Moritz Daum - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Moritz Daum

The authors of this paper were invited to provide a chapter on how to teach “Developmental Psycho... more The authors of this paper were invited to provide a chapter on how to teach “Developmental Psychology” (Daum & Manfredi, forthcoming) to the “International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching” (Zumbach et al., forthcoming). When writing, the authors got lost in the details and wrote just a tiny little bit more than the editors asked for. In the end, we had to cut a substantial part of the chapter and decided to delete entire sections, one of them was the part on the “History of Developmental Psychology”. We nevertheless thought that the section could be of interest to somebody out there and put it as a preprint on the open science platform PsyArXiv. Enjoy reading.

Infant Behavior and Development

Influential developmental theories claim that infants rely on goals when visually anticipating ac... more Influential developmental theories claim that infants rely on goals when visually anticipating actions. A widely noticed study suggested that 11-month-olds anticipate that a hand continues to grasp the same object even when it swapped position with another object (Cannon, E., & Woodward, A. L. (2012). Infants generate goal-based action predictions. Developmental Science, 15, 292-298.). Yet, other studies found such flexible goal-directed anticipations only from later ages on. Given the theoretical relevance of this phenomenon and given these contradicting findings, the current work investigated in two different studies and labs, whether infants indeed flexibly anticipate an action goal. Study 1 (N = 144) investigated by means of five experiments, under which circumstances (e.g., animated agent, human agent) 12-month-olds show flexible goal anticipation abilities. Study 2 (N = 104) presented 11-, 32-month-olds and adults both a human grasping action as well as a non-human action. In none of the experiments did infants flexibly anticipate the action based on the goal, but rather on the movement path, irrespective of the type of agent. Although one experiment contained a direct replication of Cannon and Woodward (2012), we were not able to replicate their findings. Overall our work challenges the view that infants are able to flexibly anticipate action goals from early on, but rather rely on movement patterns when processing other's actions.

Journal of Language Contact

It is well established that L2 acquisition is faster when the L2 is more closely related to the l... more It is well established that L2 acquisition is faster when the L2 is more closely related to the learner’s L1. In the current study we investigated whether language similarity has a comparable facilitative effect in early simultaneous bilingual children. The similarity between each bilingual child’s two languages was determined using phonological and typological scales. We compared the vocabulary size of bilingual toddlers learning different pairs of languages. Results show that the vocabulary size of bilingual children is indeed influenced by similarity: the more similar the languages, the larger the children’s vocabulary.

Developmental Changes in the Interference of Motor Processes with Mental Rotation Andrea Frick (a... more Developmental Changes in the Interference of Motor Processes with Mental Rotation Andrea Frick (a.frick@psychologie.unizh.ch) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Moritz M. Daum 1 , (moritz.daum@cbs.mpg.de) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Simone Walser (simone.walser@gmx.net) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Fred W. Mast (f.mast@psychologie.unizh.ch) Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Treichlerstrasse 10, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland develop and which basic processes are involved. Piaget and Inhelder (1971) proposed a basic distinction between static and kinetic mental images. They suggested that imagery in the preoperational child remains esse...

The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily a... more The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily afferents and prior beliefs. Evidence from studies using paradigms such as the rubber hand illusion and full body illusion suggests changes in the integration of visuotactile bodily signals throughout childhood. Here, we extended this line of research by assessing how bottom-up visuomotor synchrony and expectancy, modulated by visual appearance of virtual avatars, contribute to embodiment in children. We compared responses to a first-person perspective virtual full body illusion from 8-12-year-old children and adults, while manipulating synchrony of the avatar’s movements (synchronous, 0.5 s, 1 s delay compared to the participant’s movements), and appearance of the avatar (human or skeleton). We measured embodiment with both subjective questionnaires and objective skin conductance responses to virtual threat. Results showed that children experienced ownership for the virtual avatar in a s...

