[Playful Learning: a tool for Environmental Education]. / Aprendizaje a través de estrategias lúdicas: una herramienta para la Educación Ambiental.

Introduction: Playful learning for environmental education represents a participatory pedagogical mediation that considers the socio-environmental realities in which persons are immersed. Objective: To promote environmental education, through playful, participatory, and flexible methods, to prevent pesticide exposure. Methodology: Using geographic information systems, the distances between schools and bananas plantations were calculated. A playful and constructivism methodology was designed for primary school students (6 - 8.5 years), and their legal guardians. Subsequently, 148 workshops were developed in 37 rural Costa Rican schools, in which 2757 children and 387 adults participated. Results: Thirty-eight percent (38 %) (n=14) of the schools were located at less than 100 meters from banana plantations. Playful communication generated a participatory environment, in which local needs were identified and collective knowledge was built about the effects of pesticide exposure on the environment and human health. Participants were able to identify the main preventive actions to reduce pesticide exposure. Conclusions: Playful, participatory, and flexible methodologies in environmental education facilitate the process of sensitizing first cycle primary school students and their parents from rural communities about the risks of exposure to pesticides. The methodology used can be easily adapted for application in other environmental science studies.

Simulation of behavioral profiles in the plus-maze: a Classification and Regression tree approach.

This article introduces a simulation model of rat behavior in the elevated plus-maze, designed through a Decision trees approach using Classification and Regression algorithms. Starting from the analysis of the behavior performed by a sample of 18 Sprague-Dawley male rats, probabilistic rules describing behavioral patterns of the animals were extracted, and were used as the basis of the model computations. The model adequacy was tested by contrasting a simulated sample against an independent sample of real animals. Statistical tests showed that the simulated sample exhibits similar behaviors to those displayed by the real animals, both in terms of the number of entries to open and close arms as well as in terms of the time spent by the animals in those arms. However, the performance of the model in parameters related to the behavioral patterns was partially satisfactory. Given that previous attempts in the literature have neither include this kind of patterns nor the time as a crucial model parameter, the present model offers a suitable alternative for the computational simulation of this paradigm. Compared with antecedent models, the present simulation produced similar or better results in all the considered parameters. Beyond the goal of establish an appropriate simulational model, extracted rules also reveal important regularities associated to the rat behavior previously ignored by other models, i.e. that specific rat behaviors in the elevated plus-maze are time dependent. These and other important considerations to improve the model performance are discussed.

Validez y confiabilidad de tres escalas para evaluar conductas sociales en preescolares y escolares / Validity and reliability of three teachers’ ratings scales of socials be-haviors in preschoolers and scholars children

Estudiamos la validez y confiabilidad de tres escalas para evaluar conductas sociales niños y niñas costarricenses de preescolar y primer grado (n=262). Una de las escalas evalúa el comportamiento prosocial (ECPRO), otra evalúa la habilidad de explotar la experticia de los demás (EXHAD), y una más evalúa el comportamiento maquiavélico (EMach) en el ámbito escolar. Las escalas son completadas por docentes previamente capacitadas, de modo que el puntaje de cada niño o niña depende del criterio de su maestra respectiva. La estructura factorial de cada escala fue evaluada mediante un análisis de componentes principales. Según este análisis la ECPRO exhibió una estructura unidimensional caracterizada por un componente denominado “Disposición para Ayudar a los Otros”, la EXHAD mostró dos componentes principales denominados “Aprendizaje Social por Observación” y “Explotación de la Frutos de la Experticia de los Demás”, y la EMach reveló tres componentes: “Tácticas Maquiavélicas”, “Actitudes Ambivalentes hacia los Demás” y “Comprensión Social”. Las escalas arrojaron evidencia sobre una adecuada confiabilidad interna y validez de constructo. La ECPRO y la EMach evidenciaron validez discriminante entre sí. Además, estos hallazgos sugieren que el criterio de las maestras es una muy buena alternativa para evaluar este tipo de conductas sociales (AU)

The purpose of this study was to expose validity and reliability of three teacher’s ratings scales of socials behaviors in one sample (N=262) of preschoolers and scholars (grade one) Costa Ricans children. We design one scale of prosocial behavior (ECPRO) and other to evaluate the ability of exploiter the other’s expertise (EXHAD). Moreover we adapt one scale of machiavellian behavior (EMach). Teachers completed three scales for each participant. Factor structure was evaluated by principal components analysis. This analysis show that ECPRO is form by one component “Disposition for help others”, EXHAD is constitute by two components “Social Learning by Observation” and “Exploiting the Fruits of Other’s Expertise”; whereas EMach is constitute by three components “Machiavellian Tactics”, “Ambivalent Attitudes Toward the Others” and “Social Understanding”. The three teacher’s ratings scales show evidence of construct validity and internal reliability; furthermore ECPRO and EMach show discriminant validity. In addition these findings suggest that teachers are an excellent choice to evaluate this kind of socials behaviors (AU)

