Poster #28 - Direct linguistic input about mental states improves young children’s uncertainty monitoring: A storybook intervention study

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Children’s ability to engage in uncertainty monitoring (the ability to recognize and reflect upon subjective experiences of uncertainty) has long been held as a driving force of cognitive development (Flavell, 1979). Whether it is knowing when to reexamine a hard question on a test or asking for a teacher’s help, the ability to monitor subjective experiences of uncertainty is crucial for everyday functioning. Whereas traditional studies posited stark limitations in young children’s ability to monitor their uncertainty (Flavell, Green & Flavell, 1995), recent studies have demonstrated that they in fact can do so as early as the preschool years (Lyons & Ghetti, 2013).
Environmental factors associated with preschoolers’ ability to engage in uncertainty monitoring are still not well understood. One probable factor involves children’s linguistic environment. Caregivers’ capacity to talk about children’s internal states is a robust predictor of children’s mental and social understanding (Meins et. al., 2003), and such parental practices could also help promote the development of uncertainty monitoring. However, linguistic input in the family is also associated with a host of additional predictors of learning (e.g., socio-economic status, attachment style, etc.) limiting the conclusions that can be drawn between observations of linguistic input and uncertainty monitoring.
To address these issues, the current study implemented randomized-controlled storybook intervention with 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 41) to examine whether exposure to mental state language that highlights certainty and uncertainty can promote the emergence of young children’s uncertainty monitoring. The storybooks consisted of child-friendly illustrations depicting situations that highlighted the main characters knowledge or ignorance during a game of hide-and-seek (see Figure 1) or a control condition with the same materials but instead focused on practicing rudimentary math skills (e.g., counting the number of apples in a tree). Children were randomly assigned to either the hide-and-seek or counting-book condition and read the storybooks with a trained experimenter during six short sessions spaced out approximately over two weeks.
Children’s uncertainty monitoring was measured before and after the story book intervention using a perceptual-judgement task which has been demonstrated to be a reliable and valid measure (Lyons & Ghetti 2013). Children made confidence judgements– either high (2), medium (1), or low confidence (0)–after choosing which of two degraded pictures contained a target object. Children’s uncertainty monitoring was quantified as a difference score between their average certainty rating on difficult perceptual-judgements (overall at chance-performance) and their average certainty rating on easy perceptual-judgements (overall at ceiling-performance).
At post-test, analyses reveled that children who received the hide-and-seek storybook showed significantly better uncertainty monitoring (M = .40) than children who received the counting storybook (M = .00), t (39) = 2.04, p = .04, Cohen’s D = .64, whereas there were no significant differences between the groups (M = .05 and -.02 respectively) at pre-test (See Figure 2). This finding suggests that specific linguistic input about children’s knowledge and uncertainty could promote the development of children’s uncertainty monitoring and has implications for intervention efforts aimed at promoting children’s metacognitive ability in early-childhood education settings.

Authors

• Christopher Gonzales, Oregon State University
  Presenting Author

• Anne Kupfer, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jordan Hicks, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Awhona Sanyal, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• William Fabricius, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author