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İleri Çİ, Erşan M, Kalaça D, Coşkun A, Göksun T, Küntay AC. Malleability of spatial skills: bridging developmental psychology and toy design for joyful STEAM development. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1137003. [PMID: 37771811 PMCID: PMC10523793 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1137003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2023] [Accepted: 08/25/2023] [Indexed: 09/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Previous research has established that advances in spatial cognition predict STEAM success, and construction toys provide ample opportunities to foster spatial cognition. Despite various construction toy designs in the market, mostly brick-shaped building blocks are used in spatial cognition research. This group of toys is known to enhance mental rotation; however, mental rotation is not the only way to comprehend the environment three-dimensionally. More specifically, mental folding and perspective taking training have not received enough attention as they can also be enhanced with the construction toys, which are framed based on the 2×2 classification of spatial skills (intrinsic-static, intrinsic-dynamic, extrinsic-static, extrinsic-dynamic). To address these gaps, we compile evidence from both developmental psychology and toy design fields to show the central role played by mental folding and perspective taking skills as well as the importance of the variety in toy designs. The review was conducted systematically by searching peer reviewed design and psychology journals and conference proceedings. We suggest that, over and above their physical properties, construction toys offer affordances to elicit spatial language, gesture, and narrative among child-caregiver dyads. These interactions are essential for the development of spatial skills in both children and their caregivers. As developmental psychology and toy design fields are two domains that can contribute to the purpose of developing construction toys to boost spatial skills, we put forward six recommendations to bridge the current gaps between these fields. Consequently, new toy designs and empirical evidence regarding malleability of different spatial skills can contribute to the informal STEAM development.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Melisa Erşan
- Department of Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design, The New School New York, NY, United States
| | - Duru Kalaça
- Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye
- Department of Media and Visual Arts, Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye
| | - Aykut Coşkun
- Koç University-Arçelik Research Center for Creative Industries, Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye
| | - Tilbe Göksun
- Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye
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Seucan DT, Szekely-Copîndean RD, Ding XP, Visu-Petra L. Give and take: A microgenetic study of preschoolers' deceptive and prosocial behavior in relation to their socio-cognitive development. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2022; 230:103714. [PMID: 36027708 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103714] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2022] [Revised: 08/12/2022] [Accepted: 08/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/01/2022] Open
Abstract
Early on, young children begin to learn the social skills which will help them navigate through an increasingly complex social world. We explored how deceiving for personal gain potentially interacts with sharing the resulting resources and how they both relate to theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 92, 43 girls). Children played a hide-and-seek zero-sum game in which they could win stickers if they discovered how to deceive the experimenter. Then they were prompted to share their stickers in a dictator game paradigm. Using a microgenetic design, we tracked deceptive behavior across ten sessions and sharing behavior across five of these sessions, plus a follow-up session 15 months later. Children polarized into a group who never deceived across all sessions, and a group who constantly deceived above chance levels (around 85 % of the time). Sharing behavior was extremely low (under 6 % of stickers) across the sessions. At follow-up, deceptive behavior was above 80 %, while sharing remained at a low level (under 5 %). The novelty of our findings was that children who initially discovered how to deceive shared less than the children who didn't use this deceptive strategy. Nonetheless, this pattern was reversed at follow-up. Furthermore, ToM positively predicted deceptive behavior across all sessions and improved after the microgenetic sessions but wasn't related with deception at follow-up. Implications for enabling children to deploy the growing understanding of their worlds in a more prosocial way are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Raluca Diana Szekely-Copîndean
- Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Department of Social and Human Research, Romanian Academy, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
| | - Xiao Pan Ding
- Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, 117570 Singapore, Singapore.
