Evidence of a positive effect of verbal cumulative rehearsal on serial order working memory, as early as 4 years old.

The use of a verbal rehearsal strategy (repeating the items to be remembered to oneself in serial order) has been identified as a key factor in explaining working memory (WM) development. However, the debate remains open with regard to the age at which children are able to use it, and the actual benefits of using such a strategy. Numerous methodological constraints to identify WM strategies limit the interpretation of current findings reported in the literature. Moreover, the sequential nature of the cumulative rehearsal strategy means that its use may have a particular influence on maintaining serial order information. The present study aimed to examine (a) whether children aged 4, 5, and 6 (n = 74, 39 female, n = 61, 29 female, and n = 72, 29 female, respectively) were able to implement an instructed verbal rehearsal strategy and (b) the benefits of using such a strategy in terms of WM performance. Specifically, we invited children to use cumulative rehearsal, naming (simple rehearsal), or no strategy when performing verbal WM tasks (immediate serial recall and item and order serial recognition). Moreover, the specific influence of instructed strategies on item and serial order maintenance was assessed in the different age groups. While the benefits of using the naming strategy were limited, cumulative rehearsal instruction increased WM performance in all age groups, particularly for serial order information. Our results demonstrate that, as early as 4 years old, children were able to implement, and benefit from a short period of cumulative rehearsal instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Prosocial lying in children between 4 and 11 years of age: The role of emotional understanding and empathy.

This study examined whether emotional understanding and empathy were predictors of prosocial lying in children aged 4 to 11 years. A total of 144 children participated in the study. To assess children's prosocial lying, we used the Helping Scenario, a classical experimental paradigm that allows children to lie to help others at their own expense. Children's emotional understanding was assessed using the Test of Emotion Comprehension, a test that measures the nine components of emotional understanding. Children's empathy was assessed using the Griffith Empathy Measure, a questionnaire completed by parents that measures affective and cognitive empathy. Results indicated that emotional understanding plays a crucial role in the development of children's ability to produce prosocial lies from 4 to 11 years of age. However, we found no significant relationship between empathy and prosocial lying. Finally, our results confirm that as children grew up, they lied more and more effectively. Overall, the results allow us to better understand the factors that contribute to the emergence and development of children's ability to produce prosocial lies.

FANCat: French affective norms for ten emotional categories.

The present study develops key research for French word norms that combines the predominant theories of dimensional and discrete (or categorical) emotions. As a result, we provide the database FANCat, affective norms for a set of 1031 French words on ten discrete emotion categories: fear, anger, disgust, sadness, anxiety, awe, excitement, contentment, amusement, and serenity. FANCat complements a previous word set, FAN, which provides only the dimensional norms, valence, and arousal (Monnier & Syssau, 2014). Herein, we introduce five discrete positive emotions in efforts to differentiate positive emotions at higher resolution and specificity. Although ten emotional categories were considered in FANCat norms, results showed a high degree of inter-rater reliability and a good external validity. Then, distributional analyses of words into the ten emotion categories revealed that positive words evoked mainly the emotions awe, contentment, and amusement, and principally evoked either one positive emotion only ("pure" words) or two (mixed words). This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between language, and negative and positive emotions. It is also currently the only norms database in French that analyses ten discrete emotions as well as including valence and arousal. FANCat is available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338622765_FANCat_database .

Affective norms for 720 French words rated by children and adolescents (FANchild).

FANchild (French Affective Norms for Children) provides norms of valence and arousal for a large corpus of French words (N = 720) rated by 908 French children and adolescents (ages 7, 9, 11, and 13). The ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). Because it combines evaluations of arousal and valence and includes ratings provided by 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-olds, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. Good response reliability was observed in each of the four age groups. Despite a significant level of consensus, we found age differences in both the valence and arousal ratings: Seven- and 9-year-old children gave higher mean valence and arousal ratings than did the other age groups. Moreover, the tendency to judge words positively (i.e., positive bias) decreased with age. This age- and sex-related database will enable French-speaking researchers to study how the emotional character of words influences their cognitive processing, and how this influence evolves with age. FANchild is available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Catherine_Monnier/contributions .

Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis and structural invariance with age of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF)--French version.

The parent and teacher forms of the French version of the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) were used to evaluate executive function in everyday life in a large sample of healthy children (N = 951) aged between 5 and 18. Several psychometric methods were applied, with a view to providing clinicians with tools for score interpretation. The parent and teacher forms of the BRIEF were acceptably reliable. Demographic variables (such as age and gender) were found to influence the BRIEF scores. Confirmatory factor analysis was then used to test five competing models of the BRIEF's latent structure. Two of these models (a three-factor model and a two-factor model, both based on a nine-scale structure) had a good fit. However, structural invariance with age was only obtained with the two-factor model. The French version of the BRIEF provides a useful measure of everyday executive function and can be recommended for use in clinical research and practice.

Affective norms for French words (FAN).

