Domain-general and domain-specific influences on emerging numerical cognition: Contrasting uni-and bidirectional prediction models.

Domain-general skills such as executive functions (EFs), and domain-specific skills such as non-symbolic number sense and symbolic understanding are often pitted against each other as predictors of emerging maths. Here we aimed to investigate early childhood relations between these foundational skills with a balanced, longitudinal design. One hundred and seventy 3- and 4-year-old-children were tested at two time points, 5 months apart, on four domain-general executive and five domain-specific numeracy tasks. A latent EF factor was a strong predictor of symbolic maths and of their growth. In addition, stronger symbolic maths at Time 1 was correlated with later stronger EF, but symbolic maths did not predict EF growth. Our findings provide novel insights into dynamic interplay between general and specific cognitive skills contributing to preschool maths.

Deaf children's spelling: does it show sensitivity to phonology?

A written pictures to spelling task was given to two groups of children, 17 deaf children from signing schools (average age = 10.7) and 20 hearing children learning English as a second language (ESL, average age = 10.4). The stimuli were equally divided according to frequency, phonological regularity, and orthographic regularity. We predicted that the deaf group would not differ from the ESL group in the pattern of their responses across word classes, categorized in terms of the effect of frequency and phonological and orthographic regularity. Results showed that broadly this was the case, but more detailed analysis showed that the approach of the two groups was different. More specifically, the deaf children appeared to be sensitive to, but not aware of, phonology in their spelling, whereas the ESL group showed awareness of, as well as sensitivity to, phonology in their spelling.

Deaf children's understanding of beliefs and desires.

Twenty-two children (5-12 year old) who were profoundly, prelingually deaf were given two tests designed to tap their 'theory of mind', that is, their ability to attribute independent mental states to other people. The tests were versions of Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's Sally-Anne task and of Baron-Cohen's breakfast task. Seventy percent of the children were successful on all questions requiring belief attribution, a considerably and significantly larger percentage than the 29% obtained by Peterson and Siegal for a similar sample, though it is still lower than would be expected on the basis on chronological age. Children were universally successful on questions requiring the attribution of desire. We discuss implications of the findings.

A savant poet.

Poems by an individual with a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome were analysed and compared with those of a comparison poet. Though the savant poet performed less efficiently on formal language tests supposed to tap creativity, there were few differences between the two poets in regard to the poems' content and the use of various structural devices. The poems by the savant referred more often to aspects of self-analysis, while descriptions of people not related to the self were less frequent. Both poets made use of similes and metaphors. The results are discussed in terms of different modular domains within the language system.

Even More Precisely Assessing Children's Understanding of the Order-Irrelevance Principle

There are conflicting views of when children understand that the cardinality of a set is independent of the order in which the objects are counted. Some discrepancies between studies using similar tests may be due to children interpreting the experimenter as questioning the accuracy of their counting. Three studies are reported of children between 3 and 6 years old. In Experiments 1 and 2, more expected a count in a different order to yield the same number when they did not have to do any counting than when they had to count or monitor a puppet's counting. However, some also expected subtraction not to affect cardinality. In Experiment 3 substantially more children predicted correctly whether a recount would yield the same number than what the number would be. These variations may reflect the power of forms of questioning to orient the child toward principles or practice.

Subject matter and poetic devices in psychotics' poetry.

It has long been supposed that there is a connection between the mental processes of psychosis and those of creativity. The present study aimed to investigate this idea by means of a comparison between the poetic output of psychotics and that of normals, taking as its starting-point the notion that if there are observable differences between these two groups in terms of subject matter and linguistic features, this would suggest that creativity and psychosis are not to be identified with each other. Eighty poems by contemporary, non-professional poets (40 by psychotics and 40 by normals) were analysed on 11 different dimensions. The two samples of poems were highly similar on most of the dimensions investigated. The main differences found were in the incidence of self-analysis as a theme, reference to proper names and specific locations, and in the proportion of metaphors which fell into the category 'psychological/physical'. The two latter differences appeared to be largely a product of the first. It was concluded that although 'normal' and 'psychotic' poetic activities are not identical, they are closely related. This may be either because general poetic creativity does have psychotic features, or because the poetic function of language was relatively spared in at least this sample of psychotics.

Phonological devices in poems by English and Italian children.

Poems were elicited from 133 English children between two and six and 171 Italian children between three and seven, using a similar technique, and the results were compared. Both groups produced large numbers of poems. There were great similarities and some differences. The majority of poems in both samples contained phonological devices (mostly rhyme and alliteration) and the proportion was higher (87%) in the Italian sample than in the English sample (59%). The proportion of poems that contained rhyme was close to 45% in each sample, with no consistent age difference in either sample. About one-third of Italian poems and just over a fifth of English poems contained alliteration. The frequency of alliteration declined with age in the English sample but not in the Italian sample. Possible reasons for the differences between the samples are considered. It is argued that the similarities are more important, and their theoretical implications are discussed.

Modified repetition in poems elicited from young children.

Attempts were made to elicit poems from 133 children between the ages of 2;3 and 6;11. Seventy-eight of the children produced 606 poems between them. Forty-five per cent of the poems contained the syntactic device of modified repetition: a substitution exercise where a grammatical frame is repeated and the substitution occurs in part of the grammatical frame. This was so despite the fact that modified repetition was not present in the examples that were used to elicit poems from the children. The frequency and types of modified repetition used by the children did not vary much with age. The question of whether children's use of modified repetition in their rhythmical poems has the function of helping them to practise grammatical forms, or whether it is simply one reflection of a general human tendency towards the use of pattern in language, is discussed.

Rhyme and alliteration in poems elicited from young children.

Attempts were made to elicit poems from 133 children between the ages of 2 and 6. Seventy-eight of the children produced 606 poems between them. Sixty per cent of the poems contained phonological devices; 42% contained rhyme and 26% contained alliteration. There was no obvious age trend as regards the use of rhyme but the frequency of alliteration declined with age. There were no significant age differences as regards the relative frequency with which different phonemes were manipulated in rhyme and alliteration. The possible functions of such sound-based language play in language development are discussed, with special reference both to children's sound play in crib speech, and to the development of phonological awareness and its importance in learning to read.