Swiss Journal of Psychology

This study investigated the relationship between type of childcare and toddlers' skills in four i... more This study investigated the relationship between type of childcare and toddlers' skills in four important developmental domains: motor, cognitive, social, and language. A total of 637 children aged 18 and 24 months were either cared for exclusively at home by their parents or relatives (home-care group) or attended a daycare center for a minimum of 2 days per week (center-care group). We tested the children's skills using standard assessment tools and compared the skills of the two care groups. The results suggest that, for the sample tested, childcare type is not related to toddler's cognitive, motor, social, and language skills.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

The Medical journal of Australia, Jan 11, 2017

To determine the proportion of children visited by the Tooth Fairy, the child-related factors tha... more To determine the proportion of children visited by the Tooth Fairy, the child-related factors that influence the likelihood of her visit, and the parent-related variables that affect the amount of money the Tooth Fairy leaves. Cross-sectional questionnaire study. Zürich, Switzerland. 3617 parents of children (mean age of children, 6.8 years; 51.9% girls) who had lost at least one deciduous tooth received a self-developed questionnaire; 1274 questionnaires were returned (35.2%). Primary outcome variables were the Tooth Fairy's visit after tooth loss and the amount of money given in case of a visit. Child- and parent-related variables were assessed as predictors of the main outcomes. Most parents (71.0%) reported that the Tooth Fairy visited their child. She usually exchanged the lost tooth for money (55.8% of visits) or placed money next to the tooth (40.7%); rarely did she take the tooth without pecuniary substitution. The Tooth Fairy left an average of 7.20 Swiss francs (approx...

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2018

According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of othe... more According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of others involves both fast social-perceptual processes, as well as slower, reflexive cognitive operations (Frith and Frith, 2008; Apperly and Butterfill, 2009). To test the respective roles of specific abilities in either of these processes we administered 15 experimental procedures to a large sample of 343 participants, testing ability in face recognition and holistic perception, language, and reasoning. ToM was measured by a set of tasks requiring ability to track and to infer complex emotional and mental states of others from faces, eyes, spoken language, and prosody. We used structural equation modeling to test the relative strengths of a social-perceptual (face processing related) and reflexive-cognitive (language and reasoning related) path in predicting ToM ability. The two paths accounted for 58% of ToM variance, thus validating a general two-systems framework. Testing specific predic...

Developmental science, Nov 1, 2018

Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing resear... more Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing research question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the interrelation between verbal and non-verbal forms of social interactions, that is, language and action. Perceiving how actions are performed and why they are performed in a certain way is crucial for the observer to anticipate the actor's goal and to prepare an appropriate response. It is suggested that predicting upcoming events in a given action sequence can be compared to the way we process the language information flow. Goal-directed actions can be sequenced in small units, which are organized according to a hierarchical plan, resembling the hierarchical organization of language. Research on adults suggests that manipulating the action structure (i.e., action syntax) leads to analogous cortical signatures as a similar manipulation of a sentence structure (i.e., language syntax). Whereas in adults language and action knowledge are...

Psychological research, Jan 6, 2018

Successful social interaction relies on the interaction partners' perception, anticipation an... more Successful social interaction relies on the interaction partners' perception, anticipation and understanding of their respective actions. The perception of a particular action and the capability to produce this action share a common representational ground. So far, no study has explored the interrelation between action perception and production across the life span using the same tasks and the same measurement techniques. This study was designed to fill this gap. Participants between 3 and 80 years (N = 214) observed two multistep actions of different familiarities and then reproduced the according actions. Using eye tracking, we measured participants' action perception via their prediction of action goals during observation. To capture subtler perceptual processes, we additionally analysed the dynamics and recurrent patterns within participants' gaze behaviour. Action production was assessed via the accuracy of the participants' reproduction of the observed actions....

