Developmental Changes in Number Personification by Elementary School Children.

Children often personify non-living objects, such as puppets and stars. This attribution is considered a healthy phenomenon, which can simulate social exchange and enhance children's understanding of social relationships. In this study, we considered that the tendency of children to engage in personification could potentially be observed in abstract entities, such as numbers. We hypothesized that children tend to attribute personalities to numbers, which diminishes during the course of development. By consulting the methodology to measure ordinal linguistic personification (OLP), which is a type of synesthesia, we quantified the frequency with which child and adult populations engage in number personification. Questionnaires were completed by 151 non-synesthetic children (9-12 years old) and 55 non-synesthetic adults. Children showed a higher tendency than adults to engage in number personification, with respect to temporal consistency and the frequency of choosing meaningful answers. Additionally, children tended to assign unique and exclusive descriptions to each number from zero to nine. By synthesizing the series of analyses, we revealed the process in which number personification diminishes throughout development. In the discussion, we examined the possibility that number personification serves as a discrimination clue to aid children's comprehension of the relationships between numbers.

The stuffed animal sleepover: enhancement of reading and the duration of the effect.

Stuffed animal sleepover programs have been conducted by libraries worldwide. This study sought to (1) determine whether the stuffed animal sleepover program increased children's reading and (2) examine the duration of the effect. Forty-two children who attended preschool participated in the study. The results indicated that the number of children who read picture books to stuffed animals increased following the program, but the program's effect decreased within three days. One month later, the children were reminded of the stuffed animal sleepover program. The number of children who read picture books to stuffed animals increased again after the reminder. The results suggest that (1) stuffed animal sleepover programs can positively affect children's reading of picture books, (2) the duration of the program's effect can be short, and (3) reminding children of the program can be an effective strategy to revive and sustain their interest in picture books. These results are discussed in terms of the psychological characteristics of childhood.

Causes of difficulty in duration judgments: comment on Francuz and Oles (2011).

In 2011, Okazaki and Matsuda showed in studies that college students could not correctly estimate the duration of movement of two objects. Fancuz and Oles (2011) proposed two explanations of the observed task difficulty. First, they suggested that the cause of the difficulty for the duration judgments involved the experimental procedure, which may have overloaded the cognitive capacities of these students. This study presents results that indicate there was no overload. Second, because the training was intended to improve response accuracy, but it failed to significantly increase accuracy rates, Fancuz and Oles (2011) suggested there was insufficient time for learning about the task. With respect to these results, Fancuz and Oles (2011) are correct in pointing out that the training duration could be an issue.