A robot is watching me!: Five-year-old children care about their reputation after interaction with a social robot.

Since robots are becoming involved in children's lives, it is urgent to determine how children perceive robots. The present study assessed whether Japanese 5-year-olds care about their reputation when interacting with a social robot. Children were given stickers and asked to divide them between themselves and an absent recipient. Results revealed that children (N = 112, 55 boys, 57 girls) strategically shared more stickers when being watched by a social interactive robot than by an attentional but non-interactive robot or a still robot. Additionally, children (N = 36, 18 boys, 18 girls) attributed higher psychological properties to social robots. This study is the first to show that 5-year-olds care about their reputations from social robots.

Do infants understand educational television content based on scientific findings?

Although attempts to create evidence-based television content for infants from birth to 2 years of age are notable, it has not been empirically verified to what extent infants understand such content. Our study evaluated whether Japanese 11- to 20-month-olds (N = 97; 52 boys and 45 girls) understand evidence-based television content using a looking-time method. When presented with content based on number themes, infants demonstrated an understanding of addition. When presented with content related to moral cognition, infants preferentially looked at a helper more than at a non-helper. Results reveal that infants understand educational television content based on scientific findings, demonstrating robustness and ecological validity. We discuss the possibility that broadcasting such content promotes infants' sensitivity to numbers and morals and provides learning opportunities through television.

Slowdown of the Walker circulation driven by tropical Indo-Pacific warming.

Global mean sea surface temperature (SST) has risen steadily over the past century, but the overall pattern contains extensive and often uncertain spatial variations, with potentially important effects on regional precipitation. Observations suggest a slowdown of the zonal atmospheric overturning circulation above the tropical Pacific Ocean (the Walker circulation) over the twentieth century. Although this change has been attributed to a muted hydrological cycle forced by global warming, the effect of SST warming patterns has not been explored and quantified. Here we perform experiments using an atmospheric model, and find that SST warming patterns are the main cause of the weakened Walker circulation over the past six decades (1950-2009). The SST trend reconstructed from bucket-sampled SST and night-time marine surface air temperature features a reduced zonal gradient in the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean, a change consistent with subsurface temperature observations. Model experiments with this trend pattern robustly simulate the observed changes, including the Walker circulation slowdown and the eastward shift of atmospheric convection from the Indonesian maritime continent to the central tropical Pacific. Our results cannot establish whether the observed changes are due to natural variability or anthropogenic global warming, but they do show that the observed slowdown in the Walker circulation is presumably driven by oceanic rather than atmospheric processes.

[Twelve-month-old infants show social preferences for native-dialect speakers].

Recent research demonstrates that social preferences for native language speakers emerge early in development, indicating that infants prefer speakers from their own society. Dialect may also be a reliable cue to group membership because it provides information about an individual's social and ethnic identity. We investigated whether infants showed social preferences toward native-dialect speakers over those with unfamiliar dialects. Infants at 9 and 12 months of age were shown videos in which two adults (a native-dialect speaker and an unfamiliar-dialect speaker) each spoke to and then offered an identical toy to the participating infants. Next, two real versions of the toys were presented to the infants in person. The 12-month-old infants preferentially reached for the toy offered by the native-dialect speaker. The 9-month-old infants also showed a preference for native-dialect speakers but this finding was not statistically significant. Our results suggest that dialects may be a reliable cue to group membership, and that infants' orientation toward members of their native community may guide their social and cultural learning.

Infants understand the referential nature of human gaze but not robot gaze.

Infants can acquire much information by following the gaze direction of others. This type of social learning is underpinned by the ability to understand the relationship between gaze direction and a referent object (i.e., the referential nature of gaze). However, it is unknown whether human gaze is a privileged cue for information that infants use. Comparing human gaze with nonhuman (robot) gaze, we investigated whether infants' understanding of the referential nature of looking is restricted to human gaze. In the current study, we developed a novel task that measured by eye-tracking infants' anticipation of an object from observing an agent's gaze shift. Results revealed that although 10- and 12-month-olds followed the gaze direction of both a human and a robot, only 12-month-olds predicted the appearance of objects from referential gaze information when the agent was the human. Such a prediction for objects reflects an understanding of referential gaze. Our study demonstrates that by 12 months of age, infants hold referential expectations specifically from the gaze shift of humans. These specific expectations from human gaze may enable infants to acquire various information that others convey in social learning and social interaction.

An eye-tracking study of letter-sound correspondence in Japanese-speaking 2- to 3-year-old toddlers.

