Scale Errors in Context

• In Event: 3-184 - Integrating Perception, Cognition, and Action: The Case of Scale Errors

Integrative Statement

This paper will serve to introduce the symposium as well as provide a general framework for considering how factors within the child (i.e., age, executive function, language skills, etc.), within the task (e.g., free play versus well defined task, presence of time constraints), and within the environment (e.g., home, preschool, laboratory) influence children's production of scale errors. This paper will also serve to place the other papers in the symposium in a larger context that explores the role of perception, cognition, and action in the production of scale errors.

In presenting the framework, results from past research on children's scale errors will first be provided (e.g., Casler, et al., 2010; DeLoache et al, 2004; Rosengren et al., 2010ab; Ware et al., 2010) to develop a more integrative account of past research on scale errors. Then two new studies will be presented that explored children's scale errors in the context of other action errors (e.g., grasp errors, media errors; Jiang & Rosengren, 2018).

The first study to be reported involves a 6-month prospective parental diary study (N= 46) that examined the nature of action errors in children between the ages of 10 and 30 months of age. Overall the families reported a total of 75 scale errors (Mean = 1.63, SD = 2.23). Twenty-eight families (61%) reported at least one scale error. Many of the scale errors reported involved multiple attempts (M = 2.4 attempts, SD = 0.93). Families reported a total of 100 grasp errors (attempts to pick up an object depicted in a photograph; M = 2.17, SD = 8.75). Ninety-five of the grasp errors occurred when a child was interacting with print media (e.g., a book or a photograph) and five occurred when the child was interacting with an electronic screen. Twenty families (43%) reported at least one grasp error. Families reported a total of 106 media errors (other attempts to interact with objects and persons depicted in screen media; M = 2.48, SD = 2.60), with 32 families (70%) reporting at least one media error.

The second study was a retrospective online study involving 320 parents recruited on Amazon mTurk that surveyed parents' memory of children's action errors. More than three-fourths of parents (78%) reported seeing their child commit at least one type of error (n = 251). Of those, 71% were verified by the research assistants as genuine errors (n = 177). Only 3% of parents reported seeing their child commit all three errors as validated by research assistants. About one third (29%) of parents reported seeing their child commit a scale error, one fifth (20%) reported seeing a grasp error, and about one third (29%) reported seeing a media error. The three types of action errors were significantly correlated with one another (rscale-grasp = 0.35, rscale-media = 0.40, rmedia-grasp = 0.38, p<.001). These results indicate a significant relation between different types of action errors, potentially suggesting similar underlying mechanisms.

Authors

• Karl S. Rosengren, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Heather Kirkorian, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Matthew J. Jiang, Dept of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chantel Raimer, Dept of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author