The present study provides affective norms for a large corpus of French words (N = 1,031) that were rated on emotional valence and emotional arousal by 469 French young adults. Ratings were made using the Self-Assessment Manikin (Lang, 1980). By combining evaluations of valence and arousal, and including ratings provided by male and female young adults, this database complements and extends existing French-language databases. The response reliability for the two affective dimensions was good, and the consistency between the present and previous ratings was high. We found a strong quadratic relationship between the valence and arousal ratings. Perceptions of the affective content of a word were partly linked to sex. This new affective database (FAN) will enable French-speaking researchers to select suitable materials for studies of how the character of affective words influences their cognitive processing. FAN is available as an online supplement downloadable with this article.

The semantic-similarity effect in children: influence of long-term knowledge on verbal short-term memory.

The present research was designed to highlight the relation between children's categorical knowledge and their verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. To do this, we manipulated the categorical organization of the words composing lists to be memorized by 5- and 9-year-old children. Three types of word list were drawn up: semantically similar context-dependent (CD) lists, semantically similar context-independent (CI) lists, and semantically dissimilar lists. In line with the procedure used by Poirier and Saint-Aubin (1995), the dissimilar lists were produced using words from the semantically similar lists. Both 5- and 9-year-old children showed better recall for the semantically similar CD lists than they did for the unrelated lists. In the semantic similar CI condition, semantic similarity enhanced immediate serial recall only at age 9 but contributed to item information memory both at ages 5 and 9. These results, which indicate a semantic influence of long-term memory (LTM) on serial recall from age 5, are discussed in the light of current models of STM. Moreover, we suggest that differences between results at 5 and 9 years are compatible with pluralist models of development.

Haptic recognition of two-dimensional raised-line patterns by early-blind, late-blind, and blindfolded sighted adults.

We investigated the role of visual experience and visual imagery in the processing of two-dimensional (2-D) tactile patterns. The performance of early-blind (EB), late-blind (LB), and blindfolded sighted (S) adults in the recognition of 2-D raised-line patterns was compared. We also examined whether recognition of 2-D tactile patterns depends on the type of memory strategy (eg spatial, visuo-spatial, verbal, and kinesthetic) used by EB, LB, and S participants to perform the task. Significant between-group differences in the recognition performance have not been found despite significant between-group differences in self-reported memory strategies. Recognition performance does not vary significantly with the strategy, but correlates positively with visuo-spatial imagery abilities in the S participants. These findings may be taken to suggest that the difficulties some blind people experience with tactile pictures are not due to difficulties in processing 2-D tactile patterns.

Short-term memory for spatial configurations in the tactile modality: a comparison with vision.

This study investigates the role of acquisition constraints on the short-term retention of spatial configurations in the tactile modality in comparison with vision. It tests whether the sequential processing of information inherent to the tactile modality could account for limitation in short-term memory span for tactual-spatial information. In addition, this study investigates developmental aspects of short-term memory for tactual- and visual-spatial configurations. A total of 144 child and adult participants were assessed for their memory span in three different conditions: tactual, visual, and visual with a limited field of view. The results showed lower tactual-spatial memory span than visual-spatial, regardless of age. However, differences in memory span observed between the tactile and visual modalities vanished when the visual processing of information occurred within a limited field. These results provide evidence for an impact of acquisition constraints on the retention of spatial information in the tactile modality in both childhood and adulthood.

Children's emotional norms for 600 French words.

The present study provides a French child database containing a large corpus of words (N = 600) that were rated on emotional valence (positive, neutral, and negative) by French children differing in both age (5, 7, and 9 years old) and sex (girls and boys). Good response reliability was observed in each of the three age groups. The results showed some age differences in the children's ratings. With increasing age, the percentage of words rated positive decreased, whereas the percentage of neutral words increased and the percentage of negative words remained stable. Our study did not reveal marked differences across sex groups. The database compiled here should become a useful tool for experimental studies in which verbal material is used with children. It would be worthwhile in future research to study how children process emotional words and also to control the emotional variable in the same way as other linguistic variables in the experimental design. The norms from this study may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory: are pleasant words easier to remember than neutral words in serial recall and serial recognition?

In the four experiments reported here, we examined the role of word pleasantness on immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. In Experiment 1, we compared verbal serial recall of pleasant and neutral words, using a limited set of items. In Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1 with an open set of words (i.e., new items were used on every trial). In Experiments 3 and 4, we assessed immediate serial recognition of pleasant and neutral words, using item sets from Experiments 1 and 2. Pleasantness was found to have a facilitation effect on both immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. This study supplies some new supporting arguments in favor of a semantic contribution to verbal short-term memory performance. The pleasantness effect observed in immediate serial recognition showed that, contrary to a number of earlier findings, performance on this task can also turn out to be dependent on semantic factors. The results are discussed in relation to nonlinguistic and psycholinguistic models of short-term memory.