Although the acquisition of letter-sound correspondences is a critical step in reading development, how and when children develop such correspondence remains relatively unexplored. In this study, we focused on Japanese hiragana letters to examine the implicit letter-sound correspondence using an eye-tracking technique for 80 Japanese-speaking toddlers. The results showed that 32- to 48-month-olds (but not 24- to 32-month-olds) directed their gaze at the target letter. An additional experiment on a letter-reading task showed that 32- to 40-month-olds could barely read the presented hiragana letters. These findings suggest that toddlers have already begun to grasp implicit letter-sound correspondences well before actually acquiring the ability to read letters.

The impact of positive and negative testimony on children's attitudes toward others.

Children can identify who is benevolent or malevolent not only through first-hand experiences and observations but also from the testimony of others. In this study, we investigated whether 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 128) would form their attitudes toward others after hearing testimony about that person's past moral behavior and whether the valence of testimony would differently influence the children. In the positive condition, half of the participants gained information about three puppets: puppet A's prosocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B's past prosocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C's past neutral behavior. In the negative condition, the other half also learned information about the three puppets: puppet A's antisocial behavior by their own first-hand observation, testimony about puppet B's past antisocial behavior, and testimony about puppet C's past neutral behavior. Then they engaged in tasks that measured their behavioral attitudes toward the puppets and evaluated the goodness of each puppet to assess their attitudes at a cognitive level. Our results concluded that the children form their behavioral attitudes toward others based on testimony starting at the age of 7, and attitude formation at the cognitive level based on testimony is seen at age 5. Negative testimony, rather than positive testimony, influences the children's attitudes toward others. In addition, the 7-year-olds' use of testimony differs depending whether they are the allocators or the receivers of rewards. Our findings deepen understanding of how children rely on the verbal information around themselves when they navigate interactions with others.

Decadal climate variability in the tropical Pacific: Characteristics, causes, predictability, and prospects.

Climate variability in the tropical Pacific affects global climate on a wide range of time scales. On interannual time scales, the tropical Pacific is home to the El Niño­Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Decadal variations and changes in the tropical Pacific, referred to here collectively as tropical Pacific decadal variability (TPDV), also profoundly affect the climate system. Here, we use TPDV to refer to any form of decadal climate variability or change that occurs in the atmosphere, the ocean, and over land within the tropical Pacific. "Decadal," which we use in a broad sense to encompass multiyear through multidecadal time scales, includes variability about the mean state on decadal time scales, externally forced mean-state changes that unfold on decadal time scales, and decadal variations in the behavior of higher-frequency modes like ENSO.

Ostension affects infant learning more than attention.

A recent controversy in infants' social learning has revolved around whether ostensive cues have an effect beyond simply grabbing infants' attention: natural pedagogy theory vs. attention modulation theory. However, since previous research only focused on gaze-following behaviors, it has failed to determine whether attention-grabbing versus ostensive cues might affect infants' learning at different levels. To explore this possibility, we conducted a critical test with 9-month-old infants (N=140) in which gaze-following behavior was discriminated from referential learning about a target object (object processing and object preference). Here we report that although both attentional cues (shivering, a beep, and mouth-moving beep) and ostensive cues (infant-directed speech) affected infants' gaze-following, only ostensive cues facilitated their referential object learning. These findings provide new evidence that ostensive cues play a distinct role in infant learning, supporting natural pedagogy theory.

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.

Pronounced centennial-scale Atlantic Ocean climate variability correlated with Western Hemisphere hydroclimate.

Surface-ocean circulation in the northern Atlantic Ocean influences Northern Hemisphere climate. Century-scale circulation variability in the Atlantic Ocean, however, is poorly constrained due to insufficiently-resolved paleoceanographic records. Here we present a replicated reconstruction of sea-surface temperature and salinity from a site sensitive to North Atlantic circulation in the Gulf of Mexico which reveals pronounced centennial-scale variability over the late Holocene. We find significant correlations on these timescales between salinity changes in the Atlantic, a diagnostic parameter of circulation, and widespread precipitation anomalies using three approaches: multiproxy synthesis, observational datasets, and a transient simulation. Our results demonstrate links between centennial changes in northern Atlantic surface-circulation and hydroclimate changes in the adjacent continents over the late Holocene. Notably, our findings reveal that weakened surface-circulation in the Atlantic Ocean was concomitant with well-documented rainfall anomalies in the Western Hemisphere during the Little Ice Age.

