Judy DeLoache

• PhD in Psychology
• Professor Emeritus at University of Virginia

This brand-new edition of "A World of Babies" brings alive childcare practices in eight contemporary immigrant, war-torn, globalizing, and urban societies. Parenting traditions appear in the imaginative format of childcare “manuals” as if they were written by insiders, but are based on extensive fieldwork by the authors. There is no other book like...

Should babies sleep alone in cribs, or in bed with parents? Is talking to babies useful, or a waste of time? A World of Babies provides different answers to these and countless other child- rearing questions, precisely because diverse communities around the world hold drastically different beliefs about parenting. While celebrating that diversity,...

Should babies sleep alone in cribs, or in bed with parents? Is talking to babies useful, or a waste of time? A World of Babies provides different answers to these and countless other childrearing questions, precisely because diverse communities around the world hold drastically different beliefs about parenting. While celebrating that diversity, th...

Erbe und Umwelt Das aktive Kind Kontinuität/Diskontinuität Mechanismen der Veränderung Der soziokulturelle Kontext Individuelle Unterschiede Forschung und das Wohl der Kinder

Man stelle sich folgende Situation vor: Eine Entwicklungspsychologin nähert sich ihrer Versuchsperson in der Absicht, deren Wahrnehmungsfähigkeit und Fähigkeit, aus Erfahrungen zu lernen, zu untersuchen. Zuerst spielt sie der Versuchsperson aus einem Lautsprecher nahe am Ohr ein lautes Schallereignis vor (einen Laut oder einen Ton) und stellt mit B...

Der vier Monate alte Benjamin sitzt in seinem Kindersitz auf der Arbeitsplatte der Küchenzeile und schaut seinen Eltern beim Abwasch zu. Was er beobachtet, sind zwei Menschen, die sich von selbst bewegen, und eine Auswahl an Gegenständen aus Glas, Keramik und Metall unterschiedlicher Größe und Form, die sich nur dann bewegen, wenn sie von einem Men...

„Woof.“ (mit 11 Monaten verwendet zur Bezeichnung des Nachbarhundes) „Hot.“ (mit 14 Monaten verwendet zur Bezeichnung von Herd, Streichhölzern, Kerzen und Licht, das von glänzenden Oberflächen reflektiert wird) „Read me.“ (mit 21 Monaten verwendet, um die Mutter zu bitten, eine Geschichte vorzulesen) „Why I don’t have a dog?“ (mit 27 Monaten) „If y...

Im Jahre 1904 sah sich der französische Minister für Bildung und Erziehung einem Problem gegenüber. Frankreich hatte 1882 die allgemeine Schulpflicht eingeführt, wie damals viele andere Staaten in Westeuropa und Nordamerika; in Deutschland war die Schulpflicht bereits 1592 im Herzogtum Pfalz-Zweibrücken weltweit zum ersten Mal proklamiert und von F...

In ▶ Kap. 1 und 11 haben wir die schreckliche Lage von Kindern in Waisenhäusern beschrieben, die soziale, emotionale und kognitive Defizite entwickelten, nachdem es ihnen an regelmäßigen Interaktionen mit einem fürsorglichen Erwachsenen fehlte. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg beobachteten Anna Freud – die Tochter von Sigmund Freud – und Sophie Dann (Fre...

1979 kündigte die Volksrepublik China eine einschneidend neue Politik an, die sich dramatisch auf chinesische Familien auswirken sollte. Infolge der vielen Probleme, die mit der Übervölkerung des Landes zusammenhingen, entschied die chinesische Regierung, eine Obergrenze von einem Kind pro Familie einzurichten und ihre Einhaltung strikt durchzusetz...

An einem Nachmittag im Spätsommer spielten zwei Kinder im Garten, während ihre Mütter, die seit vielen Jahren gut befreundet waren, auf der Terrasse Tee tranken. Colin, fünf Jahre alt, und Catherine, viereinhalb Jahre alt, hatten schon als Säuglinge zusammen gespielt. Sie teilten viele Interessen, aber sie unterschieden sich auch in mancherlei Hins...

Viele Eltern grübeln ähnlich darüber nach, wie ihre einst musterhaften Kinder zu gedankenlosen, verantwortungslosen, selbstsüchtigen, unhöflichen, schlecht gelaunten Wesen mutieren konnten, nur weil sie in die Pubertät kamen. Nicht nur Eltern wundern sich über den Verhaltenswandel ihres Nachwuchses; auch die Heranwachsenden selbst sind oft verblüff...

