•Question-asking is a powerful learning strategy but is relatively understudied.•The ability to ask questions is present in infancy but undergoes rapid development.•We introduce a framework for ...understanding question asking in childhood.
Children’s ability to query others is remarkable because it attests to their coordination of a range of complex cognitive capacities and because it allows them to initiate and redirect pedagogical exchanges. It is therefore a catalyst for their ability to learn from others. However, despite its importance for cognitive developmental theorizing and its implications for educational practice, relative to other aspects of children’s exploratory behavior, research on children’s questions has been relatively sparse and siloed across several disciplines. The aim of this review is to provide a framework for organizing past and future research on question-asking and to use this framework to describe what development and variability in children’s question asking looks like between infancy and the elementary school years. We propose that question-asking can be divided into four components: (1) initiation, (2) formulation, (3) expression, and (4) response evaluation and follow-up. Drawing on research from the fields of psychology, education, and developmental psycholinguistics we review what is known and not known about these four components between infancy and elementary school as well as describe sources of variability across development.
Children (N = 278, 34–71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children ...were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which figurine turned on the music box, especially when the observed and testimonial evidence conflicted, children were given access to the music box during their sorting. However, children rarely explored. Indeed, they struggled to disregard the misleading testimony both when sorting the figurines and when asked about a future attempt. In contrast, children who explored the effectiveness of the figurines dismissed the misleading testimony.
•Preschool children show initial trust in an informant’s claim.•Children reassess an informant’s misleading claim in light of empirical evidence.•Children transfer their conclusions regarding the ...validity of a claim across tasks.•Preschoolers are able to integrate and align information from different sources.
Across two experiments, an adult informant presented 220 preschoolers (34–71 months of age) with either a correct claim or an incorrect claim about how to activate a music box by using one of two toy figures. Children were then prompted to explore the figures and to discover whether the informant’s claim was correct or incorrect. Children who discovered the claim to be incorrect no longer endorsed it. Moreover, their predictions regarding a new figure’s ability to activate the music box were clearly affected by the reliability of the informant’s prior claim. Thus, children reassess an informant’s incorrect claim about an object in light of later empirical evidence and transfer their conclusions regarding the validity of that claim to subsequent objects.
Research Findings: Although it is well documented that toy play and book sharing shape communication between adults and children in different ways, relatively few studies have compared teacher - ...child interactions in the two activities. The aim of this observational study was to describe and compare the conversational functions of teachers' and children's interactional contributions during book sharing and toy play. Examining dyads of five- to six-year-old children (N = 38) and their preschool teachers in the two activities, we found that the teachers produced significantly higher proportions of questions during toy play and higher proportions of statements during book sharing and that their questions tended to be more advanced (i.e. inferential) during book sharing compared to toy play. Moreover, sequential analyses of the immediate dependencies between the teachers' and children's contributions revealed that the teachers' statements were more likely to follow the children's questions during toy play than during book sharing, which may suggest more "back-and-forth" communication during play. Practice or Policy: The study findings indicate that toy play and book sharing provide children with complementary communication experiences and that the choice of activity may shape their opportunities to engage in educational dialogs.
Studies suggest that preterm delivery is a risk factor for early language delays, but knowledge is scarce about the persistence of the delays and whether the association is of a linear kind. To ...resolve this, effects of confounding risk factors that are both shared within a family and pregnancy specific need to be distinguished from effects of preterm delivery. Our study examines the association between early gestational age and language outcomes, using a sibling-control design.
The sample comprises 22,499 siblings from the Norwegian Mother and Child Birth Cohort Study, recruited between 1999 and 2008. Mothers rated child language comprehension and production at 18 and 36 months. Analyses compared siblings discordant on gestational age group (early preterm, delivery at week 22-33; late preterm, 34-36; early term, 37-38; full term, >38) and type of onset of delivery (spontaneous; provider-initiated), and compared these findings with conventional cohort analyses.
The findings revealed inverse linear relations between the gestational age groups, and persistent but diminishing language delays. Effects of preterm delivery were substantial on both language production and comprehension at 18 months. By 36 months, the effects of preterm delivery were weaker, but still extensive, in particular for language production in provider-initiated births. When comparing sibling-control with cohort analyses, preterm group was less important among spontaneous births, but remained important in provider-initiated births. Familial and pregnancy risk factors partly explained this.
Distinctive factors seem to underlie effects of preterm delivery across spontaneous and provider-initiated births.
Communication is best understood as occurring along three dimensions: interactional, conceptual, and linguistic. However, few studies have examined early parent–child communication along all three ...dimensions simultaneously. This study examines these three dimensions of communication in Norwegian parent–child interactions during play. Thirty-nine 2-year-old children participated in dyadic interactions with their fathers (N = 30) and mothers (N = 38). Of these 39 children, 29 engaged in separate interactions with both parents. Father–child and mother–child responsive communication, levels of abstract talk, and language complexity and diversity were examined and compared. Overall, the features of communication were very similar between father–child and mother–child interactions, and there were some noteworthy associations between the features of father–child and mother–child communication within families and dyads. We discuss these findings in reference to the three dimensions and in relation to the specific activity and cultural setting of the study.
This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of ...age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were gathered for 42,517 children aged 18 months and for 28,107 of the same children at 36 months. Panel analysis of latent variables revealed that imitative actions, language comprehension, and language production uniquely contributed to predicting late development of language production, while pointing gestures did not. It is suggested that the results can be explained by underlying symbolic representational skills at 18 months. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Recent studies show that Theory of Mind (ToM) has implications for children's social competences and psychological well-being. Nevertheless, although it is well documented that children overall take ...advantage when they have to resolve cognitive problems together with a partner, whether individual difference in ToM is one of the mechanisms that could explain cognitive performances produced in social interaction has received little attention. This study examines to what extent ToM explains children's spatial performances in a dyadic situation. The sample includes 66 boys and girls between the ages of 5-9 years, who were tested for their ToM and for their competence to resolve a Spatial task involving mental rotation and spatial perspective taking, first individually and then in a dyadic condition. Results showed, in accordance with previous research, that children performed better on the Spatial task when they resolved it with a partner. Specifically, children's ToM was a better predictor of their spatial performances in the dyadic condition than their age, gender, and spatial performances in the individual setting. The findings are discussed in terms of the relation between having a conceptual understanding of the mind and the practical implications of this knowledge for cognitive performances in social interaction regarding mental rotation and spatial perspective taking.
This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of ...age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were gathered for 42,517 children aged 18 months and for 28,107 of the same children at 36 months. Panel analysis of latent variables revealed that imitative actions, language comprehension, and language production uniquely contributed to predicting late development of language production, while pointing gestures did not. It is suggested that the results can be explained by underlying symbolic representational skills at 18 months.
Objective. Guided by a social interaction learning model, this study investigated potential risk and protective factors related to fathers' early parenting behaviors. Design. Parenting behaviors in ...726 Norwegian fathers with their 1-year olds (51.7% boys) were assessed by both micro social coding and global ratings from direct observation of structured interactions. Father and child factors were reported by fathers when the child was 6 months and 1 year old. Results. Fathers' positive involvement was associated with children's observed sustained attention, and lack of positive involvement was associated with children's communicative risk and fathers' lower education. Fathers' negative reinforcement was associated with children's developmental difficulties and communicative risk. Positive involvement and negative reinforcement were not correlated and were predicted by different factors, indicating they are separate dimensions of parenting. Conclusion. Multiple predictors relate to different parenting dimensions and point to factors that may enhance father-infant interaction and identify fathers and children who may benefit from early intervention.
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Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
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