The Development of Size Sequencing Skills: An Empirical and Computational Analysis.

Abstract:
We explore a long-observed phenomenon in children s cognitive development known as size seriation. It is not until children are around 7 years of age that they spontaneously use a strict ascending or descending order of magnitude to organize sets of objects differing in size. Incomplete and inaccurate ordering shown by younger children has been thought to be related to their incomplete grasp of the mathematical concept of a unit. Piaget first brought attention to children s difficulties in solving ordering and size-matching tests, but his tasks and explanations have been progressively neglected due to major theoretical shifts in scholarship on developmental cognition. A cogent alternative to his account has never emerged, leaving size seriation and related abilities as an unexplained case of discontinuity in mental growth. In this monograph, we use a new training methodology, together with computational modeling of the data to offer a new explanation of size seriation development and the emergence of related skills. We describe a connected set of touchscreen tasks that measure the abilities of 5- and 7-year-old children to (a) learn a linear size sequence of five or seven items and (b) identify unique (unit) values within those same sets, such as second biggest and middle-sized. Older children required little or no training to succeed in the sequencing tasks, whereas younger children evinced trial-and-error performance. Marked age differences were found on ordinal identification tasks using matching-to-sample and other methods. Confirming Piaget s findings, these tasks generated learning data with which to develop a computational model of the change. Using variables to represent working and long-term memory (WM and LTM), the computational model represents the information processing of the younger child in terms of a perception-action feedback loop, resulting in a heuristic for achieving a correct sequence. To explain why older children do not require training on the size task, it was hypothesized that an increase in WM to a certain threshold level provides the information-processing capacity to allow the participant to start to detect a minimum interval between each item in the selection. The probabilistic heuristic is thus thought to be replaced during a transitional stage by a serial algorithm that guarantees success. The minimum interval discovery has the effect of controlling search for the next item in a principled monotonic direction. Through a minor additional processing step, this algorithm permits relatively easy identification of ordinal values. The model was tested by simulating the perceptual learning and action selection processes thought to be taking place during trial-and-error sequencing. Error distributions were generated across each item in the sequence and these were found to correspond to the error patterns shown by 5-year-olds. The algorithm that is thought to emerge from successful learning was also tested. It simulated high levels of success on seriation and also on ordinal identification tasks, as shown by 7-year-olds. An unexpected finding from the empirical studies was that, unlike adults, the 7-year-old children showed marked difficulty when they had to compute ordinal size values in tasks that did not permit the use of the serial algorithm. For example, when required to learn a non-monotonic sequence where the ordinal values were in a fixed random order such as second biggest, middle-sized, smallest, second smallest, biggest, each item has to be found without reference to the smallest difference rule used by the algorithm. The difficulty evinced by 7-year-olds was consistent with the idea that the information in LTM is integrally tied to the search procedure itself as a search-and-stop based on a cumulative tally, as distinct from being accessed from a more permanent and atemporal store of stand-alone ordinal values in LTM. The implications of this possible constraint in understanding are discussed in terms of further developmental changes. We conclude that the seriation behavior shown by children at around 7 years represents a qualitative shift in their understanding but not in the sense that Piaget first proposed. We see the emergent algorithm as an information-reducing device, representing a default strategy for how humans come to deal with potentially complex sets of relations. We argue this with regard to counting behaviors in children and also with regard to how linear monotonic devices for resolving certain logical tasks endure into adulthood. Insofar as the monograph reprises any aspect of the Piagetian account, it is in his highlighting of an important cognitive discontinuity in logicomathematical understanding at around the age of 7, and his quest for understanding the transactions with the physical world that lead to it.
Author Listing: Maggie McGonigle-Chalmers;Iain Kusel
Volume: 84 4
Pages: \n 7-202\n
DOI: 10.1111/mono.12411
Language: English
Journal: Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

MONOGRAPHS OF THE SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

MONOGR SOC RES CHILD

影响因子:6.2 是否综述期刊:否 是否OA:否 是否预警:不在预警名单内 发行时间:- ISSN:0037-976X 发刊频率:- 收录数据库:Scopus收录 出版国家/地区:- 出版社:Wiley-Blackwell

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年发文量 2
国人发稿量 -
国人发文占比 0%
自引率 2.1%
平均录取率 -
平均审稿周期 -
版面费 US$2850
偏重研究方向 PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL-
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研究类文章占比 OA被引用占比 撤稿占比 出版后修正文章占比
100.00% 55.56% 0.00% 0.00%

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期刊预警不是论文评价,更不是否定预警期刊发表的每项成果。《国际期刊预警名单(试行)》旨在提醒科研人员审慎选择成果发表平台、提示出版机构强化期刊质量管理。

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分区表升级版(试行)的优势:一是论文层级的主题体系既能体现学科交叉特点,又可以精准揭示期刊载文的多学科性;二是采用“期刊超越指数”替代影响因子指标,解决了影响因子数学性质缺陷对评价结果的干扰。整体而言,分区表升级版(试行)突破了期刊评价中学科体系构建、评价指标选择等瓶颈问题,能够更为全面地揭示学术期刊的影响力,为科研评价“去四唯”提供解决思路。相关研究成果经过国际同行的认可,已经发表在科学计量学领域国际重要期刊。

《2019年中国科学院文献情报中心期刊分区表升级版(试行)》首次将社会科学引文数据库(SSCI)期刊纳入到分区评估中。升级版分区表(试行)设置了包括自然科学和社会科学在内的18个大类学科。基础版和升级版(试行)将过渡共存三年时间,推测在此期间各大高校和科研院所仍可能会以基础版为考核参考标准。 提示:中科院分区官方微信公众号“fenqubiao”仅提供基础版数据查询,暂无升级版数据,请注意区分。

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