Psychological research, Jan 7, 2017

Action perception and action production are tightly linked and elicit bi-directional influences o... more Action perception and action production are tightly linked and elicit bi-directional influences on each other when performed simultaneously. In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in manual fine-motor competence and/or age affect the (interfering) influence of action production on simultaneous action perception. In a cross-sectional eye-tracking study, participants of a broad age range (N = 181, 20-80 years) observed a manual grasp-and-transport action while performing an additional motor or cognitive distractor task. Action perception was measured via participants' frequency of anticipatory gaze shifts towards the action goal. Manual fine-motor competence was assessed with the Motor Performance Series. The interference effect in action perception was greater in the motor than the cognitive distractor task. Furthermore, manual fine-motor competence and age in years were both associated with this interference. The better the participants' manual fine-m...

Experimental brain research, Feb 1, 2018

Action perception and action production are assumed to be based on an internal simulation process... more Action perception and action production are assumed to be based on an internal simulation process that involves the sensorimotor system. This system undergoes changes across the life span and is assumed to become less precise with age. In the current study, we investigated how increasing age affects the magnitude of interference in action production during simultaneous action perception. In a task adapted from Brass et al. (Brain Cogn 44(2):124-143, 2000), we asked participants (aged 20-80 years) to respond to a visually presented finger movement and/or symbolic cue by executing a previously defined finger movement. Action production was assessed via participants' reaction times. Results show that participants were slower in trials in which they were asked to ignore an incongruent finger movement compared to trials in which they had to ignore an incongruent symbolic cue. Moreover, advancing age was shown to accentuate this effect. We suggest that the internal simulation of the a...

The Behavioral and brain sciences, 2017

Keven & Akins (K&A) revisit the controversial subject of neonatal imitation through analysing the... more Keven & Akins (K&A) revisit the controversial subject of neonatal imitation through analysing the physiological foundations of neonatal spontaneous behaviour. Consequently, they regard imitative capacities in neonates as unlikely. We welcome this approach as an overdue encouragement to refuse cognitively rich interpretations as far as cognitively lean interpretations are conceivable, and apply this rationale to other phenomena in early childhood development.

Journal of experimental child psychology, Jan 14, 2017

Children from the age of 3years understand social norms as such and enforce these norms in intera... more Children from the age of 3years understand social norms as such and enforce these norms in interactions with others. Differences in parental and institutional education across cultures make it likely that children receive divergent information about how to act in cases of norm violations. In the current study, we investigated whether cultural values are associated with the ways in which children react to norm violations. We tested 80 bicultural 3-year-olds with a norm enforcement paradigm and analyzed their reactions to norm violations. The reactions were correlated to the children's parental cultural values using the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) scales, and these results show that parental culture was associated with children's reactions to norm violations. The three strongest correlations were found for institutional collectivism, performance orientation, and assertiveness.

Neuropsychologia, Jan 19, 2017

Language that describes actions, for instance verbs, can help to predict future actions of conspe... more Language that describes actions, for instance verbs, can help to predict future actions of conspecifics in social interactions. Language and action are therefore interrelated. This interrelation has been described on a behavioral level for adults and toddlers. Furthermore, in adults, the sensorimotor system is involved in this interrelation. However, little is known about the early interrelation on the neural level at the onset of verb acquisition. In the present study, we examined the role of the sensorimotor system during the processing of acoustically presented verbs that describe dynamic actions and visually presented actions in toddlers, who are in the earliest stage of expressive language development. The activity of the sensorimotor system, in particular the suppression of the mu rhythm, was measured by means of electroencephalography (EEG). Results showed a significant suppression of the mu rhythm during both the processing of action verbs and observed actions, but not durin...

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Infant Behavior and Development

Imitation is a frequent behavior in the first years of life, and serves both a social function (e... more Imitation is a frequent behavior in the first years of life, and serves both a social function (e.g., to interact with others) and a cognitive function (e.g., to learn a new skill). Infants differ in their temperament, and temperament might be related to the dominance of one function of imitation. In this study, we investigated whether temperament and deferred imitation are related in 12-month-old infants. Temperament was measured via the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R) and parts of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB). Deferred imitation was measured via the Frankfurt Imitation Test for 12-month-olds (FIT-12). Regression analyses revealed that the duration of orienting (IBQ-R) and the latency of the first look away in the Task Orientation task (Lab-TAB) predicted the infants' imitation score. These results suggest that attention-related processes may play a major role when infants start to imitate.

