Research on the relation between social information processing and social adjustment in childhood is reviewed and interpreted within the framework of a reformulated model of human performance and social exchange. This reformulation proves to assimilate almost all previous studies and is a useful heuristic device for organizing the field. The review suggests that overwhelming evidence supports the empirical relation between characteristic processing styles and children's social adjustment, with some aspects of processing (e.g., hostile attributional biases, intention cue detection accuracy, response access patterns, and evaluation of response outcomes) likely to be causal of behaviors that lead to social status and other aspects (e.g., perceived self-competence) likely to be responsive to peer status

A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children's social adjustment.

The authors describe a constructionist theory that accounts for the knowledge-based inferences that are constructed when readers comprehend narrative text. Readers potentially generate a rich variety of inferences when they construct a referential situation model of what the text is about. The proposed constructionist theory specifies that some, but not all, of this information is constructed under most conditions of comprehension. The distinctive assumptions of the constructionist theory embrace a principle of search (or effort) after meaning. According to this principle, readers attempt to construct a meaning representation that addresses the reader's goals, that is coherent at both local and global levels, and that explains why actions, events, and states are mentioned in the text. This study reviews empirical evidence that addresses this theory and contrasts it with alternative theoretical frameworks.

Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension.

https://www.public.asu.edu/~mtchi/papers/Self-explanations94.pdf

Eliciting Self‐Explanations Improves Understanding

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/87/6/477.pdf

A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills.

Research has demonstrated that extensive structural and functional brain development continues throughout adolescence. A popular notion emerging from this work states that a relative immaturity in frontal cortical neural systems could explain adolescents' high rates of risk-taking, substance use and other dangerous behaviours. However, developmental neuroimaging studies do not support a simple model of frontal cortical immaturity. Rather, growing evidence points to the importance of changes in social and affective processing, which begin around the onset of puberty, as crucial to understanding these adolescent vulnerabilities. These changes in social-affective processing also may confer some adaptive advantages, such as greater flexibility in adjusting one's intrinsic motivations and goal priorities amidst changing social contexts in adolescence.

Understanding adolescence as a period of social–affective engagement and goal flexibility.

The authors investigated risk taking and underlying information use in 13 to 16 and 17 to 19 year old adolescents and in adults in 4 experiments, using a novel dynamic risk-taking task, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). The authors investigated risk taking under differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes with 2 versions of the CCT, constituting the most direct test of a dual-system explanation of adolescent risk taking in the literature so far. The "hot" CCT was designed to trigger more affective decision making, whereas the "cold" CCT was designed to trigger more deliberative decision making. Differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes in the 2 CCT versions was established by self-reports and assessment of electrodermal activity. Increased adolescent risk taking, coupled with simplified information use, was found in the hot but not the cold condition. Need-for-arousal predicted risk taking only in the hot condition, whereas executive functions predicted information use in the cold condition. Results are consistent with recent dual-system explanations of risk taking as the result of competition between affective processes and deliberative cognitive-control processes, with adolescents' affective system tending to override the deliberative system in states of heightened emotional arousal.

Affective and Deliberative Processes in Risky Choice: Age Differences in Risk Taking in the Columbia Card Task

The authors investigated risk taking and underlying information use in 13- to 16- and 17- to 19-year-old adolescents and in adults in 4 experiments, using a novel dynamic risk-taking task, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). The authors investigated risk taking under differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes with 2 versions of the CCT, constituting the most direct test of a dual-system explanation of adolescent risk taking in the literature so far. The "hot" CCT was designed to trigger more affective decision making, whereas the "cold" CCT was designed to trigger more deliberative decision making. Differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes in the 2 CCT versions was established by self-reports and assessment of electrodermal activity. Increased adolescent risk taking, coupled with simplified information use, was found in the hot but not the cold condition. Need-for-arousal predicted risk taking only in the hot condition, whereas executive functions predicted information use in the cold condition. Results are consistent with recent dual-system explanations of risk taking as the result of competition between affective processes and deliberative cognitive-control processes, with adolescents' affective system tending to override the deliberative system in states of heightened emotional arousal.

/pdf/affective-and-deliberative-processes-in-risky-choice-age-1inglgrw9t.pdf

Affective and deliberative processes in risky choice: Age differences in risk taking in the Columbia Card Task.

In a mental rotation task, children 5 and 6 years of age and adults had to decide as quickly as possible if a photograph of a hand showed a left or a right limb. The visually presented hands were left and right hands in palm or in back view, presented in four different angles of rotation. Participants had to give their responses with their own hands either in a regular, palms-down posture or in an inverted, palms-up posture. For both children and adults, variation of the posture of their own hand had a significant effect. Reaction times were longer the more awkward it was to bring their own hand into the position shown in the stimulus photograph. These results, together with other converging evidence, strongly suggest that young children's kinetic imagery is guided by motor processes, even more so than adults'.

Motor processes in children's imagery: the case of mental rotation of hands.

Integrating velocity, time, and distance information: a developmental study.

This article contrasts intuitive knowledge about projectile motion expressed in action with knowledge expressed in explicit judgments. In the action condition of Experiment 1 children and adults threw a ball horizontally from different heights to hit targets on the floor; in the judgment condition the same subjects rated the respective launch speeds required. All age groups appropriately varied the launch speed with respect to both height of release and target distance in the action condition. In the judgment condition, however, kindergartners failed to integrate the relevant dimensions and even fourth graders and adults showed misconceptions of the speed-height relation. Experiment 2 established that the speed gradations in the action condition did not critically depend on visual flight feedback or the availability of outcome information

Friedrich Wilkening

Papers

Affective and Deliberative Processes in Risky Choice: Age Differences in Risk Taking in the Columbia Card Task

Affective and deliberative processes in risky choice: Age differences in risk taking in the Columbia Card Task.

Motor processes in children's imagery: the case of mental rotation of hands.

Integrating velocity, time, and distance information: a developmental study.

Intuitive physics in action and judgment: the development of knowledge about projectile motion