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Question-asking is a crucial tool for acquiring information about unseen entities, such as viruses; thus, examining children's questions within the context of COVID-19 is particularly important for understanding children's learning about the coronavirus. The study examined 3-12-year-old children's questions and teachers' responses about the COVID-19 pandemic in Türkiye, a non-Western developing context, and the United States, a Western cultural context. A total of 119 teachers from Türkiye and 95 teachers from the US participated in the study. Teachers completed an online survey consisting of a demographic form and a questionnaire asking them to report three questions about COVID-19 asked by children in their classrooms and their responses to these questions. We analyzed children's questions and teachers' responses for their type and content and examined demographic factors associated with children's questions and teachers' responses. Consistent with the literature, children from Türkiye asked fewer explanation-seeking (i.e., why/how) questions than children from the United States. Children asked questions about viruses and precautions. Teachers responded to children's questions realistically in both countries. The findings have important implications for how children gain knowledge from teachers when discussing health, disease, and virus topics in two countries.
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COVID-19 , Professores Escolares , Humanos , COVID-19/epidemiologia , COVID-19/psicologia , Criança , Professores Escolares/psicologia , Estados Unidos/epidemiologia , Feminino , Masculino , Inquéritos e Questionários , Pré-Escolar , Adulto , SARS-CoV-2/isolamento & purificação , PandemiasRESUMO
In her 1926 book Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings, Florence Goodenough pioneered the quantitative analysis of children's human-figure drawings as a tool for evaluating their cognitive development. This influential work launched a broad enterprise in cognitive evaluation that continues to the present day, with most clinicians and researchers deploying variants of the checklist-based scoring methods that Goodenough invented. Yet recent work leveraging computational innovations in cognitive science suggests that human-figure drawings possess much richer structure than checklist-based approaches can capture. The current study uses these contemporary tools to characterize structure in the images from Goodenough's original work, then assesses whether this structure carries information about demographic and cognitive characteristics of the participants in that early study. The results show that contemporary methods can reliably extract information about participant age, gender, and mental faculties from images produced over 100 years ago, with no expert training and with minimal human effort. Moreover, the new analyses suggest a different relationship between drawing and mental ability than that captured by Goodenough's highly influential approach, with important implications for the use of drawings in cognitive evaluation in the present day.
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Do children think of genetic inheritance as deterministic or probabilistic? In two novel tasks, children viewed the eye colors of animal parents and judged and selected possible phenotypes of offspring. Across three studies (N = 353, 162 girls, 172 boys, 2 non-binary; 17 did not report gender) with predominantly White U.S. participants collected in 2019-2021, 4- to 12-year-old children showed a probabilistic understanding of genetic inheritance, and they accepted and expected variability in the genetic inheritance of eye color. Children did not show a mother bias but they did show two novel biases: perceptual similarity and sex-matching. These results held for unfamiliar animals and several physical traits (e.g., eye color, ear size, and fin type), and persisted after a lesson.
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Mães , Pais , Criança , Masculino , Feminino , Animais , Humanos , Pré-EscolarRESUMO
For over a hundred years, children's drawings have been used to assess children's intellectual, emotional, and physical development, characterizing children on the basis of intuitively derived checklists to identify the presence or absence of features within children's drawings. The current study investigates whether contemporary data science tools, including deep neural network models of vision and crowd-based similarity ratings, can reveal latent structure in human figure drawings beyond that captured by checklists, and whether such structure can aid in understanding aspects of the child's cognitive, perceptual, and motor competencies. We introduce three new metrics derived from innovations in machine vision and crowd-sourcing of human judgments and show that they capture a wealth of information about the participant beyond that expressed by standard measures, including age, gender, motor abilities, personal/social behaviors, and communicative skills. Machine-and human-derived metrics captured somewhat different aspects of structure across drawings, and each were independently useful for predicting some participant characteristics. For example, machine embeddings seemed sensitive to the magnitude of the drawing on the page and stroke density, while human-derived embeddings appeared sensitive to the overall shape and parts of a drawing. Both metrics, however, independently explained variation on some outcome measures. Machine embeddings explained more variation than human embeddings on all subscales of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (a parent report of developmental milestones) and on measures of grip and pinch strength, while each metric accounted for unique variance in models predicting the participant's gender. This research thus suggests that children's drawings may provide a richer basis for characterizing aspects of cognitive, behavioral, and motor development than previously thought.
