http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/14916/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/30912/ 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7-13. years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or mismatched the depicted object. Responses were faster for matching pictures, suggesting that participants had formed perceptual-like situation models of the sentences. The advantage for matching pictures did not increase with age. Experiment 2 extended these findings to the domain of written language. Participants (ages 7-10. years) of high and low word reading ability verified pictures after reading sentences aloud. The results suggest that even when reading is effortful, children construct a perceptual simulation of the described events. We propose that perceptual simulation plays a more central role in developing language comprehension than was previously thought. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26415/ 2011-07-01T00:00:00Z Retrieval practice of previously studied information seems to be more effective in the long run than restudying the information - a phenomenon called the testing effect. In the present study, we investigated whether individual differences in the testing effect can be attributed to variation in gist trace processing. One-hundred-thirty-one participants (7-13. years old children) studied twelve DRM word lists in a within-subject design with learning (restudying vs. taking an intervening free recall test) as a factor. Each of the participants took a final yes/no recognition test 1. week after the study phase. A latent class analysis on the final-test data revealed three classes. One class of children did not show a testing effect. In the other two classes strong testing effects emerged, but the magnitude of the effect differed in these two classes. Furthermore, the three classes differed in false recognition of semantically related distractors, suggesting that the testing effect is related to differences in gist processing. We interpreted our findings in terms of fuzzy trace theory. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25707/ 2011-05-12T00:00:00Z Several studies have demonstrated the relationship between phoneme segmentation ability and early reading performance, but so far it is unclear which abilities are involved, and which word properties contribute to the difficulty level of a segmentation task. Using a sample of 596 Dutch children, we investigated the abilities involved in segmenting the phonemes of 45 pseudowords that differed with respect to several properties. First, we found that a combination of short-term memory and speech perception explained variation in segmentation performance. Second, we found that a limited number of word property effects explained the difficulty level of pseudowords rather well. Finally, we constructed a high-reliability scale for measuring segmentation ability. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/23984/ 2011-04-01T00:00:00Z The current study examined the role of repetitive negative thoughts in the vulnerability for emotional problems in non-clinical children aged 8-13 years (N=158). Children completed self-report questionnaires for assessing (1) neuroticism and behavioral inhibition as indicators of general vulnerability (2) worry and rumination which are two important manifestations of repetitive negative thoughts, and (3) emotional problems (i. e., anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulties). Results demonstrated that there were positive correlations between measures of general vulnerability, repetitive negative thoughts, and emotional problems. Further, support was found for a model in which worry and rumination acted as partial mediators in the relation between neuroticism and symptoms of anxiety and depression. In the case of sleep difficulties, no evidence was obtained for such a mediation model. In fact, data suggested that sleeping difficulties are better conceived as an epiphenomenon of high symptom levels of anxiety and depression or as a risk factor for the development of other types of psychopathology. Finally, besides neuroticism, the temperamental trait of behavioral inhibition appeared to play a unique direct role in the model predicting anxiety symptoms but not in the models predicting depressive symptoms or sleep difficulties. To conclude, the current findings seem to indicate that worry and rumination contribute to children's vulnerability for anxiety and depression. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26519/ 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z In this study, we compared two instruction methods on spelling performance: a rewriting instruction in which children repeatedly rewrote words and an ambiguous property instruction in which children deliberately practiced on a difficult word aspect. Moreover, we examined whether the testing effect applies to spelling performance. One hundred eighty-six Dutch elementary-school students (grades 3, 4, and 5) participated in this study. a mixed design was used in the present study, with age group and instruction as between-subject variables and relearning as a within-subject variable. We showed that after a 2-day retention interval, the rewriting condition outperformed the ambiguous property condition on spelling performance in all grades. The effect of relearning type was not significant nor was the instruction x relearning interaction. An error analysis showed that relative to the rewrite instruction, the ambiguous property instruction led to more errors on the non-practiced part of the words. By contrast, the rewrite instruction and ambiguous property instruction did not differ with respect to the errors on the practiced part of the words. The findings provide strong evidence for the superiority of a rewriting study instruction over an ambiguous property study instruction with respect to the performance on a delayed spelling test. Results from the conditional error analyses suggest that the beneficial influence of rewriting emerges because rewriting requires children to process the whole word rather than only a part of the word. