Children's ability to impute inferentially based knowledge.

Roshan Rai; Peter Mitchell

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00920.x

Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 16942507

Children's ability to impute inferentially based knowledge.

Roshan Rai·Peter Mitchell

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Do young children appreciate the importance of access to premises when judging what another person knows? In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds (N=31) were sensitive to another person's access to premises when predicting that person's ability to point to a target after eliminating alternatives in a set of 3 cartoon characters. Experiment 2 replicated the finding when 5- to 6-year-olds (N=102) judged who the other person thought the target was, and whether the other person knew who the target was. Experiment 3 demonstrated that children aged 5-7 years (N=107) more successfully imputed inference by elimination than syllogistical inferential knowledge. Findings suggest that an early understanding of inference by elimination offers a route into understanding that people can sometimes gain knowledge without direct perceptual access.

Explore related subjects

Aptitude Attention Child Child, Preschool Female Humans Interpersonal Relations Judgment Knowledge of Results, Psychological Male Personal Construct Theory Problem Solving Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Roshan Rai, Peter Mitchell. Children's ability to impute inferentially based knowledge.. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00920.x

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2007

Use of context in pragmatic language comprehension by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.

Utilizing relevance theory, this study investigated the ability of children with Asperger syndrome (AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA) to use context when answering questions and when giving explanations for their correct answers. Three groups participated in this study: younger AS/HFA group (age 7-9, n=16), older AS/HFA group (age 10-12, n=23) and a normally functioning control group (age 7-9, n=23). The results indicated that the younger AS/HFA group did less well when answering contextually demanding questions compared to the control group, and the performance of the older AS/HFA group fell in between the younger AS/HFA group and the control group. Both AS/HFA groups had difficulties explaining their correct answers, suggesting that they are not always aware of how they have derived answers from the context.

Aptitude↗

PubMed2007

Executive function in preschoolers with autism: evidence consistent with a secondary deficit.

Recent research on executive function (EF) deficits in autism has led investigators to conclude that EF deficits are secondary to the disorder. The current study has two major goals: (1) Examine whether specific EF deficits are present in the youngest autism group to date (mean=2.9 years), and (2) examine whether such deficits are secondary to autism, or act as an early non-specific cognitive risk factor for autism by comparing EF abilities of this autism group to a CA-matched typically developing group. Results from Experiment 1 suggest no specific EF deficits in autism relative to MA-matched controls, while results from Experiment 2 are consistent with the hypothesis that EF deficits may emerge as a secondary deficit in autism. Alternative hypotheses are also considered.

Aptitude↗

PubMed2007

Trait-based perspectives of leadership.

The trait-based perspective of leadership has a long but checkered history. Trait approaches dominated the initial decades of scientific leadership research. Later, they were disdained for their inability to offer clear distinctions between leaders and nonleaders and for their failure to account for situational variance in leadership behavior. Recently, driven by greater conceptual, methodological, and statistical sophistication, such approaches have again risen to prominence. However, their contributions are likely to remain limited unless leadership researchers who adopt this perspective address several fundamental issues. The author argues that combinations of traits and attributes, integrated in conceptually meaningful ways, are more likely to predict leadership than additive or independent contributions of several single traits. Furthermore, a defining core of these dominant leader trait patterns reflects a stable tendency to lead in different ways across disparate organizational domains. Finally, the author summarizes a multistage model that specifies some leader traits as having more distal influences on leadership processes and performance, whereas others have more proximal effects that are integrated with, and influenced by, situational parameters.

Aptitude↗