What curves are parallel? The core feature of preschoolers' intuitive parallel category.

Existing evidence has revealed that humans can spontaneously categorize many geometric shapes without formal education. Children around 4 years could distinguish between intersecting lines and parallel lines. Three features can be used to identify parallel lines, namely "translational congruence," "never meet," and "constant distance." This study separated them by using pairs of curves that possess only one of these features. Two experiments across 2021-2023, respectively, compared the relative priority of "translational congruence" with "constant distance," and "never meet" with "constant distance" among 3- to 5-year-old Chinese preschoolers (Ntotal = 314, 48% female). The results showed that preschoolers consistently grouped "constant distance" curves with parallel lines. This suggests that the core feature of intuitive parallel category is "constant distance" at this age.

Gender stereotypes are racialized: A cross-cultural investigation of gender stereotypes about intellectual talents.

In the United States, there is a common stereotype associating brilliance with men. This gender brilliance stereotype emerges early and may undermine women's engagement in many prestigious careers. However, past research on its acquisition has focused almost exclusively on American children's beliefs of White people's intellectual talents. Therefore, less is known about how this stereotype develops in non-Western cultures and whether children consider other social identities such as race in forming this stereotype. To address these issues, the present research (a) provided the first cross-cultural test examining its development in 5- to 7-year-old Chinese and American children and (b) compared children's gender brilliance stereotype of White people with that of Asian people. Studies 1 (N = 96; Chinese children) and 2 (N = 96; Chinese children) revealed that, similar to American children, Chinese children associated brilliance with White men (vs. White women) around the age of 6. In contrast, Studies 3 (N = 96; Chinese children) and 4 (N = 96; American children; 76.9% White) showed that 5- to 7-year-old children from both cultures associated brilliance with Asian women (vs. Asian men). The results suggest that the gender stereotype about brilliance has a racial component and may be culturally consistent. Overall, these findings add to our knowledge of children's acquisition of the gender stereotype about brilliance in non-Western cultural contexts and highlight the importance of considering multiple social identities to understand the acquisition of stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Separation of geometric and featural information in children's spatial representation: Evidence from a model selection task.

Previous studies in spatial reorientation have found that young children rely mainly on geometric shapes for reorientation and sometimes ignore features in the environment. Theoretical interpretations of children's reorientation performance are usually attributed to children's spatial representation of their surrounding environments. The geometric module theory states that featural information is represented separately from geometric shape in young children's reorientation, whereas the adaptive combination model depicts an integral representation. Reorientation tasks, however, require the recognition of a specific location, and thus how the whole environment is represented remains unknown. The current study, using a model selection task, explored young children's representation of the whole surrounding environment. A total of 75 children aged 3-5 years participated in the study. In each trial, children observed a large enclosure and were then asked to choose the corresponding model from two small models. The geometric shapes of the enclosure (rectangle vs. rhombus) and the types of distractors (shape distraction vs. feature position distraction) varied. Results showed that all three age groups performed above the chance level in the shape distraction conditions. Children had more difficulty with the feature position distraction conditions than with the shape distraction conditions. When the distractor shared the feature but at an inappropriate position, children's performance was significantly poorer, especially in the rhombic enclosure. The results provide evidence that young children may represent featural cues separately from geometric shapes.

Blindfolded adults' use of geometric cues in haptic-based relocation.

Non-visual information is important for navigation in limited visibility conditions. We designed a haptic-based relocation task to examine blindfolded adults' use of geometric cues. Forty-eight participants learned to locate a corner in a parallelogram frame. They were then tested in different transformed frames: (a) a reverse-parallelogram, in which locations predicted by original length information and angle information conflicted, (b) a rectangle, which retained only length information, and (c) a rhombus, which retained only angle information. Results show that access to the environment's geometry through haptic modality is sufficient for relocation. However, adults' performances in the current task were different from that in visual tasks in previous findings. First, compared to previous findings in visual-based tasks, length information lost its priority. Approximately half of the participants relied on angle information in the conflict test and the other half relied on length. Second, though participants encoded both length and angle information in the learning phase, only one cue was relied on after the conflict test. Finally, though participants encoded the target location successfully, they failed to represent the global shape of the environment. We attribute adults' different performances in haptic-based and visual-based tasks to the high cognitive demands in encoding and using haptic spatial cues, especially length information.

Young Children's Representation of Locations in a Series: A Front-Back Representation or an Ordinal Representation?

Previous research has found that 3-5-year-old children could encode and retrieve a target location in a two-location series. In a paradigm of running two symmetrical railcars on a circular track, the study suggested that children used front-back array to help coding. That is, children at this age code the railcar running in the front of another as "the location in the front" and the railcar running in the back of another as "the location in the back." However, the children's success could be attributed to an alternative interpretation; using an ordinal representation to encode the location in front as the first with the other as the second. The current study used a four-location series to examine the children's mental representation. Three- to five-year-old children participated in a hide-and-seek game to remember a target location out of four locations that moved in a series. The results showed salient individual differences in children's representation, and their performance improved as the representation progressed. An ordinal representation supported the precise encoding of each location, while a vague front-back representation and a clearer front-middle-back representation led to different performance.

