Effects of incidental reminders on prospective memory in children.

Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to carry out intended actions in the future (e.g., posting a letter on the way to school or passing on a message) and is important for children's independent functioning in daily life. This study examined, for the first time, the effects of incidental reminder cues on children's PM. Five- and 7-year-old children (n = 160, 50% female, predominantly White from lower-middle- to middle-class families) had to remember to put cards with a picture of a dog into a box (placed behind the child) every time they finished working on an activity book with a line drawing on each page (activity-based PM task). Additionally, the picture presented on the last page of each activity book was manipulated to examine the role of incidental reminders on PM. Results showed that 7-year-old children significantly outperformed 5-year-olds on the PM task despite age equivalence of performance on the ongoing visual search task. For both age groups, an incidental reminder (a line drawing of a dog) that was similar to the target of the PM task (a card with a color picture of a dog) significantly improved PM compared to the no-reminder condition (a line drawing of a flower), while reminders related to the PM action (a line drawing of a box) or semantically related to the target of the PM task (a line drawing of a cat) were not effective. These findings have important practical and theoretical implications and open up interesting avenues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Event-based prospective memory in mildly and severely autistic children.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing body of research into the development of prospective memory (PM) in typically developing children but research is limited in autistic children (Aut) and rarely includes children with more severe symptoms. AIMS: This study is the first to specifically compare event-based PM in severely autistic children to mildly autistic and typically developing children. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Fourteen mildly autistic children and 14 severely autistic children, aged 5-13 years, were matched for educational attainment with 26 typically developing children aged 5-6 years. Three PM tasks and a retrospective memory task were administered. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results showed that severely autistic children performed less well than typically developing children on two PM tasks but mildly autistic children did not differ from either group. No group differences were found on the most motivating (a toy reward) task. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings suggest naturalistic tasks and motivation are important factors in PM success in severely autistic children and highlights the need to consider the heterogeneity of autism and symptom severity in relation to performance on event-based PM tasks.

Pragmatic language development in language impaired and typically developing children: incorrect answers in context.

This study focussed on young children's incorrect answers to pragmatically demanding questions. Children with specific language impairment (SLI), including a subgroup with pragmatic language difficulties (PLD) and typically developing children answered questions targeting implicatures, based on a storybook and short verbal scenarios. Ninety-seven children participated in this study: 30 children with SLI of whom 12 had PLD, 32 typically developing children aged 5-6 years and 35 aged 7-11 years. The incorrect answers produced by the children with SLI were similar in their use of context to those of the 5-6 year old, suggesting developmental delay. The children with PLD produced significantly more irrelevant answers than both the language impaired children without PLD and the typically developing groups and had most difficulty when the context was presented solely verbally. Results are discussed in relation to a cognitive theory of communication and the clinical implications.

How children with normal hearing and children with a cochlear implant use mentalizing vocabulary and other evaluative expressions in their narratives.

This study explored the use of mental state and emotion terms and other evaluative expressions in the story generation of 65 children (aged 2-8 years) with normal hearing (NH) and 11 children (aged 3-7 years) using a cochlear implant (CI). Children generated stories on the basis of sets of sequential pictures. The stories of the children with CI were obtained over the 5-year follow-up period. The children with NH continued to show an increased story length (number of words) with age. In the children with a CI, the increase was similar initially, but plateaued after 3 years of using a CI. In children with NH, the spontaneous use of mental state vocabulary in narratives increased significantly between the ages of three and six. The delayed use of mental state terms in the children with a CI was related to a reduced amount of linguistic production overall. The theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.