Individual differences in object-processing explain the relationship between early gaze-following and later language development.

Gaze-following behaviors play an important role in language development. However, the way in which gaze-following contributes to language development remains unclear. By focusing on two abilities, namely following the gaze direction of others and processing a cued object, the present study investigated how these two influences work together to promote language development in a longitudinal approach on infants from 9 to 18months of age. The results demonstrated that infants who spent more time following the gaze direction toward an object were more efficient in processing the cued object at 9months and had larger vocabularies by 18months. Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between early gaze-following behavior and subsequent vocabulary size was explained by object-processing ability. Importantly, mere extended fixations on a target object without the initiation of another's gaze shift were not related to enhanced object-processing. Our findings suggest that following another's gaze shift toward the object has an impact on object-processing that could contribute to vocabulary development, elucidating a critical step in the path from early gaze-following ability to later language development.

Extreme temperatures in Southeast Asia caused by El Niño and worsened by global warming.

In April 2016, southeast Asia experienced surface air temperatures (SATs) that surpassed national records, exacerbated energy consumption, disrupted agriculture and caused severe human discomfort. Here we show using observations and an ensemble of global warming simulations the combined impact of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and long-term warming on regional SAT extremes. We find a robust relationship between ENSO and southeast Asian SATs wherein virtually all April extremes occur during El Niño years. We then quantify the relative contributions of long-term warming and the 2015-16 El Niño to the extreme April 2016 SATs. The results indicate that global warming increases the likelihood of record-breaking April extremes where we estimate that 29% of the 2016 anomaly was caused by warming and 49% by El Niño. These post-Niño Aprils can potentially be anticipated a few months in advance, and thus, help societies prepare for the projected continued increases in extremes.

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.

Goal Attribution toward Non-Human Objects during Infancy Predicts Imaginary Companion Status during Preschool Years.

It has been shown that there is a significant relationship between children's mentalizing skills and creation of an imaginary companion (IC). Theorists have proposed that interaction with an IC may improve mentalizing skills, but it is also possible that children's mentalizing skills affect their creation of an IC. In this longitudinal study, we examined whether goal attribution in infants younger than 1 years old (Time 1) predicted their creation of ICs at 48 months old (Time 2). At Time 1, infants' goal attribution was measured in an action prediction experiment, where infants anticipated three types of action goals: (1) another person's goal-directed action (GH condition); (2) another person's non-goal-directed (BH condition); and (3) a mechanical claw's goal-directed action (MC condition). At Time 2, parents completed questionnaires assessing whether their children had ICs. The path analyses using Bayesian estimation revealed that infants' anticipation in the MC condition, but not in the GH and BH conditions, predicted their later IC status. These results indicate that infants' goal attributions to non-human agents may be a strong predictor of their later IC creation. Early mentalizing skills toward non-human objects may provide children with a basis for their engagement in imaginative play.

The power of human gaze on infant learning.

Social learning enables infants to acquire information, especially through communication. However, it is unknown whether humans are the prime source of information for infant learning. Here we report that humans have a powerful influence on infants' object learning compared with nonhuman agents (robots). Twelve-month-old infants were shown videos in which a human or a robot gazed at an object. The results demonstrated that the infants followed the gaze direction of both agents, but only human gaze facilitated their object learning: Infants showed enhanced processing of, and preferences for, the target object gazed at by the human but not by the robot. Importantly, an extended fixation on a target object without the orientation of human gaze did not produce these effects. Together, these findings show the importance of humanness in the gazer, suggesting that infants may be predisposed to treat humans as privileged sources of information for learning.

Rudimentary sympathy in preverbal infants: preference for others in distress.

Despite its essential role in human coexistence, the developmental origins and progression of sympathy in infancy are not yet fully understood. We show that preverbal 10-month-olds manifest sympathetic responses, evinced in their preference for attacked others according to their evaluations of the respective roles of victim, aggressor, and neutral party. In Experiment 1, infants viewing an aggressive social interaction between a victim and an aggressor exhibited preference for the victim. In Experiment 2, when comparing the victim and the aggressor to a neutral object, infants preferred the victim and avoided the aggressor. These findings indicate that 10-month-olds not only evaluate the roles of victims and aggressors in interactions but also show rudimentary sympathy toward others in distress based on that evaluation. This simple preference may function as a foundation for full-fledged sympathetic behavior later on.

Bilingualism accentuates children's conversational understanding.

BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses.