Gudrun Schwarzer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Gudrun Schwarzer

Acta Psychologica, Nov 1, 2021

The development of material property perception for grasping objects is not well explored during ... more The development of material property perception for grasping objects is not well explored during early childhood. Therefore, we investigated infants', 3-year-old children's, and adults' unimanual grasping behavior and reaching kinematics for objects of different rigidity using a 3D motion capture system. In Experiment 1, 11-month-old infants and for purposes of comparison adults, and in Experiment 2, 3-year old children were encouraged to lift relatively heavy objects with one of two handles differing in rigidity after visual (Condition 1) and visual-haptic exploration (Condition 2). Experiment 1 revealed that 11-months-olds, after visual object exploration, showed no significant material preference, and thus did not consider the material to facilitate grasping. After visual-haptic object exploration and when grasping the contralateral handles, infants showed an unexpected preference for the soft handles, which were harder to use to lift the object. In contrast, adults generally grasped the rigid handle exploiting their knowledge about efficient and functional grasping in both conditions. Reaching kinematics were barely affected by rigidity, but rather by condition and age. Experiment 2 revealed that 3-year-olds no longer exhibit a preference for grasping soft handles, but still no adult-like preference for rigid handles in both conditions. This suggests that material rigidity plays a minor role in infants' grasping behavior when only visual material information is available. Also, 3-year-olds seem to be on an intermediate level in the development from (1) preferring the pleasant sensation of a soft fabric, to (2) preferring the efficient rigid handle.

Developmental Psychobiology, Oct 25, 2017

We investigated the influence of habitual grasp strategies and object orientation on motor planni... more We investigated the influence of habitual grasp strategies and object orientation on motor planning in 3-year-olds and 4-to 5-year-old children and adults. Participants were required to rotate different vertically oriented objects around 180°. Usually, adults perform this task by grasping objects with an awkward grip (thumb and index finger pointing downward) at the beginning of the movement, in order to finish it with a comfortable hand position. This pattern corresponds to the well-known endstate comfort effect (ESC) in grasp planning. The presented objects were associated with different habitual grasp orientations that either corresponded with the grasp direction required to reach end-state comfort (downward) or implied a contrary grasp orientation (upward). Additionally, they were presented either in their usual, canonical orientation (e.g., shovel with the blade oriented downward versus cup with its opening oriented upward) or upside down. As dependent variable we analyzed the number of grips conforming to the end-state comfort principle (ESC score) realized in each object type and orientation condition. The number of grips conforming to ESC strongly increased with age. In addition, the extent to which end-state comfort was considered was influenced by the actual orientation of the objects' functional parts. Thus, in all age-groups the ESC score was highest when the functional parts of the objects were oriented downward (shovel presented canonically with blade pointing downward, cup presented upside down) and corresponded to the hand orientation needed to realize ESC.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Nov 1, 2023

Infant Behavior & Development, Aug 1, 2021

During the first year of life, infants undergo a process known as perceptual narrowing, which red... more During the first year of life, infants undergo a process known as perceptual narrowing, which reduces their sensitivity to classes of stimuli which the infants do not encounter in their environment. It has been proposed that perceptual narrowing for faces and speech may be driven by shared domain-general processes. To investigate this theory, our study longitudinally tested 50 German Caucasian infants with respect to these domains first at 6 months of age followed by a second testing at 9 months of age. We used an infant-controlled habituation-dishabituation paradigm to test the infants' ability to discriminate among other-race Asian faces and non-native Cantonese speech tones, as well as same-race Caucasian faces as a control. We found that while at 6 months of age infants could discriminate among all stimuli, by 9 months of age they could no longer discriminate among other-race faces or non-native tones. However, infants could discriminate among same-race stimuli both at 6 and at 9 months of age. These results demonstrate that the same infants undergo perceptual narrowing for both other-race faces and non-native speech tones between the ages of 6 and 9 months. This parallel development of perceptual narrowing occurring in both the face and speech perception modalities over the same period of time lends support to the domain-general theory of perceptual narrowing in face and speech perception.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jun 1, 2018

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, Aug 27, 2019

Previous research has indicated the beneficial effects of music training on executive functions (... more Previous research has indicated the beneficial effects of music training on executive functions (EFs) in children. However, researchers have not clearly determined which component of music training produces these beneficial effects or whether different components exert different effects on EFs. In the present study, we examined the impact of rhythm-based music training compared to pitch-based music training and sports training as a control on EFs in preschoolers. Children aged between 5 and 6 years (N = 76) were randomly assigned to one of the three training groups and received training in small groups three times a week for 20 min in German kindergartens. Before and after training, children completed tests designed to assess inhibition, set-shifting, and visuospatial working memory. Parental education, family income, personality, and IQ served as control variables. We observed a significant training group × time interaction for the measure of inhibition. Children from the rhythm group exhibited significant improvements in inhibition from pre-to post-tests (d RM = 0.56), whereas children from the other groups did not. Furthermore, children from the rhythm group significantly differed from the sports control group at post-test (d corr = 0.82). Concerning the measures of setshifting and visuospatial working memory, the descriptive data revealed similar results; however, we did not observe significant training group × time interactions. Based on our findings, rhythm-based music training specifically enhances inhibition in preschoolers and might affect other EFs, such as set-shifting and visuospatial working memory.

Frontiers in Psychology, Jul 26, 2019

Emotional valence is predominately conveyed in social interactions by words and facial expression... more Emotional valence is predominately conveyed in social interactions by words and facial expressions. The existence of broad biases which favor more efficient processing of positive or negative emotions is still a controversial matter. While so far this question has been investigated separately for each modality, in this narrative review of the literature we focus on valence effects in processing both words and facial expressions. In order to identify the factors underlying positivity and negativity effects, and to uncover whether these effects depend on modality and age, we present and analyze three representative overviews of the literature concerning valence effects in word processing, face processing, and combinations of word and face processing. Our analysis of word processing studies points to a positivity bias or a balanced processing of positive and negative words, whereas the analysis of face processing studies showed the existence of separate positivity and negativity biases depending on the experimental paradigm. The mixed results seem to be a product of the different methods and types of stimuli being used. Interestingly, we found that children exhibit a clear positivity advantage for both word and face processing, indicating similar processing biases in both modalities. Over the course of development, the initial positivity advantage gradually disappears, and in some face processing studies even reverses into a negativity bias. We therefore conclude that there is a need for future research that systematically analyses the impact of age and modality on the emergence of these valence effects. Finally, we discuss possible explanations for the presence of the early positivity advantage and its subsequent decrease.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, Nov 16, 2022

In the present study we examined whether infants' visual prediction abilities were related to... more In the present study we examined whether infants' visual prediction abilities were related to different types of motion experiences. We tested 30 6-month-old infants on a visual-spatial prediction task in which they had to visually anticipate the locational reappearance of temporarily occluded moving objects. We assigned infants to one of three experience groups: active locomotion training, passive motion experience, and a no-training control group. We tested the infants’ visual prediction abilities before and after these trainings. We found improved infant predictions at a post-training test only for passively trained infants ( p = .015, d = −1.033; Bonferroni corrected). Thus, we conclude that infants’ visual-spatial predictions of temporally occluded moving objects was facilitated by mere movement experience, even if passive. Visual information gathered during even passive movement seemed sufficient for visual prediction.

Hogrefe eBooks, 2011

Die vorliegende Untersuchung befasst sich mit der Frage, wie sich das to nale Verstehen entwickel... more Die vorliegende Untersuchung befasst sich mit der Frage, wie sich das to nale Verstehen entwickelt und inwieweit es mit der Entwicklung anderer kognitiver Fähigkeiten wie dem allgemein-logischen Schlussfolgern und dem räumlichen Vorstellungsvermögen im Zusammenhang steht. Es wur den 105 5-bis 10-jährige Kinder untersucht. Das Tonalitätsverstehen wurde mit der Probetonmethode (vgl. z. B. Krumhansl, 1990) erfasst, bei der die Probanden die Aufgabe haben, Schlusstöne kurzer Melodien zu bewerten.

Infant Behavior & Development, Nov 1, 2021

Studies show that visual-manual object exploration influences spatial cognition, and specifically... more Studies show that visual-manual object exploration influences spatial cognition, and specifically mental rotation performance in infancy. The current work with 9-month-old infants investigated which specific exploration procedures (related to crawling experience) support mental rotation performance. In two studies, we examined the effects of two different exploration procedures, manual rotation (Study 1) and haptic scanning (Study 2), on subsequent mental rotation performance. To this end, we constrained infants' exploration possibilities to only one of the respective procedures, and then tested mental rotation performance using a live experimental set-up based on the task used by Moore and Johnson (2008). Results show that, after manual rotation experience with a target object, crawling infants were able to distinguish between exploration objects and their mirror objects, while non-crawling infants were not (Study 1). Infants who were given prior experience with objects through haptic scans (Study 2) did not discriminate between objects, regardless of their crawling experience. Results indicated that a combination of manual rotations and crawling experience are valuable for building up the internal spatial representation of an object.

PLOS ONE, Aug 3, 2018

Categorical biases in the processing of emotional facial expression have been the subject of much... more Categorical biases in the processing of emotional facial expression have been the subject of much debate in the literature. Opposing views on this topic claim either that positive or negative facial expressions enjoy improved processing in the human brain. The developmental changes in the processing advantages of positive and negative facial expressions are also disputed, with studies using varying paradigms showing seemingly contradictory results. Therefore, to further investigate the development of categorical processing and extraction of emotional information from faces, we tested 6-, 9-, and 12-year-old children, as well as adults, on their ability to categorize various facial expressions as positive or negative as quickly as possible. This was a simplified paradigm designed to explicitly contrast the processing efficiency of positive and negative facial expressions on the broader level of those emotional valence categories, rather than specific single emotional expressions. Our results show an early age processing advantage for positive facial expressions, which disappears in adults who show no such differences in the case of response time measures. In the case of accuracy measures, the early advantage for positive facial expressions gradually disappears and is reversed into a negativity advantage in adults. These findings demonstrate that category-based positive and negative processing advantages are strongly modulated by age over the course of development, and can exhibit opposite effects depending on the developmental stage of the participant.

Musicae Scientiae, Feb 1, 2017

Cognitive transfer effects of music lessons on several cognitive abilities such as IQ (Schellenbe... more Cognitive transfer effects of music lessons on several cognitive abilities such as IQ (Schellenberg, 2004) or language skills (Moreno et al., 2009) have been reported. Beyond that, also conative transfer effects (i.e., motivational aspects like perseverance) of music lessons have been revealed. One such conative transfer has been found for academic self-concept (Degé, Wehrum, Stark, & Schwarzer, 2014). Self-concept describes the evaluations a person holds about him/herself. However, this study was correlational. Hence, it remains unclear whether music lessons influence academic self-concept or whether academic self-concept influences the likelihood of taking music lessons. To sort out the matter of causality, we investigated the influence of an extended music curriculum (EMC) at school on academic self-concept longitudinally. We compared the academic self-concept of children between 9 and 11 years of age before they started the EMC and after a year of EMC and compared it to the academic self-concept of children not attending EMC. We tested 30 children (11 male). Thirteen of them participated in the EMC and 17 did not participate. We measured academic self-concept and confounding variables such as gender, age, socioeconomic status, organized nonmusical out-of-school activities, IQ, musical aptitude, and motivation. Children with and without EMC did not differ in confounding variables except for nonmusical out-of-school activities. Hence, the amount of nonmusical out-of-school activities was controlled in further analyses. We found an influence of EMC on academic self-concept. Children attending EMC reported significantly higher academic self-concepts after a year of participation than children not attending EMC.

Frontiers in Psychology, Apr 6, 2018

Findings on the perceptual reorganization of lexical tones are mixed. Some studies report good to... more Findings on the perceptual reorganization of lexical tones are mixed. Some studies report good tone discrimination abilities for all tested age groups, others report decreased or enhanced discrimination with increasing age, and still others report Ushaped developmental curves. Since prior studies have used a wide range of contrasts and experimental procedures, it is unclear how specific task requirements interact with discrimination abilities at different ages. In the present work, we tested German and Cantonese adults on their discrimination of Cantonese lexical tones, as well as German-learning infants between 6 and 18 months of age on their discrimination of two specific Cantonese tones using two different types of experimental procedures. The adult experiment showed that German native speakers can discriminate between lexical tones, but native Cantonese speakers show significantly better performance. The results from German-learning infants suggest that 6-and 18-month-olds discriminate tones, while 9-month-olds do not, supporting a U-shaped developmental curve. Furthermore, our results revealed an effect of methodology, with good discrimination performance at 6 months after habituation but not after familiarization. These results support three main conclusions. First, habituation can be a more sensitive procedure for measuring infants' discrimination than familiarization. Second, the previous finding of a U-shaped curve in the discrimination of lexical tones is further supported. Third, discrimination abilities at 18 months appear to reflect mature perceptual sensitivity to lexical tones, since German adults also discriminated the lexical tones with high accuracy.

Learning and Instruction, Aug 1, 2021

Abstract Studies have demonstrated positive associations between music lessons and executive func... more Abstract Studies have demonstrated positive associations between music lessons and executive functions (EFs) in children. Because researchers have focused on comprehensive music lessons taught in school, it remains unclear whether pure instrumental music lessons as an extracurricular activity reveal similar results. Moreover, interventional studies reported mixed findings and there is a lack of experimental designs allowing for causal conclusions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of music lessons as an extracurricular activity on EFs in children. Primary school children (N = 94) aged 6–7 years were randomly assigned to a music group, an arts group, or a waiting control group. Different measures of EFs were assessed in pre- and posttests. The results revealed an improvement in children from the music group for some components of EFs. Based on our findings we conclude that instrumental music lessons have an impact on specific EFs in children.

American Journal of Psychology, Jul 1, 2006

Journal of Early Childhood Research, Mar 15, 2022

In 2020, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting highly infectious disease COVID-19 l... more In 2020, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting highly infectious disease COVID-19 led to restrictions based on the principal of social distancing to curb the spread of the virus among the population and to prevent an overload of health system capacities. These restrictions changed the daily lives of young children and parents dramatically. In a German questionnaire study, we aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the magnitude of stress in parent-child systems and on social-emotional child development. Our sample consisted of 90 (39 male, 51 female) children ( M = 17.2 months, SD = 9.7 months) aged 7–12 months ( n = 38), 13–24 months ( n = 31) and 25–38 months ( n = 21). Parental stress was measured using the German version of the Parenting Stress Index, namely Eltern-Belastungs-Inventar. Additionally, social-emotional child development was measured using the Social-Emotional Questionnaire of the Bayley-III. Our findings show that parents experienced more stress during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany compared to norms. Parental perceived stress was higher in parents of older children than younger ones. Interestingly, social-emotional child behavior scores significantly decreased with children’s increasing age. Moreover, higher parental stress was associated with lower values of social-emotional child behavior. Our findings provide important novel data on parental perceived stress and social-emotional child development during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, further research investigating the long-term consequences of the pandemic is needed.

Frontiers in Psychology, Sep 12, 2018

During the first year of life, infants undergo perceptual narrowing in the domains of speech and ... more During the first year of life, infants undergo perceptual narrowing in the domains of speech and face perception. This is typically characterized by improvements in infants' abilities in discriminating among stimuli of familiar types, such as native speech tones and same-race faces. Simultaneously, infants begin to decline in their ability to discriminate among stimuli of types with which they have little experience, such as nonnative tones and other-race faces. The similarity in time-frames during which perceptual narrowing seems to occur in the domains of speech and face perception has led some researchers to hypothesize that the perceptual narrowing in these domains could be driven by shared domain-general processes. To explore this hypothesis, we tested 53 Caucasian 9-month-old infants from monolingual German households on their ability to discriminate among non-native Cantonese speech tones, as well among same-race German faces and other-race Chinese faces. We tested the infants using an infantcontrolled habituation-dishabituation paradigm, with infants' preferences for looking at novel stimuli versus the habituated stimuli (dishabituation scores) acting as indicators of discrimination ability. As expected for their age, infants were able to discriminate between same-race faces, but not between other-race faces or non-native speech tones. Most interestingly, we found that infants' dishabituation scores for the non-native speech tones and other-race faces showed significant positive correlations, while the dishabituation scores for non-native speech tones and same-race faces did not. These results therefore support the hypothesis that shared domain-general mechanisms may drive perceptual narrowing in the domains of speech and face perception.