Cognitive approach to assessing pragmatic language comprehension in children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Pragmatic language impairment in children with specific language impairment has proved difficult to assess, and the nature of their abilities to comprehend pragmatic meaning has not been fully investigated. AIMS: To develop both a cognitive approach to pragmatic language assessment based on Relevance Theory and an assessment tool for identifying a group of children with pragmatic language impairment from within an specific language impairment group. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The authors focused on Relevance Theory's view of the role of context in pragmatic language comprehension using questions of increasing pragmatic complexity in different verbal contexts (scenarios with and without pictures and a story with supporting pictures). The performances of the children with and without pragmatic impairment on the most pragmatically demanding Implicature questions were examined. This study included 99 children: 27 with specific language impairment (including nine pragmatically impaired children) and two groups of typically developing children (32 children aged 5-6 years and 40 children aged 7-11 years). OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The specific language impairment group performed similarly to their peers when utilizing context in inferring referents, inferring semantic meaning, and generating Implicatures, only when the answer was provided by pictorial context. Both the children with specific language impairment and the 5-6 year olds were not yet competent at utilizing verbal context when answering the most pragmatically demanding questions (targeting Implicature). On these questions the children with pragmatic language impairment performed significantly poorer than the rest of the specific language impairment group and performance scores on Implicature questions were found to identify accurately the children with pragmatic language impairment from the rest of the specific language impairment group (sensitivity = 89%). CONCLUSIONS: Children's ability to infer and integrate information in the comprehension of pragmatic meaning was found to be influenced by the available context. As children become more competent they are able to utilize verbal context and integrate information. Children with specific language impairment and those with pragmatic language impairment were found to be developmentally delayed at making inferences, but children with pragmatic language impairment had particular difficulty in integrating contextual information. Findings support the view that a cognitive approach to assessing pragmatic comprehension deficits could provide clinicians with a useful tool.

Answering questions and explaining answers: a study of Finnish-speaking children.

This research explores, within the framework of Relevance Theory, how children's ability to answer questions and explain their answers develops between the ages of 3 and 9 years. Two hundred and ten normally developing Finnish-speaking children participated in this study. The children were asked questions requiring processing of inferential meanings and routines, and were asked to explain their correct answers to elicit understanding about their awareness of how they had derived the answers from the context. The results indicated that the number of correct answers increased rapidly between the ages of 3 years and 4-5 years. Familiarity of context had a significant effect on young children's ability to answer questions. Becoming aware of the information used in inferencing developed gradually over time between the ages of 3 and 9. Analysis of the children's incorrect answers and explanations showed that, as children develop, their unsophisticated answer strategies diminish and they increasingly utilize context even in incorrect answers and explanations.

Use of context in pragmatic language comprehension by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.

Utilizing relevance theory, this study investigated the ability of children with Asperger syndrome (AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA) to use context when answering questions and when giving explanations for their correct answers. Three groups participated in this study: younger AS/HFA group (age 7-9, n=16), older AS/HFA group (age 10-12, n=23) and a normally functioning control group (age 7-9, n=23). The results indicated that the younger AS/HFA group did less well when answering contextually demanding questions compared to the control group, and the performance of the older AS/HFA group fell in between the younger AS/HFA group and the control group. Both AS/HFA groups had difficulties explaining their correct answers, suggesting that they are not always aware of how they have derived answers from the context.

Answering contextually demanding questions: pragmatic errors produced by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.

UNLABELLED: This study examined irrelevant/incorrect answers produced by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism (7-9-year-olds and 10-12-year-olds) and normally developing children (7-9-year-olds). The errors produced were divided into three types: in Type 1, the child answered the original question incorrectly, in Type 2, the child gave a correct answer, but when asked a follow-up question, he/she explained the answer incorrectly, and in Type 3, the child first gave a correct answer or explanation, but continued answering, which ultimately led to an irrelevant answer. Analyses of Type 1 and 2 errors indicated that all the children tried to utilize contextual information, albeit incorrectly. Analyses of Type 3 errors showed that topic drifts were almost non-existent in the control group, but common in the clinical group, suggesting that these children had difficulties in stopping processing after deriving a relevant answer. LEARNING OUTCOMES: The reader becomes aware of the different instances which may lead to the irrelevance of answers and get knowledge about features of answers of children with AS/HFA.

Use of context in question answering by 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children.

This study investigates, within the theory of relevance of Sperber & Wilson (1995), how3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children (n = 45) use context when answering questions. The children were required to answer questions that placed differing contextual and processing demands on them, as predicted by the theory. The results indicate that an increasing ability to use complex contextual information was related to age and was reflected in the children's ability to answer questions appropriately. A developmental pattern became evident in terms of how the children assigned referents, enriched semantic underdetermination, and recovered implicatures. It also became evident that even at the age of 5 years 6 months the children were in the process of becoming more skilled at integrating contextually complex inferences. It was further shown how children's selection of the appropriate context, given the focus of the question, depended on how relevance was achieved in that context.