formal adult-directed speech. All toddlers participated in the pretest trials and two test conditions. After the pretest trials, ADS and IDS conditions were presented in semi-random order, such that the same register was not presented on more than 2 consecutive trials. In ADS/IDS conditions, after toddlers were shown that the speaker was talking to someone in IDS or ADS (10 sec), the black screen hid the speaker and the listener (infant or the adult) appeared.</p

Unconscious learning of orthographic regularity

Orthographic regularity (OR), the statistical regularity of letter strings, is a critical factor in fluent visual word recognition. Although studies showed that this regularity could be learned by simple exposure to letter strings, it remains unclear whether OR could be learned when participants are unconscious of their exposure to letter strings. In this study, we compared OR learning between unmasked and masked　(continuous flash suppression; CSF) exposure conditions. From Chetail (2017)’s study, regularities are embedded in the initial position of letter strings (e.g., A B _ _ _). Nine of fifteen participants who were slightly aware of the presentation of stimuli in CSF condition (&lt; 30 %) significantly selected the letter stimuli embedded in OR as word-like both in CSF (69.2%) and non-CSF (69.9%) conditions, showing no significant difference between conditions. This result suggests that orthographic regularity can be learned even when letter strings are perceived unconsciously

Sensitivity to linguistic register in 20-month-olds: Understanding the register-listener relationship and its abstract rules

<div><p>Linguistic register reflects changes in speech that depend on the situation, especially the status of listeners and listener-speaker relationships. Following the sociolinguistic rules of register is essential in establishing and maintaining social interactions. Recent research suggests that children over 3 years of age can understand appropriate register-listener relationships as well as the fact that people change register depending on their listeners. However, given previous findings that infants under 2 years of age have already formed both social and speech categories, it may be possible that even younger children can also understand appropriate register-listener relationships. The present study used Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and formal Adult-Directed Speech (ADS) to examine whether 20-month-old toddlers can understand register-listener relationships. In Experiment 1, we used a violation-of-expectation method to examine whether 20-month-olds understand the individual associations between linguistic registers and listeners. Results showed that the toddlers looked significantly longer at a scene in which the adult was talked to in IDS than when the infant was talked to in IDS. In contrast, there was no difference when the adult and the infant were talked to in formal ADS. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a habituation switch paradigm to examine whether 20-month-olds understand the abstract rule that a change of register depends on listeners rather than on speakers. Results showed that the toddlers looked significantly longer at the scene where the register rule was violated. The present findings provide new evidence that even 20-month-olds already understand that people change their way of speaking based on listeners, although their understanding of individual register-listener relationships is immature.</p></div

Mean looking times to baseline, register-, speaker-, and listener-change conditions in Experiment 2 (a) and 3 (b).

<p>Error bars indicate standard errors. * <i>p</i> < .05, ** <i>p</i> < .01.</p