Suggestibility under pressure: Theory of mind, executive function, and suggestibility in preschoolers

Individual characteristics and environmental factors influencing preschoolers' emotional eating

Emotional eating, which refers to eating in response to emotional states, is prevalent in early childhood. Executive function (EF) and sleep problems are related to preschoolers' self-regulatory abilities during the day and night and have been reported to be associated with their emotional eating. These associations can be stronger in emotionally stressful situations, such as controlling feeding practices. This study explored the role of preschoolers' EF and sleep problems as child characteristics, as well as maternal feeding practices as environmental factors influencing emotional eating during the preschool period. Participants included 363 Korean mothers with preschoolers aged 3- to 5-years old (190 boys, 173 girls). Mothers reported on their own feeding practices, and preschoolers' EF, sleep problems, and emotional eating. Results indicated that preschoolers' EF was negatively associated with emotional over- and undereating, and this association was stronger when mothers applied more pressure to eat. Maternal monitoring had a similar effect, with emotional overeating exerting a greater impact with low levels of maternal monitoring. Finally, maternal pressure to eat moderated the influence of preschoolers' sleep problems on emotional overeating, with higher pressure to eat predicting a stronger relationship between sleep problems and emotional overeating. These findings suggest that maternal feeding practices, which are relatively modifiable, should be considered an important element in intervention programs aimed at preventing emotional eating in preschool children.

How Chronological Age, Theory of Mind, and Yield are Interrelated to Memory and Suggestion in Young Children

We investigated the interrelations between chronological age, theory of mind (ToM), Yield (as a measure of individual suggestibility), memory and acceptance of experimental suggestion in a sample of children between 3 and 7 years old (N = 106). One week after participants interacted with 'a Teacher', they were asked to recall activities carried out with the Teacher (direct experience) and the contents of a story read to them by the Teacher (indirect experience). Data were examined with an analysis of developmental trajectories, which allows establishing the predictor value of socio-cognitive developmental factors regardless of participants' chronological age. It also estimates predictor values in interaction with the age and determines whether age is the best predictor for performance. As in previous research, results showed that chronological age was the main predictor of memory performance, both for direct experience (i.e., activities performed) and indirect experience (i.e., contents of the story). However, ToM and Yield, together with participants' ages, modulated their acceptance of the external suggestions received (presented only once, one week after the event). A turning point was observed at age 4.6. Below this age, the greater the mentalist skills (higher ToM), the lower was the vulnerability to external suggestion. Still, children below this age characterized individually as being suggestible (Yield medium or high) were more vulnerable to suggestion the younger they were. Thus, developmental socio-cognitive factors might modulate young children's vulnerability to external suggestions, even if received only once.

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and Investigative interviewing: A systematic review highlighting clinical and legal implications and recommendations

Individuals with foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are estimated to be 19 times more likely to encounter the criminal justice system (CJS) in comparison to individuals without FASD. During encounters with the CJS, investigative interviews are employed to obtain accurate information from suspects, victims or witnesses of crime. A systematic search using PRISMA guidelines was performed to identify empirical studies published that have explored the questioning of the FASD population within the CJS and the vulnerabilities of FASD-impacted individuals during investigative interviewing. A total of 383 studies were identified from the databases searched and 7 further studies were identified from Google Scholar. After deduplication, abstract and title screening, the full text of 23 studies were assessed for inclusion and 5 were included in the narrative synthesis of results. Two papers were empirical studies focussed on the performance of FASD-impacted individuals during investigative interviewing. Whilst the first study found the FASD population susceptible to suggestions, the second (a case study), identified the ploys employed during investigative interviewing to obtain a confession. Three papers studied the wider vulnerabilities of FASD-impacted individuals and found diminished psycho-legal abilities, increased risk of recidivism and biological, psychological and social factors that render FASD-impacted individuals vulnerable to CJS encounters. Despite the greater likelihood of CJS encounters, the result of this review highlights the slim evidence base useful to establish the vulnerabilities of FASD-impacted individuals within the CJS.

A Representational Approach to Executive Function Impairments in Young Adults with Down Syndrome

Based on a representational perspective, this paper examines executive functioning in Down syndrome. Sixteen young adults with Down syndrome, 16 mental age- and 16 age-matched controls were compared on script sequencing and sorting tasks. Participants were asked to reestablish the sequential structure of script actions given with or without irrelevant actions. Impairments in script information processing were observed only in young adults with Down syndrome, who performed more slowly than controls, making mistakes in ordering actions, but rejecting aberrant elements. These data are consistent with the view that Down syndrome impairs the syntactic but not semantic dimension of script representation.

Children's Memory for Temporal Information: The Roles of Temporal Language and Executive Function

The ability to recall the temporal order of events develops much more slowly than the ability to recall facts about events. To explore what processes facilitate memory for temporal information, we tested 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 40) for immediate memory of the temporal order of events from a storybook, using a visual timeline task and a yes/no recognition task. In addition, children completed tasks assessing their understanding of before and after and the executive functions of inhibition using the Day/Night Stroop task and cognitive shifting using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. Older children (Mage = 69.25 months) outperformed younger children (Mage = 52.35 months) on all measures; however, the only significant predictor of memory for the temporal ordering of events was cognitive shifting. The findings suggest that the difficulty in memory for temporal information is related to development of a general cognitive ability, as indexed by the DCCS, rather than specific temporal abilities.