Zwischen 1937 und 1943 beschrieben zahlreiche Personen, die beruflich mit Kindeserziehung und -fürsorge zu tun hatten, sowohl in den Vereinigten Staaten als auch in Europa ein beunruhigendes Phänomen: Kinder, deren Gefühle und Sorgen sich ausschließlich um sich selbst zu drehen schienen. Einige dieser Kinder waren zurückgezogen und isoliert; andere...

Man stelle sich folgende Situation vor: Ein junges Mädchen wird in den Raum eines Kindergartens gebracht, in dem ihr ein Versuchsleiter Süßigkeiten wie M&Ms, Marshmallows oder Brezeln zeigt. Anschließend erklärt der Versuchsleiter dem Mädchen, dass er den Raum „für eine Weile“ verlassen wird und dass es nun zwischen zwei Möglichkeiten wählen kann:...

Im April 1999 töteten Eric Harris und Dylan Klebold, zwei Schüler der Columbine-Highschool in Littleton im U.S.-Staat Colorado, ein Dutzend Schüler und einen Lehrer und verletzten 23 weitere Personen. So schrecklich dieser Vorfall war: Es hätte noch viel schlimmer kommen können. Die beiden Jugendlichen, die das Massaker monatelang sorgfältig geplan...

In den vorangegangenen 15 Kapiteln haben wir eine Fülle von Informationen zur Entwicklung von Kindern vorgestellt: zur Entwicklung von Wahrnehmung, Bindung, Konzeptverstehen, Sprache, Intelligenz, Regulation der Emotionen, Peer-Beziehungen, Aggression, Moralität, Geschlechtern und einer Vielzahl anderer wichtiger menschlicher Eigenschaften. Bei all...

Ein sieben Monate alter Junge sitzt auf dem Schoß seines Vaters und ist von dessen Brille fasziniert, greift nach einem der Bügel und zieht daran. Der Vater sagt „Au!“, und der Junge lässt los, fasst dann aber erneut hin und zieht an der Brille. Das bringt den Vater dazu, sich zu fragen, wie er die Brillengläser in Sicherheit bringen kann, ohne das...

Shawna , ein Mädchen von acht Monaten, krabbelt ins Schlafzimmer ihres sieben Jahre alten Bruders. Das Zimmer enthält viele Gegenstände: ein Bett, eine Kommode, einen Hund, einen Baseball samt Fanghandschuh, Bücher, Hefte, Schuhe, schmutzige Socken und dergleichen mehr. Für Shawnas Bruder enthält der Raum Möbel, Kleidung, Gedrucktes und Sportsachen...

Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie spielen mit einem Säugling . Wie wäre das wohl? Natürlich lächeln Sie und sprechen in gefühlvollem Tonfall, und das Baby lächelt vielleicht zurück und antwortet Ihnen, indem es glücklich gluckst. Wenn Sie aus irgendeinem Grund mit lauter, harter Stimme sprechen, wird das Baby verstummen und auf der Hut sein. Wenn Sie nach...

Wer dieses Standardwerk liest, erhält einen umfassenden Überblick über einschlägige Theorien, moderne Forschungsmethoden und neueste Erkenntnisse zur Kindes- und Jugendentwicklung. Die einfache, klare Sprache sowie zahlreiche Illustrationen und Fallbeispiele machen die Lektüre des Lehrbuchs für Studierende der Entwicklungspsychologie zum echten Ver...

Do babies have the devil in theme or are they divine?. Should parents talk to their infants, or is it a waste of time?. Do babies need a daily bath – or two or three daily baths? In this book, you will find answers to these and many other questions about infants and how to care for them. In fact, you'll find several different answers to each one. M...

Are babies divine, or do they have the devil in them? Should parents talk to their infants, or is it a waste of time? Answers to questions about the nature and nurture of infants appear in this book as advice to parents in seven world societies. Imagine what Dr. Spock might have written if he were a healer from Bali…or an Aboriginal grandmother fro...

In a study designed to test the relative effectiveness of spatial direction and brightness cues for spontaneous alternation, 29 rats were run in a grey T-maze with black and white inserts in the goal arms. Odor-trail cues were eliminated by changing the paper flooring of the maze between trials and between Ss. In Part A, the Ss received two daily t...

