Online Testing Yields the Same Results as Lab Testing: A Validation Study With the False Belief Task

Recently, online testing has become an increasingly important instrument in developmental research, in particular since the COVID-19 pandemic made in-lab testing impossible. However, online testing comes with two substantial challenges. First, it is unclear how valid results of online studies really are. Second, implementing online studies can be costly and/or require profound coding skills. This article addresses the validity of an online testing approach that is low-cost and easy to implement: The experimenter shares test materials such as videos or presentations via video chat and interactively moderates the test session. To validate this approach, we compared children’s performance on a well-established task, the change-of-location false belief task, in an in-lab and online test setting. In two studies, 3- and 4-year-old received online implementations of the false belief version (Study 1) and the false and true belief version of the task (Study 2). Children’s performance in these online studies was compared to data of matching tasks collected in the context of in-lab studies. Results revealed that the typical developmental pattern of performance in these tasks found in in-lab studies could be replicated with the novel online test procedure. These results suggest that the proposed method, which is both low-cost and easy to implement, provides a valid alternative to classical in-person test settings.

Locality in the acquisition of object A’-dependencies: insights from French

Children’s difficulties with dependencies involving movement of an object to the left periphery of the clause (object relative clauses/RCs and wh-questions), have been explained in terms of intervention effects arising when the moved object and the intervening subject share a lexical N feature (Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009). Such an account raises various questions: (1) Do these effects hold in the absence of a lexical N feature when the object and the intervener share other relevant features? (2) Do phi-features with a semantic role modulate such effects? (3) Does the degree of feature overlap determine a gradience in performance? We addressed these in three sentence-picture matching studies with French-speaking children (4;8 to 6;3), by assessing comprehension of (1) subject and object RCs headed by the demonstrative pronouns celui/celle and matching or mismatching in number; (2) object RCs headed by a lexical N and matching or mismatching in animacy; (3) object who- and which-questions. Our results show that mismatches in number, not in animacy, enhance comprehension of object RCs, even in the absence of a lexical N feature, and confirm previous findings that object who-questions yield better comprehension than object which-questions. Comparing across studies, the following gradation emerges with respect to performance accuracy: disjunction > intersection > inclusion. The global interpretation of these findings is that fine-grained phi-features determining movement are both sufficient and necessary for locality, and the degree of overlap of these features can capture the pattern of performance observed in children, namely higher accuracy as featural differences increase.

The Influence of the Psychophysical Assessment Paradigm on Pitch Discrimination for Adults (and a Pilot Sample of Children)

Pitch discrimination ability has been of research interest due to its potential relationship to language and literacy. However, assessment protocols for pitch discrimination have varied widely. Prior studies with both children and adults have produced conflicting performance findings across different pitch discrimination research paradigms, though they have consistently shown that discrimination accuracy is based on the psychophysical assessment method applied. In the present study, we examined pitch discrimination performance among convenience samples of 19 adult women and ten female children across six different adaptive psychophysical measurement conditions. We found pitch discrimination performance in both groups to be impacted by the measurement paradigm such that, while adults exhibited significantly better discrimination thresholds than did children, the pattern of performance across the six conditions was similar for both the adults and the children.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition Profiles of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Classification and Regression Trees Analysis

The Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC) are the most widely used instrument in assessing cognitive ability, especially with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous literature on the WISC has demonstrated a divergent pattern of performance on the WISC for children ASD compared to their typically developing peers; however, there is a lack of research concerning the most recent iteration, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fifth Edition (WISC-V). Due to the distinctive changes made to the WISC-V, we sought to identify the pattern of performance of children with ASD on the WISC-V using a classification and regression (CART) analysis. The current study used the standardization sample data of the WISC-V obtained from NCS Pearson, Inc. Sixty-two children diagnosed with ASD, along with their demographically matched controls, comprised the sample. Results revealed the Comprehension and Letter-Number Sequencing subtests were the most important factors in predicting group membership for children with ASD with an accompanying language impairment. Children with ASD without an accompanying language impairment, however, were difficult to distinguish from matched controls through the CART analysis. Results suggest school psychologists and other clinicians should administer all primary and supplemental subtests of the WISC-V as part of a comprehensive assessment of ASD.

Social-pragmatic contextual comprehension in Italian preschool and school-aged children: a study using the Pragma test

Efficient communication requires the interplay of linguistic, cognitive and social skills, including the ability to make contextual inferences and to understand others’ intentions and emotions. The capacity to effectively use language in specific contexts (i.e., pragmatic ability) develops with age, and an assessment of this ability is important for understanding both typical and atypical development. The Pragma test was originally developed and validated on Finnish children to assess social-pragmatic comprehension. The present study utilizes a slightly adapted version of the Pragma test, translated into Italian, and presents the results of the test given to 110 typically developing Italian children (4–8 years of age). The Italian version of the Pragma test shows content and concurrent validity, interrater reliability, and internal consistency, and it proves to be sensitive in detecting an age-dependent pattern of performance, across pre-school and school age children, in the pragmatic parameters investigated. The present study has ramifications for clinical contexts, as data for typical pragmatic development enables identification of strengths and weaknesses in the pragmatic performance in clinical populations. Finally, the results indicate that the Pragma test is relevant to both Finnish and Italian cultural contexts, thus providing the opportunity to make cross-cultural comparisons.

Eye movements elevate crowding in congenital idiopathic nystagmus

Congenital idiopathic nystagmus (sometimes known as infantile nystagmus) is a disorder characterised by involuntary eye movements, which leads to decreased acuity and visual function. One such function is visual crowding, a process whereby objects that are easily recognised in isolation become impaired by nearby flankers. Crowding typically occurs in the peripheral visual field, though elevations in foveal vision have been reported in congenital nystagmus, similar to those found with amblyopia (another developmental visual disorder). Here we examine whether the elevated foveal crowding with nystagmus is driven by similar mechanisms to those documented in amblyopia – long-term neural changes associated with a sensory deficit – or by the momentary displacement of the stimulus through nystagmus eye movements. We used a Landolt-C orientation identification task to measure threshold gap sizes with and without flanker Landolt-Cs that were either horizontally or vertically placed. Because nystagmus is predominantly horizontal, crowding should be stronger with horizontal flankers if eye movements cause the interference, whereas a sensory deficit should be equivalent for the two dimensions. Consistent with an origin in eye movements, we observe elevations in nystagmic crowding that are above that of typical vision, and stronger with horizontal than vertical flankers. This horizontal elongation was not found in either amblyopic or typical vision. We further demonstrate that the same pattern of performance can be obtained in typical vision with stimulus movement that simulates nystagmus. We consequently propose that the origin of nystagmic crowding lies in the eye movements, either through relocation of the stimulus into peripheral retina or image smear of the target and flanker elements.

Performance-Based Pay: Investigating its International Prevalence in Light of National Contexts

Performance-based pay is a popular technique in public management, but its international prevalence remains poorly evidenced. This study asks to what extent countries are using performance-based pay and how local contexts matter to its adoption status. Focusing on the education sector, we report on the varying degrees to which teacher appraisals have been used and linked with monetary rewards across countries as of 2012. We found that performance-based pay tended to be used more in less liberal economies, in cultures with a lower degree of uncertainty avoidance and a higher degree of individualism, in those with more decentralized educational systems, and surprisingly, in places where teachers exert greater influence. Our results suggest that some country contexts matter to the prevalence pattern of performance-based pay, and they offer policy makers some insights into the debate on whether a managerial technique like this, used in other countries, is transferrable to their own national context.