Effects of anti-osteoporosis therapy on plasma aldosterone and renin.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the effect of anti-osteoporosis therapy on plasma aldosterone concentration (PAC), plasma renin concentration (PRC) and the aldosterone/renin ratio (ARR) in patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis. METHODS: In 60 patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis, bone mineral density (BMD), PAC and PRC were measured before and after treatment with alendronate (70 mg/week, n=22) or recombinant human parathyroid hormone (20 µg/day, n=35) for 48 weeks. RESULTS: PAC was negatively correlated with the T-score of lumbar spine BMD and femoral neck BMD (lumbar r=-0.386, p<0.01; femoral neck r=-0.262, p<0.05). With the improvement in lumbar BMD after anti-osteoporosis treatment (T-score -3.4±0.5 vs. -3.1 ±0.4, p<0.0001), PAC decreased from 182.8±53.2 to 143.7±68.6 pg/mL (p<0.0001), PRC increased from 7.8±11.6 to 39.2±50.0 µIU/mL (p<0.0001) and the ARR decreased from 74.8±75.2 to 13.1±17.1 pg/µIU (p<0.0001). At baseline, 58% (35/60) of the patients had an ARR >37 pg/µIU, and the proportion decreased to 8% (5/57) after treatment. CONCLUSION: Treatment with alendronate or parathyroid hormone causes decreased PAC and increased PRC, resulting in a decreased ARR in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis.

Young children's representation of geometric relationships between locations in location coding.

From an early age, children are able to use surface layout geometry and landmarks to search for a hidden toy when disoriented. Theoretical debate remains regarding whether children represent locations based on the global environment or on local cues. Exploring whether children construct and use the relationships between discrete locations of the global environment can provide direct evidence regarding this issue. We investigated young children's representation of two geometric relationships: diagonal relationships (Experiment 1) and same-side relationships (Experiment 2). Children (4- and 5-year-olds) were tested in a square room with a distinctively colored wall. Children completed two tasks. In a two-location task, children watched two toys hidden in two corners that formed one of the two relationships. After disorientating children, the experimenter uncovered one toy and children searched for the other one (target). In a one-location task, only one toy was hidden. In both experiments, children's performance was better in the two-location task than in the one-location task. Furthermore, accuracy in the two-location task of Experiment 1, in which the two corners formed a diagonal relationship, was higher than that of Experiment 2, in which the two corners formed a same-side relationship and a correct location required the combination of this relationship and landmark. These findings suggest that at least by 4 years of age, children can construct geometric relationships between individual corners in their spatial representation and support the global accounts of young children's location coding.

The development of symmetry concept in preschool children.

Young children are exposed to symmetrical figures frequently before they are taught the concept of symmetry, which is a valuable experience for the development of geometry; however, limited research has explored how this concept develops. This study investigated the developmental sequence of "general symmetry" concept and "specific symmetry" concepts (i.e., bilateral, rotational, and translational symmetry) with 106 4-6-year-old children using a symmetry deviant detection task. The test examined children's conception of general symmetry against asymmetry, specific symmetry against asymmetry, and discrimination of specific symmetries. The results suggested that the concept of symmetry develops as a differentiation process. The concept of general symmetry was acquired first, followed by specific symmetries which were acquired in sequential order.

Understanding others' knowledge certainty from inference and information-seeking behaviors in children.

The current study investigated whether children understand the conditions under which another agent would hold uncertain knowledge resulting from inferential processes and, more importantly, whether children can make causal inferences about the relationship between the certainty of an agent's epistemic states and consequent behavioral strategies. We developed a game in which 3 blocks (2 of identical color) were hidden in 3 boxes. After the content of the 1st box was revealed, the player was asked to choose between 2 strategies: either make an immediate guess or look in the 2nd box before guessing the color of the block in the 3rd box. We varied the hiding sequence of the 3 blocks to create 2 conditions with differing degrees of certainty. Children aged 5 to 7 watched another agent playing the game and reasoned about the individual's epistemic states and behaviors. Not until 6 years of age did children display stable competence in using the certainty of another agent's knowledge to predict the agent's subsequent behaviors. Moreover, the ability to reason from information-seeking behaviors to uncertain epistemic states lagged until 7 years old. Our findings suggest that reasoning between epistemic states and information-seeking behavior undergoes significant developmental changes between ages 5 and 7. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A letter on a hand: Rotating together or separately?

The motor system plays a role in some object mental rotation tasks, and researchers have reported that people may use a strategy of motor simulation to mentally rotate objects. In this study, we used images of a hand with a letter printed on the palm to directly determine whether a hand image can be automatically rotated during the deliberate mental rotation of an object and whether the hand and object are rotated in the same trajectory. A total of 41 participants were shown the stimuli and asked to decide whether the letters, which were upright or tilted at specific degrees, were normal or mirrored. The hand images in the background showed either a left or a right hand in the palm view, with fingers pointing upwards, medial, downwards, or lateral. Reaction times and error rates were measured to determine the speed and accuracy of mental rotation. A complex interaction between the hand posture and letter orientation revealed that the hand image was mentally rotated automatically, together with the deliberate mental rotation of the letter. The biomechanical constraints of the hand also influenced reaction times, suggesting the involvement of the motor system in the concomitant mental rotation of the hand image. Consistent with the motor simulation theory, the participants seemed to imagine the hand carrying the object in its movement. These behavioural data support the motor simulation theory and elucidate specific processes of mental rotation that have not been addressed by neuroimaging studies.

