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1. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are impaired in absolute but not relative pitch and duration matching in speech and song imitation

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2569  

   Wang, Li ; Pfordresher, Peter Q. ; Jiang, Cunmei ; Liu, Fang ( July 2021 , Autism Research)

   Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit atypical imitation. However, few studies have identified clear quantitative characteristics of vocal imitation in ASD. This study investigated imitation of speech and song in English‐speaking individuals with and without ASD and its modulation by age. Participants consisted of 25 autistic children and 19 autistic adults, who were compared to 25 children and 19 adults with typical development matched on age, gender, musical training, and cognitive abilities. The task required participants to imitate speech and song stimuli with varying pitch and duration patterns. Acoustic analyses of the imitation performance suggested that individuals with ASD were worse than controls on absolute pitch and duration matching for both speech and song imitation, although they performed as well as controls on relative pitch and duration matching. Furthermore, the two groups produced similar numbers of pitch contour, pitch interval‐, and time errors. Across both groups, sung pitch was imitated more accurately than spoken pitch, whereas spoken duration was imitated more accurately than sung duration. Children imitated spoken pitch more accurately than adults when it came to speech stimuli, whereas age showed no significant relationship to song imitation. These results reveal a vocal imitation deficit across speech and music domains in ASD that is specific to absolute pitch and duration matching. This finding provides evidence for shared mechanisms between speech and song imitation, which involves independent implementation of relative versus absolute features.

   Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit atypical imitation of actions and gestures. Characteristics of vocal imitation in ASD remain unclear. By comparing speech and song imitation, this study shows that individuals with ASD have a vocal imitative deficit that is specific to absolute pitch and duration matching, while performing as well as controls on relative pitch and duration matching, across speech and music domains.

    

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2. The impact of sufferers’ wealth status on pain perceptions: Its development and relation to allocation of healthcare resources

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13467  

   Shu, Yuhang ; Li, Huisi ; Ma, Shaocong ; Bian, Lin ( December 2023 , Developmental Science)

   Wealth‐based disparities in health care wherein the poor receive undertreatment in painful conditions are a prominent issue that requires immediate attention. Research with adults suggests that these disparities are partly rooted in stereotypes associating poor individuals with pain insensitivity. However, whether and how children consider a sufferer's wealth status in their pain perceptions remains unknown. The present work addressed this question by testing 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds from the US and China. In Study 1 (N = 108, 56 girls, 79% White), US participants saw rich and poor White children experiencing identical injuries and indicated who they thought felt more pain. Although 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds responded at chance, children aged seven and above attributed more pain to the poor than to the rich. Study 2 with a new sample of US children (N = 111, 56 girls, 69% White) extended this effect to judgments of White adults’ pain. Pain judgments also informed children's prosocial behaviors, leading them to provide medical resources to the poor. Studies 3 (N = 118, 59 girls, 100% Asian) and 4 (N = 80, 40 girls, 100% Asian) found that, when evaluating White and Asian people's suffering, Chinese children began to attribute more pain to the poor than to the rich earlier than US children. Thus, unlike US adults, US children and Chinese children recognize the poor's pain from early on. These findings add to our knowledge of group‐based beliefs about pain sensitivity and have broad implications on ways to promote equitable health care.

   Four studies examined whether 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children's pain perceptions were influenced by sufferers’ wealth status.

   US children attributed more pain to White individuals of low wealth status than those of high wealth status by age seven.

   Chinese children demonstrated an earlier tendency to attribute more pain to the poor (versus the rich) compared to US children.

   Children's wealth‐based pain judgments underlied their tendency to provide healthcare resources to people of low wealth status.

    

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3. The effect of group status on children's hierarchy‐reinforcing beliefs

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13393  

   Rizzo, Michael T. ; Roberts, Steven O. ; Rhodes, Marjorie ( November 2023 , Developmental Science)

   Members of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to think, feel, and behave in ways that reinforce their group's position within the hierarchy. This study examined how children's status within a group‐based hierarchy shapes their beliefs about the hierarchy and the groups that comprise it in ways that reinforce the hierarchy. To do this, we randomly assigned children (4–8 years;N = 123; 75 female, 48 male; 21 Asian, 9 Black, 21 Latino/a, 1 Middle‐Eastern/North‐African, 14 multiracial, 41 White, 16 not‐specified) to novel groups that differed in social status (advantaged, disadvantaged, neutral third‐party) and assessed their beliefs about the hierarchy. Across five separate assessments, advantaged‐group children were more likely to judge the hierarchy to be fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and were more likely to hold biased intergroup attitudes and exclude disadvantaged group members. In addition, with age, children in both the advantaged‐ and disadvantaged‐groups became more likely to see membership in their own group as inherited, while at the same time expecting group‐relevant behaviors to be determined more by the environment. With age, children also judged the hierarchy to be more unfair and expected the hierarchy to generalize across contexts. These findings provide novel insights into how children's position within hierarchies can contribute to the formation of hierarchy‐reinforcing beliefs.

