Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Children
- All Subjects: Object Permanence
- Creators: Fabricius, William
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
Introspective awareness refers to direct access to one’s own internal and subjective thoughts and feelings (Wimmer & Hartl, 1991). Two theories, simulation theory and theory-theory, have been used to understand our access to our mental states. Simulation theory (Harris, 1991) involves imagining yourself in another person’s situation, reading off of your mental state, and attributing that state to the other person. Theory-theory (Gopnik, 1993) involves an interrelated body of knowledge, based on core mental-state constructs, including beliefs and desires, that may be applied to everyone—self and others (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). Introspection is taken for granted by simulation theory, and explicitly denied by theory-theory. This study is designed to test for evidence of introspection in young children using simple perception and knowledge task. The current evidence is against introspective awareness in children because the data suggest that children cannot report their own false beliefs and they cannot report their on-going thoughts (Flavell, Green & Flavell, 1993; Gopnik & Astington, 1988). The hypothesis in this study states that children will perform better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks, which will be evidence for introspection. The Other-Perception tasks require children to calculate the other’s line of sight and determine if there is something obscuring his or her vision. The Other-Knowledge tasks require children to reason that the other’s previous looking inside a box means that he or she will know what is inside the box when it is closed. The corresponding Self tasks could be answered either by using the same reasoning for the self or by introspection to determine what it is they see and do not see, and know and do not know. Children performing better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks will be an indication of introspection. Tests included Yes/No and Forced Choice questions, which was initially to ensure that the results will not be caused by a feature of a single method of questioning. I realized belatedly, however, that Forced Choice was not a valid measure of introspection as children could introspect in both the Self and Other conditions. I also expect to replicate previous findings that reasoning about Perception is easier for children than reasoning about Knowledge.
ContributorsAamed, Mati (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
For many years now, early word learning in children has been an important subject among many researchers. There are many ways in which children learn word-object pairings including using co-occurrences, forwards integration, and backwards integration. This study primarily focuses on backwards integration. Backwards integration entails using learned information to be able to recall a word-object pairing from a previous time. In this thesis, three different studies were conducted with children aged 3-7 years old. In the general task, children were presented with a computerized word-learning task in which they could track word-referent pairings using co-occurrence statistics, forward integration, and backward integration. The goal of Study 1 and Study 2 was to determine the best task design to study backwards integration. The goal of the final study, Study 3, was to provide preliminary data on backwards integration. The overall results indicate that a between subjects design is the most beneficial way to test backwards integration because as a group, children were learning when compared to chance. In addition, the results from Study 3 showed that children were not learning in the task. In general, this suggests that this task may have been very difficult for children to complete. One limitation of Study 3
was that there was a small sample size of only 29 children. In order to account for this, the sample sizes in Study 2 and Study 3 were combined. This combined data did show that children succeeded at the backwards integration condition. It is noteworthy to mention that backwards integration was above chance in Study 2 and in the Study 2 and 3 combination. Therefore, the overall results suggest that children may possibly be able to backwards integrate; however, no evidence of learning in any of the other conditions were present.
was that there was a small sample size of only 29 children. In order to account for this, the sample sizes in Study 2 and Study 3 were combined. This combined data did show that children succeeded at the backwards integration condition. It is noteworthy to mention that backwards integration was above chance in Study 2 and in the Study 2 and 3 combination. Therefore, the overall results suggest that children may possibly be able to backwards integrate; however, no evidence of learning in any of the other conditions were present.
ContributorsLalani, Hanna Alyssa (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Fabricius, William (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Current research has consistently shown that children substantially younger than 2 years of age understand object permanence; i.e. infants have realistic expectations of where hidden objects should reappear, and they react with increased looking time to experimenter-manipulated violations of object permanence. However, new research has revealed that 2-year-olds' understanding of object permanence does not seem to transfer to active search tasks. Although infants look longer when an object moves behind a screen and is subsequently shown to have "magically" passed through a solid barrier, 2-year-olds do not search correctly for an object that has moved behind a panel of four doors and stopped at a barrier that is visible above the correct door. However, 2-year-olds do search flawlessly on a warm-up task in which the experimenter hides a stationary object behind one of the doors. Due to these conflicting results, I designed three search tasks to test whether the method of hiding the object affects young 2-year-olds' ability to successfully search. I used a simplified three-door apparatus with stationary objects in which children were allowed to search only one door per trial. In the Hide-3 search task, the experimenter opened a door, placed a toy in the doorway, and closed the door. In the Reveal-3 search task, all doors opened and closed simultaneously without the experimenter touching one door, and a toy was revealed already in place in a doorway. In the Reveal-2 search task, the experimenter hid the toy identically as in Reveal-3, except a hand puppet opened an incorrect door immediately after the toy was hidden, leaving two remaining doors for the child to search. If infants' and 2-year-olds' knowledge of a hidden object's location is activated in previous looking time experiments, then the puppet's incorrect search in Reveal-2 should facilitate their search performance relative to Reveal-3 by activating this knowledge. My results suggest that young 2-year-olds are not using knowledge of the hidden object's location to guide search. Instead, their performance is best explained by a utilization of alternate search strategies including imitation of the adult and salience differentials between search options. These results call into question a fundamental tenet of modern child psychology, that by 2 years of age children use their knowledge of object permanence to guide search under a variety of hiding and disappearance conditions.