| | - Laura Visu-Petra
- Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, 400015 Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
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Cigala A, Mori A. Perspective Taking Ability in Psychologically Maltreated Children: A Protective Factor in Peer Social Adjustment. Front Psychol 2022; 13:816514. [PMID: 35310280 PMCID: PMC8929140 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.816514] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2021] [Accepted: 02/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Perspective taking is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct characterized by three components: cognitive, affective, and visual. The experience of psychological maltreatment impairs the child's emotional competence; in particular, maltreated children present difficulty in understanding and regulating emotions and in social understanding ability. In addition, the literature contains several contributions that highlight maladaptive behaviors of children with a history of maltreatment in peer interactions in the school context. Perspective taking ability has rarely been studied in maltreated children and the existing studies have produced different and often conflicting results that require further insights. On the grounds of these premises, the main objective of the present research is to investigate perspective taking ability in preschool children from maltreating and non-maltreating family contexts and its role in social adjustment, in terms of prosocial and aggressive behavior toward peers inside the kindergarten. A second objective is to verify the effectiveness of a training aimed to promote perspective taking ability in victims of psychological maltreatment. This research, organized into two separate studies, involved 249 preschool children: 206 children from non-maltreating family contexts and 43 brought up in psychologically maltreating families. Perspective taking was measured via the administration of several tests, and prosocial behavior and aggressiveness were observed via non-participant observations in the school context. The training involved maltreated children in small-group meetings based on familiar and appealing activities within the mother-child community. The overall results show that children's perspective taking ability, in particular the affective perspective taking, contributed to social adjustment. In fact, greater affective perspective taking ability was correlated to a higher frequency of prosocial behaviors toward peers and minor frequency of aggressiveness. Finally, the results of the training (pre/post-test comparison) showed an increase in perspective taking, especially in the affective dimension, and a consequent increase in prosocial behaviors and a decrease in aggressive ones. Therefore, the affective perspective taking ability seems to represent a very significant protective factor, which should be focused and strengthened in order to improve the social adaptation of preschool children who are victims of psychological abuse.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ada Cigala
- Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries (DUSIC), University of Parma, Parma, Italy
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Aslan D, Köksal Akyol A. Impact of an Empathy Training Program on Children's Perspective-Taking Abilities. Psychol Rep 2019; 123:2394-2409. [PMID: 31403904 DOI: 10.1177/0033294119868785] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated the impact of an empathy training program developed by the researchers to promote perspective-taking abilities of preschool children. Participants were 34 children from two different kindergartens. Children in the treatment group attended an empathy training program that consisted of 30 activities and lasted for 10 weeks, whereas those in the nonintervention group attend the regular preschool program. Data were obtained through individual interviews with children. Perspective-Taking Test for Children, designed by the researchers, was used to assess children's perspective-taking abilities. The results of the study demonstrated that the training program significantly improved perspective-taking performance of children in the treatment group compared to their peers in the nonintervention group, and this effect persisted one month after the intervention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Durmuş Aslan
- Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, Cukurova University, Adana, Turkey
| | - Aysel Köksal Akyol
- Department of Child Development, Faculty of Health Science, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
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Ding XP, Heyman GD, Sai L, Yuan F, Winkielman P, Fu G, Lee K. Learning to deceive has cognitive benefits. J Exp Child Psychol 2018; 176:26-38. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.07.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2018] [Revised: 07/07/2018] [Accepted: 07/08/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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Mori A, Cigala A. ‘Putting oneself in someone else's shoes during childhood: How to learn it’ Training for preschool age children. BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 2018; 89:750-766. [DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12255] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2018] [Revised: 10/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Arianna Mori
- Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries University of Parma Italia
| | - Ada Cigala
- Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries University of Parma Italia