   A total of 123 4–8‐year‐olds were assigned to advantaged, disadvantaged, and third‐party groups within a hierarchy and were assessed on seven hierarchy‐reinforcing beliefs about the hierarchy.

   Advantaged children were more likely to say the hierarchy was fair, generalizable, and wrong to challenge and to hold intergroup biases favoring advantaged group members.

   With age, advantaged‐ and disadvantaged‐group children held more essentialist beliefs about membership in their own group, but not the behaviors associated with their group.

   Results suggest that advantaged group status can shape how children perceive and respond to the hierarchies they are embedded within.

    

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4. The role of vision in the acquisition of words: Vocabulary development in blind toddlers

   https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13475  

   Campbell, Erin ; Casillas, Robyn ; Bergelson, Elika ( January 2024 , Developmental Science)

   What is vision's role in driving early word production? To answer this, we assessed parent‐report vocabulary questionnaires administered to congenitally blind children (N = 40, Mean age = 24 months [R: 7–57 months]) and compared the size and contents of their productive vocabulary to those of a large normative sample of sighted children (N = 6574). We found that on average, blind children showed a roughly half‐year vocabulary delay relative to sighted children, amid considerable variability. However, the content of blind and sighted children's vocabulary was statistically indistinguishable in word length, part of speech, semantic category, concreteness, interactiveness, and perceptual modality. At a finer‐grained level, we also found that words’ perceptual properties intersect with children's perceptual abilities. Our findings suggest that while an absence of visual input may initially make vocabulary development more difficult, the content of the early productive vocabulary is largely resilient to differences in perceptual access.

   Infants and toddlers born blind (with no other diagnoses) show a 7.5 month productive vocabulary delay on average, with wide variability.

   Across the studied age range (7–57 months), vocabulary delays widened with age.

   Blind and sighted children's early vocabularies contain similar distributions of word lengths, parts of speech, semantic categories, and perceptual modalities.

   Blind children (but not sighted children) were more likely to say visual words which could also be experienced through other senses.

    

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5. Programming as a language for young children to express and explore mathematics in school

   https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13080  

   Goldenberg, E. Paul ; Carter, Cynthia J. ( May 2021 , British Journal of Educational Technology)

   Natural language helps express mathematical thinking and contexts. Conventional mathematical notation (CMN) best suits expressions and equations. Each is essential; each also has limitations, especially for learners. Our research studies how programming can be a advantageous third language that can also help restore mathematical connections that are hidden by topic‐centred curricula. Restoring opportunities for surprise and delight reclaims mathematics' creative nature. Studies of children's use of language in mathematics and their programming behaviours guide our iterative design/redesign of mathematical microworlds in which students, ages 7–11, use programming in their regular school lessonsas a language for learning mathematics. Though driven by mathematics, not coding, the microworlds develop the programming over time so that it continues to support children's developing mathematical ideas. This paper briefly describes microworlds EDC has tested with well over 400 7‐to‐8‐year‐olds in school, and others tested (or about to be tested) with over 200 8‐to‐11‐year‐olds. Our challenge was to satisfy schools' topical orientation and fit easily within regular classroom study but use and foreshadow other mathematical learning to remove the siloes. The design/redesign research and evaluation is exploratory, without formal methodology. We are also more formally studying effects on children's learning. That ongoing study is not reported here.

   What is already known

   Active learning—doing—supports learning.

   Collaborative learning—doingtogether—supports learning.

   Classroom discourse—focused, relevantdiscussion, not just listening—supports learning.

   Clear articulation of one's thinking, even just to oneself, helps develop that thinking.

   What this paper adds

   The common languages we use for classroom mathematics—natural language for conveying the meaning and context of mathematical situations and for explaining our reasoning; and the formal (written) language of conventional mathematical notation, the symbols we use in mathematical expressions and equations—are both essential but each presents hurdles that necessitate the other. Yet, even together, they are insufficient especially for young learners.

   Programming, appropriately designed and used, can be the third language that both reduces barriers and provides the missing expressive and creative capabilities children need.

   Appropriate design for use in regular mathematics classrooms requires making key mathematical content obvious, strong and the ‘driver’ of the activities, and requires reducing tech ‘overhead’ to near zero.

   Continued usefulness across the grades requires developing children's sophistication and knowledge with the language; the powerful ways that children rapidly acquire facility with (natural) language provides guidance for ways they can learn a formal language as well.

   Implications for policy and/or practice

   Mathematics teaching can take advantage of the ways children learn through experimentation and attention to the results, and of the ways children use their language brain even for mathematics.

   In particular, programming—in microworlds driven by the mathematical content, designed to minimise distraction and overhead, open to exploration and discoveryen routeto focused aims, and in which childrenself‐evaluate—can allow clear articulation of thought, experimentation with immediate feedback.

   As it aids the mathematics, it also builds computational thinking and satisfies schools' increasing concerns to broaden access to ideas of computer science.

    

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