One of the most common types of interaction between parents and their very young children is picture-book reading, with alphabet books being one of the most popular types of book used in these interactions. Here we report two studies examining alphabet letter learning by 30- to 36-month-old children in book-reading interactions with an adult. Each...

Animals are important stimuli for humans, and for children in particular. In three experiments, we explored children's affinity for animals. In Experiment 1, 11- to 40-month-old children were presented with a free-play session in which they were encouraged to interact with several interesting toys and two live animals - a fish and a hamster. Experi...

Three experiments compared performance and transfer among children aged 83–94 months after written or manipulatives instruction on two-digit subtraction. In Experiment 1a, children learned with manipulatives or with traditional written numerals. All children then completed a written posttest. Experiment 1b investigated whether salient or perceptual...

Scale errors is a term referring to very young children's serious efforts to perform actions on miniature replica objects that are impossible due to great differences in the size of the child's body and the size of the target objects. We report three studies providing further documentation of scale errors and investigating the validity and robustne...

submitted to the University of Illinois, 1983. We wish to thank Steve

Parents commonly dress their baby girls in pink and their baby boys in blue. Although there is research showing that children prefer the colour blue to other colours (regardless of gender), there is no evidence that girls actually have a special preference for the colour pink. This is the focus of the current investigation. In a large cross-section...

Indicators of temperament appear early in infancy and remain relatively stable over time. Despite a great deal of interest in biological indices of temperament, most studies of infant temperament rely on parental reports or behavioral tasks. Thus, the extent to which commonly used temperament measures relate to potential biological indicators of in...

Preschool children (N = 104) read a book that described and illustrated color camouflage in animals (frogs and lizards). Children were then asked to indicate and explain which of 2 novel animals would be more likely to fall prey to a predatory bird. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were tested with pictures depicting animals in camouflage and no...

Fairness is central to morality. Previous research has shown that children begin to understand fairness between the ages of four and six, depending on the context and method used. Within distributive contexts, there is little clear evidence that children have a concept of fairness before the age of five. This research, however, has mostly examined...

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans’ rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that...

Consider the familiar story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. When this famous folklore heroine entered the home of the three-member ursine family after having been lost and wandering through the woods for some time, she was desperately tired. Spying a set of three chairs, she decided to sit down to rest. She first tried to sit in the biggest one,...

Snakes and spiders are the objects of two of the most common fears and phobias throughout the world. In the lab, researchers have documented two interesting phenomena in adult humans and nonhuman primates: A propensity for the rapid association of snakes and spiders with fear, and a propensity for the rapid detection of these threatening stimuli. H...

Previous work has shown that 4-month-olds can discriminate between two-dimensional (2D) depictions of structurally possible and impossible objects [S. M. Shuwairi (2009), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 115; S. M. Shuwairi, M. K. Albert, & S. P. Johnson (2007), Psychological Science, 18, 303]. Here, we asked whether evidence of discr...

In recent years, parents in the United States and worldwide have purchased enormous numbers of videos and DVDs designed and marketed for infants, many assuming that their children would benefit from watching them. We examined how many new words 12- to 18-month-old children learned from viewing a popular DVD several times a week for 4 weeks at home....

Picture books are ubiquitous in young children's lives and are assumed to support children's acquisition of information about the world. Given their importance, relatively little research has directly examined children's learning from picture books. We report two studies examining children's acquisition of labels and facts from picture books that v...

Symbol-Mediated Problem-SolvingYoung Children's Performance in Symbolic Object-Retrieval TasksA Model of Young Children's Symbol Use and UnderstandingDevelopment in Young Children's Symbolic FunctioningConclusion

Symbol-Mediated Problem SolvingYoung Children's Performance in Symbolic Object-Retrieval TasksA Model of Young Children's Symbol Use and UnderstandingDevelopment in Young Children's Symbolic FunctioningConclusion References

Young children occasionally make scale errors- they attempt to fit their bodies into extremely small objects or attempt to fit a larger object into another, tiny, object. For example, a child might try to sit in a dollhouse-sized chair or try to stuff a large doll into it. Scale error research was originally motivated by parents' and researchers' i...