Journal of experimental child psychology, Mar 1, 2017

Recent research has demonstrated enhanced communicative abilities in bilingual children compared ... more Recent research has demonstrated enhanced communicative abilities in bilingual children compared with monolingual children throughout childhood and in a variety of domains. The processes underlying these advantages are, however, not well understood. It has been suggested that one aspect that particularly stimulates bilinguals' communication skills is their daily experience with challenging communication. In the current study, we investigated whether children's assumed experience with communication failures would increase their skills when it came to repairing communication failure. Non-German bilingual, German bilingual, and monolingual 2.5-year-old toddlers participated in a communication task in which a misunderstanding occurred. We hypothesized that monolingual and German bilingual children would have fewer daily communication failures-and, therefore, less well-trained repair skills-compared with non-German bilinguals. The results showed that non-German bilinguals were mo...

Journal of experimental child psychology, Mar 1, 2017

Impaired self-regulation, especially in food-specific situations, has been linked to childhood ob... more Impaired self-regulation, especially in food-specific situations, has been linked to childhood obesity. These deficits may be acquired during the development of obesity rather than being a prerequisite thereof. The current study, hence, focused on an at-risk population versus controls. Normal-weight children of obese and normal-weight parents were tested regarding attentional flexibility, emotion regulation, and inhibitory control. A sample of 50 preschoolers of obese parents (n=25) or normal-weight parents (n=25) participated in this study. Through eye-tracking, attentional bias for food cues was measured during a visual probe task using food and toy images. Emotion regulation was assessed during a distress-evoking task, and inhibitory control was examined through a delay-of-gratification task. Both tasks are standardized and were conducted in non-food contexts. Results showed no significant group differences in overall attentional bias to food images over toy images. However, chil...

The authors of this paper were invited to provide a chapter on how to teach “Developmental Psycho... more The authors of this paper were invited to provide a chapter on how to teach “Developmental Psychology” (Daum & Manfredi, forthcoming) to the “International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching” (Zumbach et al., forthcoming). When writing, the authors got lost in the details and wrote just a tiny little bit more than the editors asked for. In the end, we had to cut a substantial part of the chapter and decided to delete entire sections, one of them was the part on the “History of Developmental Psychology”. We nevertheless thought that the section could be of interest to somebody out there and put it as a preprint on the open science platform PsyArXiv. Enjoy reading.

Infant Behavior and Development

Influential developmental theories claim that infants rely on goals when visually anticipating ac... more Influential developmental theories claim that infants rely on goals when visually anticipating actions. A widely noticed study suggested that 11-month-olds anticipate that a hand continues to grasp the same object even when it swapped position with another object (Cannon, E., & Woodward, A. L. (2012). Infants generate goal-based action predictions. Developmental Science, 15, 292-298.). Yet, other studies found such flexible goal-directed anticipations only from later ages on. Given the theoretical relevance of this phenomenon and given these contradicting findings, the current work investigated in two different studies and labs, whether infants indeed flexibly anticipate an action goal. Study 1 (N = 144) investigated by means of five experiments, under which circumstances (e.g., animated agent, human agent) 12-month-olds show flexible goal anticipation abilities. Study 2 (N = 104) presented 11-, 32-month-olds and adults both a human grasping action as well as a non-human action. In none of the experiments did infants flexibly anticipate the action based on the goal, but rather on the movement path, irrespective of the type of agent. Although one experiment contained a direct replication of Cannon and Woodward (2012), we were not able to replicate their findings. Overall our work challenges the view that infants are able to flexibly anticipate action goals from early on, but rather rely on movement patterns when processing other's actions.