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17582/ 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z Disgust is a basic emotion that is thought to play a role in the etiology of certain types of specific phobias, like animal phobias. Two experiments were conducted in which 9- to 14-year-old children were exposed to disgust-related, cleanliness-related, and threat-related information about unknown animals. It was investigated to what extent these types of information influenced children's fear beliefs, feelings of disgust, and avoidance behavior in relation to the animals. Most important, results suggested a bidirectional relationship between disgust and fear. That is, disgust-related information was found to promote fear beliefs, and conversely threat-related information enhanced feelings of disgust. Repercussions of these findings for the role of disgust in the development and maintenance of anxiety pathology are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14287/ 2008-11-01T00:00:00Z A recently proposed theory of the spacing effect [Raaijmakers, J. G. W. (2003). Spacing and repetition effects in human memory: application of the SAM model. Cognitive Science, 27, 431-452.] suggests that the spacing effect is conditional on study-phase retrieval leading to two groups of students showing different magnitudes of the spacing effect. This bimodality was also observed in histograms of spacing-effect data. In this study, we used latent class regression analysis to investigate whether these groups can be detected in existing datasets (Experiment 1). Specific hypotheses about the magnitude of the spacing effect in the latent classes were assessed in Experiment 2. Latent class regression analysis in both experiments showed that the fit of the two-class model was considerably better than the (1-class) ANOVA model. Moreover, the results of Experiment 2 showed, in line with our predictions, that when the presentation rate changed from 1 s to 4 s the increase in spacing effect was larger for the low-performing class than for the high-performing class. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/11580/ 2007-03-01T00:00:00Z Fuzzy trace theory explains why children do not have to use rules of logic or premise information to infer transitive relationships. Instead, memory of the premises and performance on transitivity tasks is explained by a verbatim ability and a gist ability. Until recently, the processes involved in transitive reasoning and memory of the premises were studied by comparing mean performance in fixed-age groups. In this study, an individual-difference model of fuzzy trace theory for transitive reasoning was formulated and tested on a sample (N = 409) of 4- to 13-year-old children. Tasks were used which differed with respect to presentation ordering and position ordering. From this individual- difference model expectations could be derived about the individual performance on memory and transitivity test-pairs. The multilevel latent class model was used to fit the formalized individual-difference fuzzy trace theory to the sample data. The model was shown to fit the data to a large extent. The results showed that verbatim ability and gist ability drove the activation of verbatim and gist traces, respectively, and that children used combinations of these traces to solve memory tasks (testing memory of the premises) and transitivity tasks. Task format had a stronger effect on transitivity task performance than on memory of the premises. Development of gist ability was found to be faster than development of verbatim ability. Another important finding was that some children remembered the premise information correctly but were not able to infer the transitive relationship, even though the premises provided all the necessary information. This contradicts Trabasso’s linear ordering theory which posits that memory of the premises is sufficient to infer transitive relationships. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/11581/ 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z Fuzzy trace theory posits that during development the use of verbatim information for solving transitive relationships shifts to the use of gist information. In cognitive developmental research that uses a cross-sectional design, the binomial mixture model is often used to identify such shifts. Because the binomial mixture model assumes equal task difficulty and uses the number of correctly solved tasks for data analysis, it may be too restrictive and the more flexible latent class model is adopted as an alternative. This model allows varying task difficulty and uses the pattern of task scores as input for data analysis. The binomial mixture model and the latent class model are compared theoretically, and applied to transitive reasoning test data obtained from a cross-sectional sample of 615 children. The latent class model is found to be more appropriate for identifying multiple phases. Three phases are distinguished which can be interpreted well by means of fuzzy trace theory. These phases do not encompass fixed age periods.