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Do adults think about genetic inheritance as a deterministic or probabilistic process? Do adults display systematic biases when reasoning about genetic inheritance? Knowing how adults think about genetic inheritance is valuable, both for understanding the developmental end point of these concepts and for identifying biases that persist even after formal education. In two studies, we examined adults' reasoning about genetic inheritance for familiar animals (Study 1) and unfamiliar animals (Study 2). First, participants were presented with animals that varied in eye color and were asked to judge whether each could be the offspring of a particular set of animal parents that had either the same or different eye colors. The potential offspring had eye colors that were either identical to the parents, blended the parents' eye colors, or differed from the parents. Next, participants predicted how six offspring of the animal parents would look. Participants judged a variety of choices as possible-not only the ones resembling the parents-suggesting that they thought genetic inheritance was a probabilistic process. Additionally, many participants thought that female offspring would look more like their mothers and male offspring would look more like their fathers. Thus, systemic biases in reasoning about inheritance persist into adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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Mães , Núcleo Familiar , Animais , Masculino , Humanos , Feminino , Julgamento , PaisRESUMO
Visualizations are commonly used in educational materials; however, not all visualizations are equally effective at promoting learning. Prior research has supported the idea that both perceptually rich and bland visualizations are beneficial for learning and generalization. We investigated whether the perceptual richness of a life cycle diagram influenced children's learning of metamorphosis, a concept that prior work suggests is difficult for people to generalize. Using identical materials, Study 1 (N = 76) examined learning and generalization of metamorphosis in first- and second-grade students, and Study 2 (N = 53) did so in fourth- and fifth-grade students. Bayesian regression analyses revealed that first and second graders learned more from the lesson with the perceptually rich diagram. In addition, fourth and fifth graders generalized more with the bland diagram, but these generalizations tended to be incorrect (i.e., generalizing metamorphosis to animals that do not undergo this type of change). These findings differ from prior research with adults, in which bland diagrams led to more correct generalizations, suggesting that the effect of perceptual richness on learning and generalization might change over development.
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Generalização Psicológica , Aprendizagem , Animais , Teorema de Bayes , Humanos , Instituições Acadêmicas , EstudantesRESUMO
Parent-child conversations are important for children's cognitive development, children's ability to cope with stressful events, and can shape children's beliefs about the causes of illness. In the context of a global pandemic, families have faced a multitude of challenges, including changes to their routines, that they need to convey to their children. Thus, parent-child conversations about the coronavirus pandemic might convey information about the causes of illness, but also about how and why it is necessary for children to modify their behaviors to comply with new social norms and medical guidance. The main goal of this study was to examine the questions children ask about the COVID-19 pandemic and how parents answer them. This survey included responses from a national sample of 349 predominantly white parents of children between the ages of 3 and 12 recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk in United States. Parents reported that although children asked about COVID-19 and its causes (17.3%), children asked primarily about lifestyle changes that occurred as a result of the pandemic (24.0%) and safety (18.4%). Parents reported answering these questions by emphasizing that the purpose of different preventative measures was to protect the child (11.8%) or the family (42.7%) and providing reassurance (13.3%). Many parents discussed how it was their social responsibility to slow the spread of the virus (38.4%). Parents of younger children tended to shield them from information about COVID-19 (p = .038), while parents with more knowledge were more likely to provide explanations (p < .001). Our analysis shows that families not only discuss information about the virus but also information about changes to their lifestyle, preventative measures, and social norms.
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COVID-19/epidemiologia , Pais/psicologia , Adaptação Psicológica , Adulto , Ansiedade/patologia , COVID-19/virologia , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Pandemias , Relações Pais-Filho , SARS-CoV-2/isolamento & purificação , Inquéritos e Questionários , Estados Unidos/epidemiologiaRESUMO
We present three studies examining death in children's animated films. Study 1 is a content analysis of 49 films. We found that death is often portrayed in films, but many deaths occurred off-screen. Deaths were mostly portrayed in a biologically accurate manner, but some films portrayed biological misconceptions. Study 2 (n = 433) reports on parents' attitudes and parent-child conversations about death in films. Children's questions about death in animated films were similar to their questions about death more generally. Animated films may provide a context for parent-child conversations about death, as parents often watched these films with their children. However, it appeared that few parents took advantage of this opportunity to talk about death with their children.
