Browsing by Author "Allen, Jedediah W. P."

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Open Access
Age 4 transitions: Reflection as a domain-general development for explicit reasoning
(Elsevier Ltd, 2021-07) Allen, Jedediah W. P.; Çelik, Bartuğ; Bichard, M. H.
The literature provides many examples of important developments across different social and cognitive domains at around age 4. Based on an action-based approach to cognition - interactivism - we argue that the changes across different domains can be explained by the development of a domain-general cognitive enabling: reflection. The interactivist model’s claim about reflection was empirically supported on the basis of a novel object-reasoning task called Leaning Blocks (LB) developed by Allen and Bickhard (2018). In the current study, there were three aims. First, to replicate the age 4 shift on the LB task in a non-western sample. Second, to explore the LB task’s relations with Executive Functioning skills (working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control) in order to test alternative interpretations of performance on LB. Third, to diversify the measurement of reflective reasoning with two new tasks based on Piaget’s categorization of mental imagery. The results showed a replication of Allen and Bickhard’s 2018 findings on the LB task and failed to show any relations with the EF measures after controlling for age. One of the new reflection tasks (Candy Monster) showed both the age 4 transition and a correlation with LB (before-and-after controlling for age and the EF measures). Overall, as in Allen and Bickhard (2018) the current study’s results support the interactivist model’s claim that the development of reflection is responsible for the transitions in performance across domains in a “stage-like” fashion.
Open Access
Building resilience in young children the Sesame Street way
(Springer, 2014) Cohen, D.; Oades-Sese, Geraldine V.; Allen, Jedediah W. P.; Lewis, Michael; Prince-Embury, S.; Saklofske, D. H.
Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit organization involved with community outreach to support the educational needs of children and to foster healthy, strong families. The Educational Outreach Department creates needs-driven public service initiatives across multiple media platforms, leveraging relationships and distributing materials through a network of strategic partnerships in the United States and internationally. One such initiative is Little Children, BIG Challenges, which provides educators, service providers, families, and young children with the tools and resources necessary to overcome everyday challenges, transitions, and stressful life events. These resilience-enhancing tools and resources maximize the use of multimedia and technology and showcase the lovable Muppets of Sesame Street in various scenarios and specific experiences relevant to military and civilian families.
Open Access
(Co-)Constructing a theory of mind: from language or through language?
(Springer, 2020) Ilgaz, Hande; Allen, Jedediah W. P.
There is a large body of empirical work that has investigated the relationship between parents’ child-directed speech and their children’s Theory of Mind development. That such a relationship should exist is well motivated from both Theory Theory and Socio-Cultural (SC) perspectives. Despite this general convergence, we argue that theoretical differences between the two perspectives suggests nuanced differences in the expected outcomes of the empirical work. Further, the different ontological commitments of the two approaches have (mis)guided the design, coding, and analysis of existing research and imply different future directions. We discuss five areas of extant research that can be extended and diversified most coherently by adopting a SC framework.
Open Access
How not to find over-imitation in animals
(S. Karger AG, 2024-02-20) Allen, Jedediah W. P.; Andrews, Kristin
While more species are being identified as cultural on a regular basis, stark differences between human and animal cultures remain. Humans are more richly cultural, with group-specific practices and social norms guiding almost every element of our lives. Furthermore, human culture is seen as cumulative, cooperative, and normative, in contrast to animal cultures. One hypothesis to explain these differences is grounded in the observation that human children across cultures appear to spontaneously over-imitate silly or causally irrelevant behaviors that they observe. The few studies on over-imitation in other species are largely taken as evidence that spontaneous over-imitation is not present in other species. This leads to the over-imitation hypothesis – that the differences between human culture and animal cultures can be traced to the human unique tendency to over-imitate. In this paper, we analyze the current state of the literature on animal over-imitation and challenge the adequacy of the over-imitation hypothesis for the differences between humans and animal cultures. To make this argument, we first argue that the function of human over-imitation is norm-learning and that over-imitation, like skill-learning, should be subject to selective social learning effects. Then we review the empirical evidence against animal over-imitation and argue that these studies do not take into account the relevant variables given the normative and selective nature of over-imitation. We then analyze positive empirical evidence of over-imitation in great apes and canids from the experimental literature and conclude that the current body of evidence suggests that some canids and primates may have the capacity for over-imitation. This paper offers a methodological suggestion for how to study animal over-imitation, and a theoretical suggestion that over-imitation might be much more widely found among species. The larger implication for claims about human uniqueness suggests that if we do find widespread evidence of over-imitation across species, many of the current theories of human uniqueness that focus on human hyper-cooperation or social norms may have only identified a difference of degree, not of kind, between humans and other animals.
Open Access
Social meta-learning: learning how to make use of others as a resource for further learning
(Springer, 2017) Allen, Jedediah W. P.; Ilgaz, Hande; Hakli, R.; Seibt, J.
While there is general consensus that robust forms of social learning enable the possibility of human cultural evolution, the specific nature, origins, and development of such learning mechanisms remains an open issue. The current paper offers an action-based approach to the study of social learning in general and imitation learning in particular. From this action-based perspective, imitation itself undergoes learning and development and is modeled as an instance of social meta-learning – children learning how to use others as a resource for further learning. This social meta-learning perspective is then applied empirically to an ongoing debate about the reason children imitate causally unnecessary actions while learning about a new artifact (i.e., over-imitate). Results suggest that children over-imitate because it is the nature of learning about social realities in which cultural artifacts are a central aspect.
Open Access
Social meta-learning: Learning how to make use of others as a resource for learning
(IOS Press, 2014) Allen, Jedediah W. P.
While there is general consensus that robust forms of social learning enable the possibility of human cultural evolution, the specific nature, origins, and development of such learning mechanisms remains an open issue. The current paper offers an action-based approach to the study of social learning in general and imitation learning in particular. From this action-based perspective, imitation itself undergoes learning and development and is modeled as an instance of social meta-learning-children learning how to use others as a resource for further learning. This social meta-learning perspective is then applied empirically to an ongoing debate about the reason children imitate causally unnecessary actions while learning about a new artifact (i.e., over-imitate). Results suggest that children over-imitate because it is the nature of learning about social realities in which cultural artifacts are a central aspect. © 2014 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Who peeks: cognitive, emotional, behavioral, socialization, and child correlates of preschoolers’ resistance to temptation
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Allen, Jedediah W. P.; Lewis, M.
Research over several decades has demonstrated that children’s ability to wait and delay immediate gratification in preschool is related to a multitude of developmental outcomes throughout childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood. However, less research has focused on concurrent abilities, characteristics, and contexts related to the waiting behaviour itself. This study seeks to explore some of the cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and socialization correlates of an at-risk (poor inner city) group of preschoolers’ ability to wait. The study used a resistance to temptation paradigm in which children were instructed not to peek at a ‘forbidden toy’ while left alone. As predicted, 4-year-olds’ (M = 4.5; SD = 1.2 months) general IQ and emotion knowledge were related to their delay in peeking, with longer delays related to higher scores. Results also indicated an effect of gender such that girls waited longer than boys. Contrary to expectations, there were no effects related to harsh parenting practices or to general environmental risk. Of all the variables investigated, emotion knowledge seemed to be the most important.