The ability to quickly detect potential threat is an important survival mechanism for humans and other animals. Past research has established that adults have an attentional bias for the detection of threat-relevant stimuli, including snakes and spiders as well as angry human faces. Recent studies have documented that preschool children also detect...

Abstract— As the articles in this special issue suggest, linking concrete and abstract representations remains a fundamentally important challenge of cognition development and education research. This issue is considered from the perspective of the dual-representation hypothesis—all symbols are simultaneously objects in their own right and represen...

Pictures are referential in that they can represent objects in the real world. Here we explore the emergence of understanding of the referential potential of pictures during the second year of life. In Study 1, 15-, 18-, and 24-month-olds learned a word for a picture of a novel object (e.g., “blicket”) in the context of a picture book interaction....

One facet of Vigil's socio-relational framework of expressive behaviors (SRFB) suggests that females are more sensitive to facial expressions than are males, and should detect facial expressions more quickly. A re-examination of recent research with children demonstrates that girls do detect various facial expressions more quickly than do boys. Alt...

In the last decade, exposure to screen media has extended to ever earlier ages, as video products designed and marketed specifically for infants have proliferated and generated extraordinary sales. Parents purchase these products for multiple reasons, including the expectation that their infants will learn from them. We first summarize some of the...

Why are snakes such a common target of fear? One current view is that snake fear is one of several innate fears that emerge spontaneously. Another is that humans have an evolved predisposition to learn to fear snakes. In the first study reported here, 9- to 10-month-old infants showed no differential spontaneous reaction to films of snakes versus o...

Although picture-book reading is commonplace during infancy, little is known about the impact of this activity on learning. A previous study showed that 18- and 24-month-olds imitated a novel action sequence presented in a book that was illustrated with realistic color photos, whereas they failed to imitate from books illustrated with less realisti...

This chapter examines some of the growing literature on symbol-based learning in the first few years of life. It focuses on recent research involving two of the most common and influential symbolic media in the lives of very young children: language and pictures. It is shown that very young children's learning about the world is based in large part...

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias. In visual detection tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than the presence of other kinds of visual stimuli. We report evidence that very young children share this attentional bias. In three experiments, preschool children and adults were asked to find a single target pictur...

Picture book reading is a very common form of interaction between parents and very young children. Here we explore to what extent young children transfer novel information between picture books and the real world. We report that 15- and 18-month-olds can extend newly learned labels both from pictures to objects and from objects to pictures. However...

Reports an error in "Planes, trains, automobiles--and tea sets: Extremely intense interests in very young children" by Judy S. DeLoache, Gabrielle Simcock and Suzanne Macari (Developmental Psychology, 2007[Nov], Vol 43[6], 1579-1586). The DOI for the supplemental materials was printed incorrectly. The correct DOI is as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10...

Some normally developing young children show an intense, passionate interest in a particular category of objects or activities. The present article documents the existence of extremely intense interests that emerge very early in life and establishes some of the basic parameters of the phenomenon. Surveys and interviews with 177 parents revealed tha...

Using a symbolic object such as a model as a source of information about something else requires some appreciation of the relation between the symbol and what it represents. Representational insight has been proposed as essential to success in a symbolic retrieval task in which children must use information from a hiding event in a scale model to f...

One of the most distinctive characteristics of humans is the capacity to learn from what other people tell them. Often new information is provided about an entity that is not present, requiring incorporation of that information into one's mental representation of the absent object. Here we present evidence regarding the emergence of this vital abil...

What do toddlers learn from everyday picture-book reading interactions? To date, there has been scant research exploring this question. In this study, the authors adapted a standard imitation procedure to examine 18- to 30-month-olds' ability to learn how to reenact a novel action sequence from a picture book. The results provide evidence that todd...

Getting stuff published is easier than getting people to read what you've published. - Dennis Proffitt Introduction So, you've done some research and have some interesting results; perhaps you've even written drafts of your method and results sections. Now you have to write your introduction and discussion and figure out how to present your researc...

Prior research (DeLoache, Uttal & Rosengren, 2004) has documented that 18- to 30-month-olds occasionally make scale errors: they attempt to fit their bodies into or onto miniature objects (e.g. a chair) that are far too small for them. The current study explores whether scale errors are limited to actions that directly involve the child's body. We...

The concept of training children to start thinking symbolically is described. Throughout the first years of life, children become increasingly capable of curbing impulses, which helps them restrain from interacting directly with pictures. Teachers in preschool and elementary school classrooms around the world use blocks, rods, and other objects des...