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Two foundational concepts in biology education are 1) offspring are not identical to their parents, and 2) organisms undergo changes throughout their lives. These concepts are included in both international and U.S. curricular standards. Research in psychology has shown that children often have difficulty understanding these concepts, as they are inconsistent with their intuitive theories of the biological world. Additionally, prior research suggests that diagrams are commonly used in instruction and that their features influence student learning. Given this prior work, we explored the characteristics of life cycle diagrams and discuss possible implications for student learning. We examined 75 life cycle diagrams from books, including five biology or general science textbooks and 25 specialized trade books focusing on biology for children. We also examined 633 life cycle diagrams from a publicly available online database of science diagrams. Most diagrams failed to show any within-species variability. Additionally, many diagrams had perceptually rich backgrounds, which prior research suggests might hinder learning. We discuss how the design characteristics of diagrams may reinforce students' intuitive theories of biology, which might make it difficult for students to understand key biological concepts in the future.
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Estágios do Ciclo de Vida , Animais , Compreensão , Humanos , Aprendizagem , EstudantesRESUMO
Parents are typically in charge of purchasing the food that their children eat, but little is known about how parents decide if particular foods are healthy for their children and how their beliefs about nutrition influence their children's beliefs. In two studies, we investigated how parents of children ages 4 to 12 (N = 826) make decisions about the healthiness of foods, when presented with different representations of the same nutritional information. Providing parents with nutritional information did not influence their ratings of how healthy food items are, compared to when they are shown only pictures of the foods. Parents reported talking with their children about nutrition, believed they are the best source of information for children about nutrition, and believed their nutrition beliefs influence their child's beliefs. Our findings highlight the role of prior knowledge in food cognition and how beliefs about foods are transmitted from parents to children.
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Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined how participants' memories of socialization regarding death might influence their self-reported coping with losses in childhood and adulthood. We recruited 318 adults to complete an online survey. Path analyses indicated that participants who remembered their parents shielding them less from issues related to death reported better coping as children and adults. Qualitative responses suggested participants wanted to receive more information about death from their parents as they went through the grieving process. We highlight the potential benefits of socializing children about death, and how it may aid in their coping with death-related events.
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Adaptação Psicológica , Atitude Frente a Morte , Poder Familiar/psicologia , Socialização , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pesquisa QualitativaRESUMO
A mixed-method approach was used to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Mexico. Parents' and children's death-related experiences and understanding of death were examined. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, older children were less likely to endorse that all living things die. Children also displayed coexistence of beliefs related to death that can be attributed to both their biological and spiritual understanding of death. We also found that older children were more likely to report that a child should feel sad following the death of a loved one. These findings highlight how cultural practices shape the development of cognitive and affective processes related to death.
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Atitude Frente a Morte/etnologia , Comportamento Infantil/etnologia , Compreensão , Pais , Adulto , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , México/etnologiaRESUMO
Young children's growing access to touchscreen technology represents one of many contextual factors that may influence development. The focus of the current study was the impact of traditional versus electronic drawing materials on the quality of children's drawings during the preschool years. Young children (2-5 years, N = 73) and a comparison group of adults (N = 24) copied shapes using three mediums: marker on paper, stylus on touchscreen tablet, finger on touchscreen tablet. Drawings were later deemed codable or uncodable (e.g., scribbles), and codable drawings were then scored for subjective quality on a 4-point scale. Girls and older children (vs. boys and younger children) produced more codable drawings; however, this gap closed when children drew with their finger on a tablet. Medium also affected the quality of adults' drawings, favoring marker on paper. Thus, drawing on a tablet helped younger children produce drawings but resulted in lower quality drawings among adults. These findings underscore the importance of considering environmental constraints on drawing production. Moreover, since clinical assessments often include measures of drawing quality, and sometimes use tablet computers for drawing, these findings have practical implications for education and clinical practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Arte , Desenvolvimento Infantil , Computadores de Mão , Destreza Motora/fisiologia , Percepção Visual , Adulto , Fatores Etários , Pré-Escolar , Estudos Transversais , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Fatores Sexuais , Adulto JovemRESUMO
In this chapter, we explore an interesting class of behaviors, referred to as action errors, which, we argue, provide a window in to the early development of the perception-action system. As we examine these behaviors, we discuss how acquisition of motor and cognitive skills interact at particular periods of development to make children more likely to perform action errors. However, we also provide evidence that even adults perform action errors under certain task demands. We argue that it is fruitful to examine the developing perception-action system in terms of the dynamic interplay of constraints within the environment, the individual child, and the task that they are attempting to complete. This interaction of constraints is dynamic and multiply determined, which is why action errors do not occur whenever a child sees a photograph of an object, views a tiny chair, or interacts with grandparents over interactive media. We argue, however, that not all constraints are weighted equally in the emergence of a specific behavior. Rather, the child's goal or intention plays a key role in organizing factors that lead to a specific behavior.
