Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory.
The present study is part of a larger study, the School Readiness Study. Measures and hypotheses for the School Readiness Study were pre-registered: https://osf.io/jzxb8. Data files, a data dictionary, analysis scripts, and a computational notebook for the present study are published online: https://osf.io/5xnrh. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. The present DEVELOPMENTAL SCALE OF SELF-REGULATION 2 study was approved by the University of Iowa Institutional Review Board (Study #: 201708761).
Self-regulation is thought to show heterotypic continuity—its individual differences endure but its behavioral manifestations change across development. Thus, different measures across time may be necessary to account for heterotypic continuity of self-regulation. This longitudinal study examined children’s (N = 108) self-regulation development using 17 measures, including 15 performance-based measures, two questionnaires, and three raters across seven timepoints. It is the first to use different measures of self-regulation over time to account for heterotypic continuity while using developmental scaling to link the measures onto the same scale for more accurate growth estimates. Assessed facets included inhibitory control, delayed gratification, sustained attention, and executive functions. Some measures differed across ages to retain construct validity and account for heterotypic continuity. A Bayesian longitudinal mixed model for developmental scaling was developed to link the differing measures onto the same scale. This allowed charting children’s self-regulation growth across ages 3–7 years and relating it to both predictors and outcomes. Rapid growth occurred from ages 3–6. As a validation of the developmental scaling approach, greater self-regulation was associated with better school readiness (math and reading skills) and fewer externalizing problems. Our multi-wave, multi-facet, multi-method, multi-measure, multi-rater, developmental scaling approach is the most comprehensive to date for assessing the development of self-regulation. This approach demonstrates that developmental scaling may enable studying development of self-regulation across the lifespan.
Research on children’s categorization presents seemingly paradoxical results: Presenting exemplars at the same time (simultaneously) and presenting exemplars apart in time (spaced) have both been argued to support learning. This research was designed to explain these results by examining the visual attention and forgetting dynamics underlying various presentation schedules. Across three experiments, preschool-aged children (N = 292) were presented with science category exemplars on simultaneous, massed, and spaced schedules. The first experiment revealed that children had the strongest generalization performance in the spaced condition at the delayed post-test. In subsequent experiments, children visually attended less and forgot more during spaced learning. These results are discussed in the context of several theoretical accounts in cognitive science and applied implications for science education.
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