Individual Differences in Children's Suggestibility: An Updated Review

The present review is intended as an overview of our current understanding of how children's individual characteristics, in terms of demographic, cognitive, and psycho-social variables, may influence their susceptibility to suggestion. The goals are to revisit conceptual models of the mechanisms of suggestibility, to provide an updated practical guide for practitioners, and to make recommendations for future research. Results suggest that children with intellectual impairment and those with nascent language skills may be particularly vulnerable to suggestion. Further, memory for separate events, theory of mind, executive function, temperament, and social competence may not be related to suggestibility, whereas additional work is needed to clarify the potential contributions of knowledge, stress, mental health, parental elaborative style, and adverse experiences/maltreatment to children's suggestibility.

"Is it worth my time and effort?": How children selectively gather information from experts when faced with different kinds of costs

Gathering good-quality information is important for effective learning, but children may often need to expend time or energy (i.e., costs) in order to do so. In this study, we examined how 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 91) gather information from others when one source of information comes at a cost. Children were given three types of question cards (doctor-related, mechanic-related, and neutral questions) and could assign each question to either a doctor or car mechanic puppet. One puppet (either the doctor or the car mechanic, counterbalanced) could be accessed immediately, but the other puppet required either waiting 30 s or completing a tedious sorting task first. Children's verbal intelligence and executive function skills were also assessed. Results showed that cost influenced how children sought information from each of the expert puppets; children selected the costly expert for domain-relevant questions at chance levels and otherwise strongly preferred to question the non-costly puppet. In addition, executive function skills (but not verbal intelligence) related to how frequently children were willing to direct questions to the costly puppet. Overall, these results indicate that children are influenced by costs when gathering information from others and that their ability to expend a cost to gather good-quality information may relate to their inhibition skills. Implications for encouraging effective learning are discussed.

Preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers

The current research examined preschoolers' credulity toward misinformation from ingroup versus outgroup speakers. Experiment 1 showed that when searching for a hidden toy, Caucasian English monolingual 4-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of a race-and-accent ingroup speaker, despite their firsthand observations of the hiding event, but were skeptical when the false testimony was provided by a race-and-accent outgroup speaker. In the same experiment, 3-year-olds were credulous toward the false testimony of both speakers. Experiment 2 showed that when the false testimony was provided by a same-race-only or same-accent-only speaker, 4-year-olds were not particularly credulous or skeptical. The findings are discussed in relation to how intergroup bias might contribute to the selective credulity in the 4-year-olds as well as the factors that might explain the indiscriminate credulity in the 3-year-olds.

The role of executive function in children's source monitoring with varying retrieval strategies

Previous research on the relationship between executive function and source monitoring in young children has been inconclusive, with studies finding conflicting results about whether working memory and inhibitory control are related to source-monitoring ability. In this study, the role of working memory and inhibitory control in recognition memory and source monitoring with two different retrieval strategies were examined. Children (N = 263) aged 4–8 participated in science activities with two sources. They were later given a recognition and source-monitoring test, and completed measures of working memory and inhibitory control. During the source-monitoring test, half of the participants were asked about sources serially (one after the other) whereas the other half of the children were asked about sources in parallel (considering both sources simultaneously). Results demonstrated that working memory was a predictor of source-monitoring accuracy in both conditions, but inhibitory control was only related to source accuracy in the parallel condition. When age was controlled these relationships were no longer significant, suggesting that a more general cognitive development factor is a stronger predictor of source monitoring than executive function alone. Interestingly, the children aged 4–6 years made more accurate source decisions in the parallel condition than in the serial condition. The older children (aged 7–8) were overall more accurate than the younger children, and their accuracy did not differ as a function of interview condition. Suggestions are provided to guide further research in this area that will clarify the diverse results of previous studies examining whether executive function is a cognitive prerequisite for effective source monitoring.

Children's event reports: factors affecting responses to repeated questions in vignette scenarios and event recall interviews

When adults repeat questions, children often give inconsistent answers. This study aimed to test the claim that these inconsistencies occur because children infer that their first answer was unsatisfactory, and that the adult expects them to change their answer. Children aged 4, 6, and 8 years (N= 134) were asked about vignettes in which an adult repeated a question, with manipulation of the adult's overt dissatisfaction (high vs. low pressure) and knowledge about the information sought. On a separate occasion, the children were given an unrelated event recall interview containing repeated questions. All age groups showed sensitivity to adult dissatisfaction, interpreting question repetition as an implicit request for answer change more frequently in the high than in the low-pressure vignettes. Overall, however, these 'change-expected' interpretations were least frequent in the younger children, who were the most prone to shifting. Also there was no evidence that these interpretations were associated with more frequent shifting in the recall interview. The results do not provide clear support for a simple conversational inference account of shifting, especially in younger children.