College of Education

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Psychology, Cognitive

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    The Intentionality and Social Information Processing Patterns Associated with Ethnic Minority Children's Aggression
    (2009) Simcox, April Guzy; Teglasi-Golubcow, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    According to Dodge and colleagues' social information processing model (e.g. Crick and Dodge, 1994) when faced with social situations, children engage in five components of decision making. In previous research using the model and corresponding social information processing (SIP) instruments, deficiencies in different components corresponded with childhood aggression. In particular, a tendency to interpret others' intentions as hostile is associated with aggression. Dodge and his colleagues cite schemas, or mental structures, as responsible for SIP deficiencies. However, the relationship between schemas and childhood aggression has not been systematically examined. This study investigated the social information processing patterns and schemas of ethnic minority children in relation to reactive and proactive aggression, as rated by teacher, peer, and self informants. The SIP instrument measured participants' social information processing patterns and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) assessed schemas underlying aggression using portions of Teglasi's coding system (2001) and coding procedures developed to capture SIP components. The TAT and SIP instruments were not correlated with one another and each correlated with different aspects of aggression. The SIP correlated primarily with teacher rated reactive aggression whereas the TAT correlated primarily with both peer and teacher rated proactive aggression. Prior research using the SIP instrument which found relationships between intentionality and aggression were not replicated. The TAT showed that among second and third grade children, most do not spontaneously consider the intentionality behind a provocation (intent attribution) but do consider the intention behind their response to a provocation (goal formation). Older age--within the two year span, significantly correlated with improved performance on some aspects of the SIP and TAT. On the SIP, girls were more likely than boys to select aggressive responses to a hypothetical situation, but expressed these in proactive ways while boys expressed more reactive aggression. Gender differences on the TAT were not present. Overall the TAT was a better predictor of both aggression types than the SIP and this was true for all informants. The use of multiple measures and multiple informants to capture various aspects of aggression is discussed along with implications for theory and practice, and directions for future research.
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    The response-monitoring mechanism: Influence of feedback and temperament
    (2008-05-06) Martin McDermott, Jennifer; Fox, Nathan A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The purpose of the current study was to examine behavioral and physiological processes underlying response-monitoring and to document the manner in which these processes are expressed during early childhood. As well, this study examined two factors important in understanding individual differences in monitoring: performance feedback and temperament. A total of seventy-four children (mean age 7.5 years) were tested using a modified flanker paradigm administered in both no-feedback and feedback conditions. Accuracy and reaction time measures of behavioral performance were assessed as well as event-related potentials linked to response execution and feedback presentation. Data were also examined in relation to the temperamental dimensions of shyness and inhibitory control. The results indicate a strong impact of trial-by-trial feedback on both behavioral and physiological measures. Overall, feedback served to increase children's task engagement as evidenced by fewer errors of omission and faster reaction times. Similarly, the physiological measures also varied as a function of feedback such that the error-related Positivity (Pe) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN) were more pronounced on incorrect as compared to correct trials in the feedback condition. Larger FRN responses were also associated with fewer errors of commission. These findings were further moderated by individual differences in temperament. Specifically, feedback was particularly influential in increasing task involvement for children low in inhibitory control and enhancing performance accuracy for children low in shyness Overall these results confirm a strong impact of feedback on task engagement as assessed by children's behavioral performance and physiological reactivity. Findings are presented in the framework of individual differences in cognitive control and variations in children's physiological measures of response-monitoring are discussed. Several avenues for future research are provided which emphasize the need for investigations of response-monitoring in young children and also highlight the importance of exploring the applicability of these assessments across various cognitive and social contexts.
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    The bilingual acquisition of compound words and its relation to reading skills
    (2008-04-22) Cheng, Chenxi; Wang, Min; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigated how Chinese-English bilingual children process compound words in their two languages and how that processing skill in one language affects reading skill in the other language. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the bilingual acquisition of compound words, using a lexical-decision paradigm. Each compound was composed of two constituent morphemes in the target language. The combination of the translated equivalents of the constituents formed a new translated compound word (or nonword) in the nontarget language. In both Experiments 1 and 2, when the target language was English, the lexical status of translated compounds in the nontarget language was shown to affect the accuracy of lexical decisions in the target language. When the target language was Chinese, the effect of the lexical status in English was not significant in Experiment 1 and disappeared after the effect of familiarity was controlled in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 2 further showed that the effect of the lexical status of translated compounds was independent of semantic transparency and language proficiency. Those results provided evidence of decomposition in both semantically transparent and semantically opaque compounds. The stronger effect from L1 to L2 than from L2 to L1 is consistent with the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994). Experiment 3 investigated the awareness of compound words and reading skills and their relationship in a group of Grade 2 and Grade 3 Chinese-English bilingual children. Comparable tasks in Chinese and English were designed to test students' morphological awareness of compounds, phonological awareness, oral vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension. Results of structural equation modeling showed that, within each language, compound awareness was a significant predictor for both real-word naming and reading comprehension. Across languages, English compound awareness was a significant predictor for reading comprehension in Chinese. Those results suggest that compound awareness might play a critical role in the reading development of Chinese-English bilingual children.