Journal of Language Contact

It is well established that L2 acquisition is faster when the L2 is more closely related to the l... more It is well established that L2 acquisition is faster when the L2 is more closely related to the learner’s L1. In the current study we investigated whether language similarity has a comparable facilitative effect in early simultaneous bilingual children. The similarity between each bilingual child’s two languages was determined using phonological and typological scales. We compared the vocabulary size of bilingual toddlers learning different pairs of languages. Results show that the vocabulary size of bilingual children is indeed influenced by similarity: the more similar the languages, the larger the children’s vocabulary.

Developmental Changes in the Interference of Motor Processes with Mental Rotation Andrea Frick (a... more Developmental Changes in the Interference of Motor Processes with Mental Rotation Andrea Frick (a.frick@psychologie.unizh.ch) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Moritz M. Daum 1 , (moritz.daum@cbs.mpg.de) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Simone Walser (simone.walser@gmx.net) Cognitive and Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Attenhoferstrasse 9, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland Fred W. Mast (f.mast@psychologie.unizh.ch) Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Treichlerstrasse 10, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland develop and which basic processes are involved. Piaget and Inhelder (1971) proposed a basic distinction between static and kinetic mental images. They suggested that imagery in the preoperational child remains esse...

The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily a... more The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily afferents and prior beliefs. Evidence from studies using paradigms such as the rubber hand illusion and full body illusion suggests changes in the integration of visuotactile bodily signals throughout childhood. Here, we extended this line of research by assessing how bottom-up visuomotor synchrony and expectancy, modulated by visual appearance of virtual avatars, contribute to embodiment in children. We compared responses to a first-person perspective virtual full body illusion from 8-12-year-old children and adults, while manipulating synchrony of the avatar’s movements (synchronous, 0.5 s, 1 s delay compared to the participant’s movements), and appearance of the avatar (human or skeleton). We measured embodiment with both subjective questionnaires and objective skin conductance responses to virtual threat. Results showed that children experienced ownership for the virtual avatar in a s...

Swiss Journal of Psychology

This study investigated the relationship between type of childcare and toddlers' skills in four i... more This study investigated the relationship between type of childcare and toddlers' skills in four important developmental domains: motor, cognitive, social, and language. A total of 637 children aged 18 and 24 months were either cared for exclusively at home by their parents or relatives (home-care group) or attended a daycare center for a minimum of 2 days per week (center-care group). We tested the children's skills using standard assessment tools and compared the skills of the two care groups. The results suggest that, for the sample tested, childcare type is not related to toddler's cognitive, motor, social, and language skills.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

The Medical journal of Australia, Jan 11, 2017

To determine the proportion of children visited by the Tooth Fairy, the child-related factors tha... more To determine the proportion of children visited by the Tooth Fairy, the child-related factors that influence the likelihood of her visit, and the parent-related variables that affect the amount of money the Tooth Fairy leaves. Cross-sectional questionnaire study. Zürich, Switzerland. 3617 parents of children (mean age of children, 6.8 years; 51.9% girls) who had lost at least one deciduous tooth received a self-developed questionnaire; 1274 questionnaires were returned (35.2%). Primary outcome variables were the Tooth Fairy's visit after tooth loss and the amount of money given in case of a visit. Child- and parent-related variables were assessed as predictors of the main outcomes. Most parents (71.0%) reported that the Tooth Fairy visited their child. She usually exchanged the lost tooth for money (55.8% of visits) or placed money next to the tooth (40.7%); rarely did she take the tooth without pecuniary substitution. The Tooth Fairy left an average of 7.20 Swiss francs (approx...

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2018

According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of othe... more According to the two-systems account of theory of mind (ToM), understanding mental states of others involves both fast social-perceptual processes, as well as slower, reflexive cognitive operations (Frith and Frith, 2008; Apperly and Butterfill, 2009). To test the respective roles of specific abilities in either of these processes we administered 15 experimental procedures to a large sample of 343 participants, testing ability in face recognition and holistic perception, language, and reasoning. ToM was measured by a set of tasks requiring ability to track and to infer complex emotional and mental states of others from faces, eyes, spoken language, and prosody. We used structural equation modeling to test the relative strengths of a social-perceptual (face processing related) and reflexive-cognitive (language and reasoning related) path in predicting ToM ability. The two paths accounted for 58% of ToM variance, thus validating a general two-systems framework. Testing specific predic...