ContributorsHarkins, James Montgomery (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Keen, Rachel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
How do children understand how others see the world? I examined correlations between 4-8 year old children's understanding of beliefs and their understanding of other ways that people represent the world. Beliefs that I measured are understanding of pretense, understanding that things can have multiple identities, understanding that people can know things by inference, and understanding that people can look at the same thing and have different representations of it. I predicted that there would be correlations among these tasks. In particular, I predicted children would be able to understand these tasks when they understood true and false beliefs, based on current theories on belief understanding. I predicted that the classic false belief task alone would not be a good predictor of task performance, but that the combination of true and false belief tasks would. Participants were 100 children recruited at the Phoenix Children's Museum between ages 4 and 8. Previous research has found that children pass all of these tasks between the ages of 6 and 8, but no other studies have looked at the inter-correlations among them. Contrary to my prediction, children did not pass these tasks all at once, but scores went up gradually with age and belief understanding.
ContributorsLaitin, Emily Lynne (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
It is well known that the lack of care coordination in the healthcare system causes numerous problems including cost inefficiency and inconsistent care, specifically for complex pediatric and adult patients. Many pediatric patients have complex medical and social service needs which can be expensive for both the patient’s parents and the general healthcare system. Therefore, it is difficult for the healthcare system to deliver the highest quality care possible, due to the number of appointments that have to be scheduled (with some being out of state), the large volume of physical health records, and overall lack of time parents have to coordinate this care while also caring for themselves and other family members. It is integral to find a more efficient way to coordinate care for these patients, in order to improve overall care, cost efficiency, and outcomes. <br/>A number of stakeholders in Arizona came together to work on this problem over several years. They were funded through a PCORI Eugene Washington Engagement grant to investigators at ASU. This project, Take Action for Arizona's Children through Care Coordination: A Bridge to Action was developed in order to further develop a research agenda and build the network (PCOR). Regional conferences were conducted in Flagstaff, Yuma, Phoenix, and Tucson, as well as a final capstone conference held in Phoenix. At these conferences, frustrations, suggestions, and opinions regarding Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN) and navigating the healthcare system were shared and testimonials were transcribed.<br/>This study focused on the capstone conference. The study design was a strategic design workshop; results of the design analysis were analyzed qualitatively using descriptive content analysis. Themes described parent’s common experiences navigating the system, impacts resulting from such experiences, and desires for the care coordination system. Quotes were then grouped into major themes and subthemes for the capstone conference. After these themes were determined, the overarching goals of stakeholders could be assessed, and implementation projects could be described.
ContributorsBrennan, Bayley (Author) / Doebbeling, Bradley (Thesis director) / Lamb, Gerri (Committee member) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
According to Jean Piaget, a prominent cognitive development psychologist in 1954, infants should have an understanding of object permanence at 12 months of age. Current research has backed this idea and shown that children younger than 2 years of age understand object permanence- shown through their increased looking times to inconsistent displays in which a moving object appears to have fallen through a solid shelf. However, current research used active search tasks with 2 year olds and found that they failed to search for the object consistently. My thesis explores why 2 year olds are failing search tasks if infants are appearing the understand object permanence with their looking responses. The Theory of Mind Lab at ASU designed a simple two door/two room apparatus to test 2 year olds’ ability to search for an object once it goes out of sight. Two doors open to two rooms separated by a green wall that extends above the front wall. Results showed that 2-year-olds randomly searched for the object. Perhaps children were not able to clearly differentiate the two separate spaces and ultimately started guessing because they assumed both doors go to the same room. Therefore, my thesis involved adding a ‘hallway’ between the two rooms to help children mentally separate the two spaces by showing them the bottom of the barrier. Despite the hallway, results showed that 2-year-olds again hardly performed above chance across all 6 trials. To remove the social aspects and the need to coordinate motor movement with knowledge of the object’s location, I designed a Visual Anticipation Task with automatic doors that required 2-year olds to merely look at the correct door for the hidden object. Results showed that children looked correctly at the first location correctly but when hidden in a new location in the second trial, perseverated and looked back at the first location. These results showed that 2-year olds do not understand object permanence at this age when it comes to both searching and looking.
ContributorsVirani, Sanya Z (Co-author) / Virani, Sanya (Co-author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05