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

Allosteric modulation of retinal GABA receptors by ascorbic acid

Ionotropic GABA receptors (GABAA and GABAC) belong to the Cys-loop receptor family of ligand-gated ion channels. GABAC receptors are highly expressed in the retina, mainly localized at the axon terminals of bipolar cells. Ascorbic acid, an endogenous redox agent, modulates the function of diverse proteins, and basal levels of ascorbic acid in the retina are very high. However, the effect of ascorbic acid on retinal GABA receptors has not been studied. Here we show that the function of GABAC and GABAA receptors is regulated by ascorbic acid. Patch-clamp recordings from bipolar cell terminals in goldfish retinal slices revealed that GABAC receptor-mediated currents activated by tonic background levels of extracellular GABA, and GABAC currents elicited by local GABA puffs, are both significantly enhanced by ascorbic acid. In addition, a significant rundown of GABA puff-evoked currents was observed in the absence of ascorbic acid. GABA-evoked Cl- currents mediated by homomeric ρ1 GABAC receptors expressed in Xenopus laevis oocytes were also potentiated by ascorbic acid in a concentration-dependent, stereo-specific, reversible, and voltage-independent manner. Studies involving the chemical modification of sulfhydryl groups showed that the two Cys-loop cysteines and histidine 141, all located in the ρ1 subunit extracellular domain, each play a key role in the modulation of GABAC receptors by ascorbic acid. Additionally, we show that retinal GABAA IPSCs and heterologously expressed GABAA receptor currents are similarly augmented by ascorbic acid. Our results suggest that ascorbic acid may act as an endogenous agent capable of potentiating GABAergic neurotransmission in the CNS.Fil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Vickers, Evan. Oregon Health and Science University; Estados UnidosFil: Cid, Gustavo Moraga. Universidad de Concepción; ChileFil: Aguayo, Luis G.. Universidad de Concepción; ChileFil: von Gersdorff, Henrique. Oregon Health and Science University; Estados UnidosFil: Calvo, Daniel Juan. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; 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

Repensar el aula: la posible importancia del lenguaje no verbal y la enseñanza entre pares

El comedor, la cocina o, en el mejor de los casos, la pieza que no comparte con nadie esa niña o ese niño, no es un aula. Esto (quizá) ya lo sabíamos, pero hoy, como consecuencia de la pandemia de covid-19, ya es imposible de negar. Un aula es mucho más que un espacio de cuatro paredes donde se dictan nuevos contenidos de conocimiento. Un aula es un elemento vivo, que crece, muta y se desarrolla a lo largo de un año escolar, y que requiere de piezas que muchas veces no se tienen en cuenta. Este contexto nos obligó a dejar de utilizar las aulas, pero también nos hizo revalorizarlas y pensar que lo que sucede dentro de ellas no es tan sencillo de reproducir por fuera. ¿Qué ocurre entonces dentro de las aulas que permite la enseñanza? Muchos han tratado de responder esta pregunta en el campo de las neurociencias educacionales.Fil: Calero, Cecilia Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Gobierno. Area de Educacion; Argentin

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 Teaching Instinct

Teaching allows human culture to exist and to develop. Despite its significance, it has not been studied in depth by the cognitive neurosciences. Here we propose two hypotheses to boost the claim that teaching is a human instinct, and to expand our understanding of how teaching occurs as a dynamic bi-directional relation within the teacher-learner dyad. First, we explore how children naturally use ostensive communication when teaching; allowing them to be set in the emitter side of natural pedagogy. Then, we hypothesize that the capacity to teach may precede to even have a mature metacognition and, we argue that a teacher will benefit from the interaction with her student, improving her understanding on both contents of knowledge: her own and her student’s. Thus, we propose that teaching may be the driving force of metacognitive development and may be occurring as an instinct from very early ages.Fil: 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"; ArgentinaFil: Goldin, Andrea Paula. 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; 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