Interacciones entre el entendimiento de la falsa-creencia y el desarrollo de la habilidad verbal: Diferencias entre los sexos en edad preescolar / Interactions between false-belief understanding and verbal ability development: Sex differences in preschool children

En este artículo se analiza el desempeño de niños y niñas en la resolución de tareas de falsa-creencia y se explora la posible influencia del desarrollo de las habilidades verbales sobre las diferencias de rendimiento entre ambos sexos en dichas tareas. El trabajo incluye dos estudios: En el Estudio 1 se comparó el entendimiento de la falsa-creencia y la habilidad verbal de 17 niños y 17 niñas costarricenses de 5 años, con el entendimiento de la falsa-creencia y de la habilidad verbal de 17 niños y 17 niñas costarricenses de 6 años de edad. Para el Estudio 2, los mismos participantes del grupo de 5 años del Estudio 1 fueron reevaluados después de un período de 3 meses. En el Estudio 1, el grupo de niñas de 6 años evidenció un desempeño significativamente mayor que el grupo de niñas de 5 años, tanto en el índice de habilidad verbal como en el entendimiento de la falsa-creencia. En contraste, entre los niños de 5 y 6 años solo se encontró un incremento no significativo en los puntajes de ambas variables. Luego de reevaluar a los participantes de 5 años, el Estudio 2 confirmó estas diferencias entre ambos sexos y verificó que los incrementos entre ambas variables son mutuamente dependientes. Los hallazgos principales de ambos estudios señalan diferencias significativas en el desarrollo cognitivo de los preescolares según su sexo. La relevancia de los resultados se discute en el contexto del debate actual sobre las interacciones entre la habilidad verbal y la teoría de la mente durante la edad preescolar.

The purpose of this article is to analyze some developmental interactions between cognitive processes during the preschool period. In specific, we are interested in the interactions between verbal ability and false-belief understanding. The research explores the performance of boys and girls in the execution of false-belief tasks, and evaluates the possible influence of verbal ability development on the sex differences in the falsebelief scores. In recent times, the emphasis on the sex differences in this dimension of social cognition has been an important issue stemming from the results of current lines of research. The present work is divided in two studies. The Study 1 compares the false-belief understanding and verbal ability of 17 five-year-olds Costa Rican boys and 17 five-year-olds Costa Rican girls, with the false-belief understanding and verbal ability of 17 six-year-olds Costa Rican boys and 17 six-year-olds Costa Rican girls. The main interest of this first study is focused on the identification of interactions between the cognitive processes of the participants. Sub sequently, in Study 2, the same five-year-olds that participated in Study 1 were reevaluated through the same measures after a period of 3 months. The goal of this second study was to follow up the tendencies evidenced in the previous study, after a brief period of time. As an attempt to capture specific details in the development of these processes and given the recommendations of previous works, an interval of 3 months between measures was used here for the first time in the context of this line of research. All the participants were students from a public preschool in the capital city of Costa Rica and native speakers of the Spanish language. Additional inclusion criteria take into account the absence of developmental disorders and other antecedents of psychiatric / psychological intervention. The assessment of false- belief understanding was through a battery that includes four different false-belief tasks. This battery was conformed by 3 first order false-belief tasks, and one second order false-belief task. For the assessment of verbal ability, the study includes 4 subtests (Information, Arithmetic, Vocabulary, and Comprehension) from the WPPSI-III Verbal Ability Scale. The results of the Study 1 evidenced that the six-year-olds girls had significantly higher scores than the five-year-olds girls, both in verbal ability and in false-belief understanding. Interestingly, the improvements in both abilities were mutually dependent. In contrast, the scores at the same variables showed a small but not significant improvement between five and six-year-olds boys. In Study 2, our results confirm these sex differences through the reassessment of the same five-year-olds, and verify that the improvements in both abilities are mutually dependent. The main results of both studies highlights important sex differences in the cognitive development of preschool children. In both studies the false-belief understanding and verbal ability improve significantly in girls but not in boys. The implications of our data are discussed in the context of the actual debate about the interaction between verbal ability and theory of mind during the preschool years. The possible influences of different socialization processes associated with a particular gender are discussed, as well as other tentative mediating factors like the empathic abilities or the influence produced by the context of different daily play scenarios among boys and girls. Research limitations like the particular period of assessment between measures in the Study 2 or the necessity of more tasks for each construct are also discussed. Finally, tentative mechanisms that could account for our data are considered.