28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

A large body of research on the child’s “theory of mind” has been devoted over the last 20 years to
why children younger than four years fail “false belief” tasks. Progress on this question has been
limited because little attention has been paid to the prior question of how four-year-olds pass the
task. I will outline a process model of how success on belief-desire reasoning tasks is achieved.
This leads to new insight into why younger children fail.
1013.3 Does the language we speak affect the way we think? L. Gleitman, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Recent commentary and experimentation in the topic-area of spatial organization has led some
investigators to believe that differences in spatial terminology and grammar across languages
influence memory and reasoning about spatial location and movement. Specifically, reasoning in
terms of ego-centered mental maps has been claimed to be difficult or impossible in such
languages as Mayan Tzeltal which have no locutions such as “ to my left” or “behind me.” We
present evidence showing that preliterate, monolingual Tzeltal speakers reason about space much
as do speakers of other languages. These findings are discussed as they relate to the understanding
of how human language and thought interact.
1013.4 Early learning, domain-specificity and relevance, R. Gelman, Rutgers University,
Piscataway, NJ, USA
Why do young children attend to the data they do? The idea that the information is salient begs the
question. In order to avoid circularity, we have to assign salience in advance of what is learned.
All learners, young or not, learn more about what they already know. Evidence is consistent with
the conclusion that our young benefit from skeletal domain-specific structures. These draw
attention to relevant data that can nurture learning coherent knowledge. Examples about numerical
and causal reasoning buttress this account of learning during development.
1014 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
Computer-mediated knowledge communication
Convener and Chair: H. Spada, Germany
Co-convener: F.W. Hesse, Germany
1014.1 Collaborative skill acquisition in a computer-mediated setting, H. Spada, University of
Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Collaborative skill acquisition is a precondition if complex tasks have to be solved efficiently by
persons working together in a computer-mediated setting. One aspect of good collaboration is the
coordination of joint work like time management, and division of labor and roles; another
concerns characteristics of the communication. But how to promote collaborative skill acquisition?
Is unguided practice sufficient? Two instructional methods are proposed, observational learning
from a best-practice example and scripted practice. These methods were applied and evaluated in a
study with 36 dyads collaborating for several hours on a task, in which experts of different fields
jointly solved psychiatric cases thereby communicating via a desktop video-conference (Rummel
& Spada, 2003).
1014.2 Conceptions about educational technology and its use in instruction, F.W. Hesse,
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