In two experiments on very young children's response to the orientation of pictures and objects, 18-, 24- and 30-month-old children showed no preference for upright pictures over inverted ones. More importantly, we found that children in all three age groups were equally accurate and equally fast at identifying depicted objects regardless of orient...

Surface similarity generally promotes reasoning by analogy and physical similarity has been shown to have a powerful positive effect on very young children's use of a scale model as a source of information about another space. The research reported here investigated 2!-year -old children's performance in an object retrieval task when asked to reaso...

Cumulative experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been hypothesized as a source of young children's increasing sensitivity to new symbol-referent relations. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from transfer studies showing that experience with a relatively easy symbolic retrieval task improves performance on a more difficult task. Signi...

We report a perception-action dissociation in the behavior of normally developing young children. In adults and older children, the perception of an object and the organization of actions on it are seamlessly integrated. However, as documented here, 18- to 30-month-old children sometimes fail to use information about object size and make serious at...

No facet of human development is more crucial than becoming symbol-minded. To participate fully in any society, children have to master the symbol systems that are important in that society. Children today must learn to use more varieties of symbolic media than ever before, so it is even more important to understand the processes involved in symbol...

Very young children occasionally commit scale errors, which involve a dramatic dissociation between planning and control: A child's visual representation of the size of a miniature object is not used in planning an action on it, but is used in the control of the action. Glover's planning–control model offers a very useful framework for analyzing th...

El propósito de esta investigación es examinar la comprensión que los niños pequeños tienen de las relaciones simbólicas entre una fotografía y su referente. Específicamente, tratamos de investigar si los niños de 24 meses son capaces de seleccionar una fotografía que corresponda a una situación real observada (el ocultamiento de un objeto) y compa...

This chapter deals with the two very influential theorist of Picture perception–the “innocent eye” and the “intelligent eye.” It argues that the process of developing an “intelligent eye” to interpret and understand pictures is a very complex and protracted process, a process infants begin with a relatively (but not a fully) “innocent eye.” Underst...

Pictorial competence, which refers to the many factors involved in perceiving, interpreting, understanding, and using pictures, develops gradually over the first few years of life. Although experience is not required for accurate perception of pictures, it is necessary for understanding the nature of pictures. Infants initially respond to depicted...

In the first few years of life, children become increasingly sensitive to the significance of a variety of symbolic artifacts. An extensive body of research has explored very young children's ability to use symbol-based information as a guide to current reality. In one common task, for example, children watch as a miniature toy is hidden in a scale...

In previous research, we established that 9-month-old infants manually investigate pictured objects by hitting, rubbing, and grasping as if to pluck them off the page. This behavior suggests that infants do not understand the 2-dimensional nature of pictures. Although they can perceive depth cues and distinguish pictures from objects, they do not a...

The role of relational similarity in 3-year-old children’s understanding of the relation between a scale model and the space it represents was investigated in two studies. Relational similarity was manipulated by arranging the objects within the two spaces in either the same or different configurations; thus, the internal relations among the object...

To use a symbolic object such as a model, map, or picture, one must achieve dual representation; that is, one must mentally represent both the symbol itself and its relation to its referent. The studies reported here confirm predictions derived from this concept. As hypothesized, dual representation was as difficult for 2 1/2-year-olds to achieve w...

The very strong, natural-seeming preference that adults and older children have for looking at pictures in their canonical orientation is not shared by very young children. In 3 studies with 18- to 30-month-old children, several different assessments were made of the degree to which the children behaved differentially to upright versus inverted pic...

From the back cover: "Are babies divine, or do they have the devil in them? Should parents talk to their infants, or is it a waste of time? Answers to questions about the nature and nurture of infants appear in this book as advice to parents in seven world societies. Imagine what Dr. Spock might have written if he were a healer from Bali...or an...

Although young children begin to master a number of symbol systems in the first years of life, they need substantial social support to do so. Specifically, to detect a novel symbol-referent relation, young children may need very extensive, explicit information about the existence and nature of the relation. The three studies reported here show the...

Although young children begin to master a number of symbol systems in the first years of life, they need substantial social support to do so. Specifically, to detect a novel symbol-referent relation, young children may need very extensive, explicit information about the existence and nature of the relation. The three studies reported here show the...