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Grazzani I, Ornaghi V, Conte E, Pepe A, Caprin C. The Relation Between Emotion Understanding and Theory of Mind in Children Aged 3 to 8: The Key Role of Language. Front Psychol 2018; 9:724. [PMID: 29867683 PMCID: PMC5962725 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00724] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/08/2018] [Accepted: 04/25/2018] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Although a significant body of research has investigated the relationships among children’s emotion understanding (EU), theory of mind (ToM), and language abilities. As far as we know, no study to date has been conducted with a sizeable sample of both preschool and school-age children exploring the direct effect of EU on ToM when the role of language was evaluated as a potential exogenous factor in a single comprehensive model. Participants in the current study were 389 children (age range: 37–97 months, M = 60.79 months; SD = 12.66), to whom a False-Belief understanding battery, the Test of Emotion Comprehension, and the Peabody Test were administered. Children’s EU, ToM, and language ability (receptive vocabulary) were positively correlated. Furthermore, EU scores explained variability in ToM scores independently of participants’ age and gender. Finally, language was found to play a crucial role in both explaining variance in ToM scores and in mediating the relationship between EU and ToM. We discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these outcomes, particularly in relation to offering social and emotional learning programs through schools.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilaria Grazzani
- "Riccardo Massa" Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Veronica Ornaghi
- "Riccardo Massa" Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Elisabetta Conte
- "Riccardo Massa" Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Alessandro Pepe
- "Riccardo Massa" Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Claudia Caprin
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
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Peters LC, Thompson RH. How Teaching Perspective Taking to Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders Affects Social Skills: Findings from Research and Suggestions for Practitioners. Behav Anal Pract 2018; 11:467-478. [PMID: 30538923 DOI: 10.1007/s40617-018-0207-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Behavior-analytic practitioners working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may be approached to incorporate perspective taking into a client's programming. Teaching perspective taking to individuals with ASDs has received attention in both the developmental psychology and, more recently, the behavior-analytic literature. The results of our review of the current evidence suggest that although perspective-taking repertoires believed to be related to social skills can be taught (false belief task performance, deictic frames), only directly teaching the social skills of interest (or applied perspective-taking skills) results in improvements in socially important behavior. The aim of this article is to provide practitioners with the current state of research on how teaching perspective taking affects social skills and to provide suggestions on how these findings might be incorporated into their practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lindsay C Peters
- 1Psychology Department, Western New England University, Springfield, MA USA.,Elmtree ABA Services, LLC, P.O. Box 1401, Framingham, MA 01701 USA
| | - Rachel H Thompson
- 1Psychology Department, Western New England University, Springfield, MA USA
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Montoya-Rodríguez MM, Molina FJ, McHugh L. A Review of Relational Frame Theory Research Into Deictic Relational Responding. PSYCHOLOGICAL RECORD 2016. [DOI: 10.1007/s40732-016-0216-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Montoya-Rodríguez MM, Molina Cobos FJ. Relationship Between Deictic Relational Responding and Theory of Mind Tasks in Children: A Pilot Study. PSYCHOLOGICAL RECORD 2016. [DOI: 10.1007/s40732-016-0193-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
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Grazzani I, Ornaghi V, Brockmeier J. Conversation on mental states at nursery: Promoting social cognition in early childhood. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2016. [DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2015.1127803] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
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Ding XP, Wellman HM, Wang Y, Fu G, Lee K. Theory-of-Mind Training Causes Honest Young Children to Lie. Psychol Sci 2015; 26:1812-21. [PMID: 26431737 PMCID: PMC4636928 DOI: 10.1177/0956797615604628] [Citation(s) in RCA: 54] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2015] [Accepted: 08/17/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Theory of mind (ToM) has long been recognized to play a major role in children's social functioning. However, no direct evidence confirms the causal linkage between the two. In the current study, we addressed this significant gap by examining whether ToM causes the emergence of lying, an important social skill. We showed that after participating in ToM training to learn about mental-state concepts, 3-year-olds who originally had been unable to lie began to deceive consistently. This training effect lasted for more than a month. In contrast, 3-year-olds who participated in control training to learn about physical concepts were significantly less inclined to lie than the ToM-trained children. These findings provide the first experimental evidence supporting the causal role of ToM in the development of social competence in early childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiao Pan Ding
- Hangzhou College of Preschool Education, Zhejiang Normal University Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto
| | | | - Yu Wang
- Hangzhou College of Preschool Education, Zhejiang Normal University
| | - Genyue Fu
- Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University
| | - Kang Lee
- Hangzhou College of Preschool Education, Zhejiang Normal University Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto
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