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Desenvolvimento Infantil , Percepção de Forma , Força da Mão , Desempenho Psicomotor , Atenção , Percepção de Cores , Sinais (Psicologia) , Percepção de Profundidade , Aprendizagem por Discriminação , Humanos , Lactente , Percepção de Movimento , Mascaramento Perceptivo , Resolução de Problemas , Percepção de Tamanho , Aprendizagem EspacialRESUMO
One of the most common causes of injuries among firefighters is slips, trips, and falls on the fireground. Acute fatigue from firefighting activities and/or carrying asymmetric loads might impact gait characteristics increasing slip, trip, and fall risk. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of fatigue from simulated firefighting activities and carrying asymmetric loads (fire hose over one shoulder) on firefighters' gait behavior. Both firefighting activities and asymmetric hoseload carriage led to shorter step lengths, stride lengths, single leg support time, and longer double leg support time, suggesting firefighters adopted cautious gait strategies. Simulated firefighting activities performed in either a live-fire training tower or laboratory-based environmental chamber using a firefighting activity simulator resulted in nearly identical effects on gait kinematics. This result suggests that gait assessment in a laboratory-based environmental chamber can be used as effective simulations in place of specialized burn facilities.
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Fadiga/fisiopatologia , Bombeiros , Marcha/fisiologia , Remoção , Suporte de Carga/fisiologia , Acidentes por Quedas , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Saúde Ocupacional , Esforço Físico/fisiologia , Análise e Desempenho de Tarefas , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Slips, trips, and falls (STF) of firefighters may occur while traversing stationary obstacles. STF risk may be amplified by fatigue from firefighting and carrying an asymmetric load. Vertical and horizontal clearances of the lead (VCL, HCL) and trailing (VCT, HCT) foot and contact with a 30â¯cm obstacle were examined in 24 firefighters. We examined the impact on obstacle crossing performance due to three exercise protocols (treadmill walking or simulated firefighting in an environmental chamber, and simulated firefighting in a live-fire burn building) and carrying a hose load on the right shoulder. Post-activity fatigue resulted in significant decreases in HCL and VCT. Adding a hose load did not affect choice of lead/trailing foot, but did significantly decreased HCL and increased VCL. The hose load amplified acute fatigue effects by causing a sharper decrease in both VCL and VCT. Clearances were significantly impacted by interaction effects of exercise protocol type and acute fatigue. HCL decreased and VCL remained consistent following both simulated firefighting tasks, but HCL remained unchanged and VCL increased following the treadmill protocol. Contact errors increased with fatigue and load, and more errors occurred following simulated firefighting task protocols compared to treadmill walking. Our findings suggest that both acute fatigue and carrying an additional load can cause decrements in firefighter movement, which may place a firefighter at greater STF risk. Simulated firefighting testing protocols may have greater impact on movement performance than treadmill walking. Knowledge of these results may assist in the development of a reliable, laboratory based, and standardizable simulated firefighting exercise protocol.