Developmental science, Nov 1, 2018

Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing resear... more Throughout life, actions and language are inherent to social interactions. A long-standing research question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the interrelation between verbal and non-verbal forms of social interactions, that is, language and action. Perceiving how actions are performed and why they are performed in a certain way is crucial for the observer to anticipate the actor's goal and to prepare an appropriate response. It is suggested that predicting upcoming events in a given action sequence can be compared to the way we process the language information flow. Goal-directed actions can be sequenced in small units, which are organized according to a hierarchical plan, resembling the hierarchical organization of language. Research on adults suggests that manipulating the action structure (i.e., action syntax) leads to analogous cortical signatures as a similar manipulation of a sentence structure (i.e., language syntax). Whereas in adults language and action knowledge are...

Psychological research, Jan 6, 2018

Successful social interaction relies on the interaction partners' perception, anticipation an... more Successful social interaction relies on the interaction partners' perception, anticipation and understanding of their respective actions. The perception of a particular action and the capability to produce this action share a common representational ground. So far, no study has explored the interrelation between action perception and production across the life span using the same tasks and the same measurement techniques. This study was designed to fill this gap. Participants between 3 and 80 years (N = 214) observed two multistep actions of different familiarities and then reproduced the according actions. Using eye tracking, we measured participants' action perception via their prediction of action goals during observation. To capture subtler perceptual processes, we additionally analysed the dynamics and recurrent patterns within participants' gaze behaviour. Action production was assessed via the accuracy of the participants' reproduction of the observed actions....

Psychological research, Jan 7, 2017

Action perception and action production are tightly linked and elicit bi-directional influences o... more Action perception and action production are tightly linked and elicit bi-directional influences on each other when performed simultaneously. In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in manual fine-motor competence and/or age affect the (interfering) influence of action production on simultaneous action perception. In a cross-sectional eye-tracking study, participants of a broad age range (N = 181, 20-80 years) observed a manual grasp-and-transport action while performing an additional motor or cognitive distractor task. Action perception was measured via participants' frequency of anticipatory gaze shifts towards the action goal. Manual fine-motor competence was assessed with the Motor Performance Series. The interference effect in action perception was greater in the motor than the cognitive distractor task. Furthermore, manual fine-motor competence and age in years were both associated with this interference. The better the participants' manual fine-m...

Experimental brain research, Feb 1, 2018

Action perception and action production are assumed to be based on an internal simulation process... more Action perception and action production are assumed to be based on an internal simulation process that involves the sensorimotor system. This system undergoes changes across the life span and is assumed to become less precise with age. In the current study, we investigated how increasing age affects the magnitude of interference in action production during simultaneous action perception. In a task adapted from Brass et al. (Brain Cogn 44(2):124-143, 2000), we asked participants (aged 20-80 years) to respond to a visually presented finger movement and/or symbolic cue by executing a previously defined finger movement. Action production was assessed via participants' reaction times. Results show that participants were slower in trials in which they were asked to ignore an incongruent finger movement compared to trials in which they had to ignore an incongruent symbolic cue. Moreover, advancing age was shown to accentuate this effect. We suggest that the internal simulation of the a...

The Behavioral and brain sciences, 2017

Keven & Akins (K&A) revisit the controversial subject of neonatal imitation through analysing the... more Keven & Akins (K&A) revisit the controversial subject of neonatal imitation through analysing the physiological foundations of neonatal spontaneous behaviour. Consequently, they regard imitative capacities in neonates as unlikely. We welcome this approach as an overdue encouragement to refuse cognitively rich interpretations as far as cognitively lean interpretations are conceivable, and apply this rationale to other phenomena in early childhood development.