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    The influence of maternal sensitivity and maternal stimulation on later development of executive functioning via structural equation modeling
    (2007-04-25) Emick, Jessica; Strein, William; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigated the relations between early maternal behaviors, maternal sensitivity and maternal stimulation, and the later development of executive function. It was hypothesized that maternal behaviors could influence the development of executive function either directly or indirectly by influencing a child's language or attentional abilities. This study attempted to model these relationships using archival data from phase I and phase II from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Structural equation modeling was used with data from 470 participants on measures of SES, maternal sensitivity, maternal stimulation, language, attention, and executive function. From existing literature three nested models were proposed to examine how maternal behaviors influenced the later development of executive function. While there were significant differences between the three proposed models it is important to recognize the overall poor fit of the models. The differences between the models suggest that maternal sensitivity and maternal stimulation do not directly influence executive functioning in the 1st grade but instead influence the development of executive functioning through assisting the child in development of attention and language skills. Interestingly, the model also indicated verbal ability played an important role in the development of executive function. Secondly the study attempted to examine multi-group differences in the proposed models (Caucasian and African American). While small sample size precluded this analysis, examining the effect size differences between the two groups indicated that within the current sample ethnicity, language ability, and SES are deeply entangled. The results of the current study highlight the potential role of language ability in the development of executive function and the need for cleaner measures of executive function that are developmentally appropriate.
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    Learning with hypermedia: Examining cognitive, motivational, and contextual factors
    (2007-04-17) Moos, Daniel Charles; Azevedo, Roger; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Think-aloud, pretest, posttest, and self-efficacy data collected from 85 undergraduates were used to examine factors related to learning with hypermedia. Participants, randomly assigned to either the No Scaffolding (NS) condition or Conceptual Scaffolding (CS) condition, were given 30 minutes to learn about the circulatory system with hypermedia. Participants in the NS condition received an overall learning goal during the hypermedia learning task, while participants in the CS condition received five guiding questions in addition to the same overall learning goal during the hypermedia learning task. There are four findings from this study. First, results from the pretest and posttest indicated that prior domain knowledge significantly predicted both declarative and conceptual knowledge learning outcomes with hypermedia. Second, results from the self-report self-efficacy questionnaire indicated that while self-efficacy significantly fluctuated during learning, the provision of conceptual scaffolds was not related to this fluctuation. Third, results from a think-aloud protocol indicated that self-efficacy significantly predicted monitoring and planning processes, but not strategy use during the hypermedia learning task. Fourth, results from a think-aloud protocol also indicated that self-regulatory processes (particularly processes related to monitoring) significantly predicted conceptual and declarative learning outcomes. Educational and scientific implications are discussed.
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    PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING UNIT TRANSFER: THE IMPACT OF FIRST LANGUAGE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PREFERRED SUBSYLLABIC DIVISION UNITS
    (2006-07-27) Chen, Shih-wei; Dreher, Mariam Jean; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigated the potential transfer of first language (L1) phonological processing unit to second language processing. English and Chinese phonology differ mainly in the complexity of their syllable structures. English phonology allows highly complex syllable structures, whereas Chinese has been characterized primarily as a core syllable language, i.e., its syllables typically consist only of a consonant and vowel (CV). This sharp contrast is hypothesized to entail different phonological processing units in the two languages, and to result in, through L1 transfer, the poor phonological awareness often observed in Chinese speakers learning English as a second language (ESL). This hypothesis was tested by examining the performance patterns of Chinese ESL fourth graders on phoneme deletion and phoneme isolation tasks. The results suggest that Chinese ESL children do seem to process an English syllable in terms of an intact core syllable plus its appendices due to L1 transfer. This gives support to a developmental account of subsyllabic division unit preference, which suggests that core syllable is universally preferred in the initial stages of language development, only after which speakers of different languages diverge in their division unit preferences due to linguistic characteristics of their respective L1s. The presence of transfer suggested that Chinese ESL children performed differently on two item types--core-syllable items (requiring segmentation of an element within the core syllable) and non-core-syllable items (requiring segmentation of any appendices from the core syllable). As phonological awareness involves the ability to segment cohesive sound units, it was hypothesized that only performance on core-syllable items should represent phonological awareness. This hypothesis was tested by analyzing the item types' respective contribution to decoding skills. Phonological awareness has long been established as a strong predictor of decoding skills; thus the analyses served to test the two item types' respective criterion validity in tapping phonological awareness. The results confirmed the hypothesis. This implies that, methodologically, phonological awareness of Chinese ESL children could be more reliably measured if, in future studies, only core-syllable segmentation items are employed. Educationally, instruction in phonological awareness might emphasize core-syllable segmentation, which alone appears to reflect Chinese ESL children's phonological awareness.
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    The Role of Syntax and Contextual Frame in Children's Use of a Causal Theory in Reasoning about Natural Kinds
    (2005-05-27) Hammond, Jane; Scholnick, Ellin K; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    A central focus of cognitive development research is the nature and organization of knowledge. Some researchers claim that young children use an intuitive theory to help them understand foundational domains such as biological categories. In particular, researchers have studied whether children's biological concepts are embedded in a causal theory about the nature of living organisms. Two key features of this theory are the concept of biological essences and the use of inductive generalizations. This study examined the influence of contextual frame and logical conjunctions on access and use of the theory in elementary and middle school children. It also investigated whether that causal theory supports both inductive and deductive reasoning. Children were given inductive and deductive tasks involving natural kinds. In the inductive tasks the child was asked whether a property of an animal would be found in other animals varying in taxonomic distance from the animal. In the deductive task, children worked on syllogisms based on cues at different levels of a biological taxonomy. Older children were not as likely to make inductions about instances of less biological resemblance to the target. However they also made more accurate deductions regardless of level of the hierarchy. Inductive and deductive performance were not correlated. Whether the cues were stated in a sentence beginning with "if" or "all" had no significant impact on performance, but whether the problem was presented from the viewpoint of a scientist or a pet store owner affected performance. These results were used to re-examine the basic tenets of essentialist thinking and the nature of developmental changes in reasoning about biological kinds.