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Fadiga/fisiopatologia , Bombeiros , Remoção , Esforço Físico/fisiologia , Análise e Desempenho de Tarefas , Caminhada/fisiologia , Acidentes por Quedas , Adulto , Feminino , Incêndios , Humanos , Masculino , Saúde Ocupacional , Suporte de Carga , Adulto JovemRESUMO
We investigated children's (nâ¯=â¯120; 3- to 11-year-olds) and adults' (nâ¯=â¯18) reasoning about life-cycle changes in biological organisms by examining their endorsements of four different patterns of life-span changes. Participants were presented with two separate tasks: (a) judging possible adult versions of a juvenile animal and (b) judging possible juvenile versions of an adult animal. The stimuli enabled us to examine the endorsement of four different patterns of change: identical growth, natural growth, dramatic change, and speciation. The results suggest that endorsement of the different patterns is influenced by age and familiarity. Young children and individuals confronted with unfamiliar organisms often endorsed an identical growth that emphasizes the stability of features over the life span and between parents and offspring. The results are interpreted as supporting the idea that cognitive constraints influence individuals' reasoning about biological change and that the influence of these constraints is most notable when individuals are young or are presented with unfamiliar biological organisms.
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Compreensão/fisiologia , Julgamento/fisiologia , Resolução de Problemas/fisiologia , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Cognição/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Lockhart and Keil have written an interesting monograph focusing on the development of reasoning about medicine, a relatively underexplored area of research with potentially broad implications with respect to the design of more-effective medical interventions. In a set of 15 studies with well over 2,200 participants, they examine how children and adults combine aspects of biological and psychological reasoning to create working models of medicine. Lockhart and Keil explore developmental changes in reasoning about illness and its treatment using medicines in terms of dualism (e.g., psychological vs. physical), spatial proximity, differential timing of effects, potential side effects, and treatment tradeoffs. This commentary highlights the novel contributions of this monograph, examines issues that need additional considerations, and makes suggestions for future research.
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Cuidado da Criança , Tratamento Farmacológico , Conhecimentos, Atitudes e Prática em Saúde , Pesquisa , Criança , Pré-Escolar , Atenção à Saúde , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
Risk of slips, trips and falls in firefighters maybe influenced by the firefighter's equipment and duration of firefighting. This study examined the impact of a four self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) three SCBA of increasing size and a prototype design and three work cycles one bout (1B), two bouts with a five-minute break (2B) and two bouts back-to-back (BB) on gait in 30 firefighters. Five gait parameters (double support time, single support time, stride length, step width and stride velocity) were examined pre- and post-firefighting activity. The two largest SCBA resulted in longer double support times relative to the smallest SCBA. Multiple bouts of firefighting activity resulted in increased single and double support time and decreased stride length, step width and stride velocity. These results suggest that with larger SCBA or longer durations of activity, firefighters may adopt more conservative gait patterns to minimise fall risk. Practitioner Summary: The effects of four self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and three work cycles on five gait parameters were examined pre- and post-firefighting activity. Both SCBA size and work cycle affected gait. The two largest SCBA resulted in longer double support times. Multiple bouts of activity resulted in more conservative gait patterns.
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Fadiga/etiologia , Bombeiros , Marcha/fisiologia , Dispositivos de Proteção Respiratória , Trabalho/fisiologia , Acidentes por Quedas/prevenção & controle , Adulto , Análise de Variância , Desenho de Equipamento , Fadiga/fisiopatologia , Feminino , Bombeiros/estatística & dados numéricos , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Equipamento de Proteção Individual , Análise e Desempenho de Tarefas , Fatores de Tempo , Suporte de Carga , Carga de TrabalhoRESUMO
Slips, trips and falls are leading causes of fireground injuries. A functional balance test (FBT) was used to investigate the effects of self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) size and design, plus firefighting work cycle. During the FBT, subjects walked along a narrow platform and turned in defined spaces, with and without an overhead obstacle. Thirty firefighters wore three varying-sized standard SCBAs and a low-profile prototype SCBA during three simulated firefighting work/rest cycles. Firefighters were tested pre- and post-firefighting activity (one bout, two bouts with a 5-min break, or back-to-back bouts with no break). Subjects committed more errors and required longer completion times with larger SCBAs. Use of the prototype SCBA lead to lower times and fewer errors. Performing a second bout of firefighting increased completion time. Firefighters need to consider how SCBA and amount of physical activity on the fireground may influence balance in order to reduce the risk of injury.