Journal of experimental child psychology, Jan 14, 2017

Children from the age of 3years understand social norms as such and enforce these norms in intera... more Children from the age of 3years understand social norms as such and enforce these norms in interactions with others. Differences in parental and institutional education across cultures make it likely that children receive divergent information about how to act in cases of norm violations. In the current study, we investigated whether cultural values are associated with the ways in which children react to norm violations. We tested 80 bicultural 3-year-olds with a norm enforcement paradigm and analyzed their reactions to norm violations. The reactions were correlated to the children's parental cultural values using the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) scales, and these results show that parental culture was associated with children's reactions to norm violations. The three strongest correlations were found for institutional collectivism, performance orientation, and assertiveness.

Neuropsychologia, Jan 19, 2017

Language that describes actions, for instance verbs, can help to predict future actions of conspe... more Language that describes actions, for instance verbs, can help to predict future actions of conspecifics in social interactions. Language and action are therefore interrelated. This interrelation has been described on a behavioral level for adults and toddlers. Furthermore, in adults, the sensorimotor system is involved in this interrelation. However, little is known about the early interrelation on the neural level at the onset of verb acquisition. In the present study, we examined the role of the sensorimotor system during the processing of acoustically presented verbs that describe dynamic actions and visually presented actions in toddlers, who are in the earliest stage of expressive language development. The activity of the sensorimotor system, in particular the suppression of the mu rhythm, was measured by means of electroencephalography (EEG). Results showed a significant suppression of the mu rhythm during both the processing of action verbs and observed actions, but not durin...

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Infant Behavior and Development

Imitation is a frequent behavior in the first years of life, and serves both a social function (e... more Imitation is a frequent behavior in the first years of life, and serves both a social function (e.g., to interact with others) and a cognitive function (e.g., to learn a new skill). Infants differ in their temperament, and temperament might be related to the dominance of one function of imitation. In this study, we investigated whether temperament and deferred imitation are related in 12-month-old infants. Temperament was measured via the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Revised (IBQ-R) and parts of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB). Deferred imitation was measured via the Frankfurt Imitation Test for 12-month-olds (FIT-12). Regression analyses revealed that the duration of orienting (IBQ-R) and the latency of the first look away in the Task Orientation task (Lab-TAB) predicted the infants' imitation score. These results suggest that attention-related processes may play a major role when infants start to imitate.

Journal of experimental child psychology, Mar 1, 2017

Recent research has demonstrated enhanced communicative abilities in bilingual children compared ... more Recent research has demonstrated enhanced communicative abilities in bilingual children compared with monolingual children throughout childhood and in a variety of domains. The processes underlying these advantages are, however, not well understood. It has been suggested that one aspect that particularly stimulates bilinguals' communication skills is their daily experience with challenging communication. In the current study, we investigated whether children's assumed experience with communication failures would increase their skills when it came to repairing communication failure. Non-German bilingual, German bilingual, and monolingual 2.5-year-old toddlers participated in a communication task in which a misunderstanding occurred. We hypothesized that monolingual and German bilingual children would have fewer daily communication failures-and, therefore, less well-trained repair skills-compared with non-German bilinguals. The results showed that non-German bilinguals were mo...

Journal of experimental child psychology, Mar 1, 2017

Impaired self-regulation, especially in food-specific situations, has been linked to childhood ob... more Impaired self-regulation, especially in food-specific situations, has been linked to childhood obesity. These deficits may be acquired during the development of obesity rather than being a prerequisite thereof. The current study, hence, focused on an at-risk population versus controls. Normal-weight children of obese and normal-weight parents were tested regarding attentional flexibility, emotion regulation, and inhibitory control. A sample of 50 preschoolers of obese parents (n=25) or normal-weight parents (n=25) participated in this study. Through eye-tracking, attentional bias for food cues was measured during a visual probe task using food and toy images. Emotion regulation was assessed during a distress-evoking task, and inhibitory control was examined through a delay-of-gratification task. Both tasks are standardized and were conducted in non-food contexts. Results showed no significant group differences in overall attentional bias to food images over toy images. However, chil...