Children and Adults Prefer the Egocentric Representation to the Allocentric Representation.

We studied the strategy preference of using the egocentric or the allocentric representation in individuals who have acquired the ability to use both representations. Fifty-seven children aged 5-7 years and 53 adults retrieved toys hidden in one of four identical containers in a square room. We varied the type of spatial representation available in four conditions: (1) only self-motion information (egocentric representation); (2) only external landmark cues (allocentric representation); (3) both self-motion and landmark cues (dual representation); (4) self-motion and landmark cues in conflict (conflict trial). We found that, compared with the allocentric representation, the egocentric representation approached maturity earlier in development and was exploited better in early years. More importantly, in the conflict trials, while both children and adults relied more on egocentric representation, still a small portion of participants chose allocentric representation, especially in the adult group. These results provided evidence that egocentric representation is generally preferred more in both young children and adults.

The use of front-back arrays by young children to code locations.

Research suggests that during the first 2years of life, children use an egocentric reference system and an extrinsic reference frame, the latter being one allocentric reference system, to encode locations. However, little is known about children's use of an object's intrinsic structure, another allocentric reference system. The current study focused on the role of the front-back relationship, one of the simplest intrinsic reference frames, in children's location encoding. Children (3- to 5-year-olds) participated in a hide-and-find game with one of three different intrinsic front-back array conditions: a facet-induced front-back array, a motion-induced front-back array, or no array. The results showed that whereas the ability to use a facet-induced front-back array began by 3years of age, children used a motion-induced front-back array to encode locations at 4years of age. These results provide evidence that the developmental trajectories of using an intrinsic reference frame to encode locations vary and depend on the specific spatial array involved.

Angles no longer weigh in: The effect of geometric cue directness on reorientation.

Previous research in spatial reorientation, which only presented the target location in the corner, has found that adults weighed angles more than wall lengths. We proposed that in previous research, angular cues were available for direct use whereas length cues had to be associated with the left/right sense. We thus investigated whether the directness of cues rather than the cues themselves accounted for the previous findings in the reorientation task. Through navigating a virtual environment, 111 participants were trained to remember target locations in a parallelogram-shaped room and tested in varied versions of the training environment: (a) a reverse-parallelogram environment where angular information conflicted with wall length information, (b) a rhombic environment that preserved only angular information from the training environment, and (c) a rectangular environment that preserved only wall length information. We varied the directness of the two cues in the current study. In addition to the condition with target location in the corner, we included a condition that placed the target positions in the middle of the walls, making the length cues direct. The results revealed that angular information no longer received priority, especially in the wall condition. More interestingly, compared to the group trained with the target positions at walls, the group trained with target positions at corners weighted angular cues more heavily in conflict trials and performed less accurately using length cues in rectangular environments. The results suggest that human adults prefer to rely on direct cues more than indirect cues in the reorientation process. (PsycINFO Database Record

Spatial Representation of Ordinal Information.

Right hand responds faster than left hand when shown larger numbers and vice-versa when shown smaller numbers (the SNARC effect). Accumulating evidence suggests that the SNARC effect may not be exclusive for numbers and can be extended to other ordinal sequences (e.g., months or letters in the alphabet) as well. In this study, we tested the SNARC effect with a non-numerically ordered sequence: the Chinese notations for the color spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet). Chinese color word sequence reserves relatively weak ordinal information, because each element color in the sequence normally appears in non-sequential contexts, making it ideal to test the spatial organization of sequential information that was stored in the long-term memory. This study found a reliable SNARC-like effect for Chinese color words (deciding whether the presented color word was before or after the reference color word "green"), suggesting that, without access to any quantitative information or exposure to any previous training, ordinal representation can still activate a sense of space. The results support that weak ordinal information without quantitative magnitude encoded in the long-term memory can activate spatial representation in a comparison task.

Is height a core geometric cue for navigation? Young children's use of height in reorientation.

With respect to reorientation, children older than 1.5 to 2 years can use geometric cues (distance and left/right sense). However, because previous studies have focused mainly on the plane geometric properties, little is known about the role of information with respect to vertical dimension in children's reorientation. The current study aimed to examine whether and how 3- and 4-year-old children use height information to search for a hidden toy when disoriented in a small enclosure. In a slant-ceiling rectangular room and a slant-ceiling square room, 4-year-olds were able to use height information to reorient and search for the toy in the correct corner, whereas 3-year-olds were not able to do so. Our results suggest that children can, at least by the age of 4 years, use height information and that height is not used as early as other geometric properties that are in the core geometry system for navigation.