Research Questions How do young children reason about the effects of emotional and physiological states on cognition? Do

1. Amsterlaw, J., Lagattuta, K.J., & Meltzoff, A.N. (2009). Young children’s reasoning about the effects of emotional and physiological states on academic performance. Child Development, 80(1), 115 – 133. Reviewed by Brandy Quinn, May 18, 2009 • Research Questions • How do young children reason about the effects of emotional and physiological states on cognition? • Does this ability change over time? Results 1. Children understand impairment of performance due to negative states earlier than they understand improvement b/c of positive states. 2. Referencing of cognitive mechanism to explain why states effect performance increases with age. 3. Children can differentiate what does and does not impact performance as they get older. Method Participants: 72 children (24 each of 5, 6 and 7 year-olds; 75% Caucasian, 15% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 3% American Indian/Alaskan Native, 7% other backgrounds; 86% from homes where both parents completed college, 64% with at least one parent with a graduate or professional degree) 24 college students (M age = 18.9 years; 46% Caucasian, 42% Asian, 8% Hispanic, 12% other backgrounds) Implications Because changes in emotional and physical states are a regular part of children’s experience in school, they can be helped in their academic performance if they obtain the knowledge and skills to understand how these states affect performance. Procedure: *Prediction task and explanation task based on story (physiological or emotional; noisy-quiet; no-change; neutral-change; valence-change) *Warm-up/Rating Scale Training *Children sat 1:1 with researcher; adults completed written packet *Indicated whether the character would do about the same, or better or worse than before and provided reasoning * Predictions were coded on a -2 to +2 scale’ Explanations were coded into 10 categories Strengths and Weaknesses Strengths: Controlled for a variety of other potential influencing factors in stories (gender, ethnicity, valence, etc.); controlled for priming effect by balancing order of story presentation; seems to have real relevance to education. Weaknesses: makes “change” predictions with a cross-sectional study; sample is heavily biased towards the well-educated; “correct” predictions were based on folk theories.