Dimitris M Pnevmatikos

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to discuss two interesting questions regarding awareness about mind. The first one concerns the origin, nature and the mechanisms that are involved in its appearance. The second question refers to its developmental sequence. The discussion is based on the psychological theories and the empirical findings that derived from two distinct, up to now, fields of inquiry regarding the awareness about mind, the theory of mind and metacognition. The discussion is also based on the current neurophysiological data since neuroscience offers a vast body of knowledge that either supports or clarifies the relevant psychological approaches. The paper ends with the statement that the available psychological knowledge, whether combined with the neuropsyciological findings, could serve as a basis for the construction of a model regarding the nature and development of self-consciousness.

Abstract: This study aimed at investigating the beliefs of parents concerning the contribution of parental involvement on their children’s academic achievement. Five hundred and thirty parents completed questionnaires concerning (a) their beliefs about the effect of parental involvement on their children’s academic achievement, (b) the anxiety they experienced as students, (c) their feelings of pride for their children’s school, and (d) their academic expectations for their children. Factor analysis of the first questionnaire revealed three types of parental involvement: (a) parental involvement in broader school life, (b) parental involvement in learning at home, and (c) school-family communication. Parents, depending on their education level, gender, age, anxiety as students, and academic expectations for their children, were differentiated in their beliefs regarding parental involvement.

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to give an answer to fundamental issues regarding the children’s acquisition of concepts through the investigation of the conceptual change in the field of religion and, particularly, through the study of the development of the concept of GOD. Prior researches have revealed qualitative differentiations between children’s representations and the theologically accepted beliefs for God. These differences have been interpreted, mainly, in terms of children’s weakness to understand abstract concepts before the stage of formal thought. However, these studies have also shown that a great number of adolescents and adults have difficulties in representing abstractively the concept of GOD. In the present study, it was hypothesized that children and adolescents’ weakness to represent the concept of GOD in the theologically accepted way, derives from constraints that are posed by the ontological presuppositions of their initial knowledge upon which they construct the concept of GOD. The results of present study showed that children’s conceptualization of God is constrained by the ontological presuppositions of the living beings in which children, initially, categorize the concept of GOD. Moreover, the results showed that the acquisition of the theologically accepted knowledge for the Christian God does not happen as change of theory but it happens, progressively, through the creation of alternative mental models like those of God as superman, as soul or as spirit.

Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate the development of children’s knowledge about consciousness. For this purpose, children of ages 5, 6, 7, 9, 11 years, and young adults were asked a) to estimate whether protagonists of stories who are engaged in cognitive activities determined by the activation of various cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and comprehension, and specialized capacities, such as quantitative, imaginal, and verbal, could think (primary-consciousness activities), b) to determine the content of protagonists’ thinking, c) to estimate whether protagonists know that they thinking (reflective consciousness activities), and d) whether protagonists could deliberately decide to change the content of their thinking. The results of the study showed that, even though preschoolers demonstrate an efficient knowledge about the various aspects of consciousness, the development of this knowledge undergoes several changes during childhood. The results of the study have also showed that the development of children’s knowledge about consciousness is not necessarily linear.

Abstract: Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga (2001) have suggested that children are able to conceptualize the representational properties held by certain super-natural entities, such as God, before they achieve representational understanding of the human mind. The two experimental conditions of the present study aimed at cross-checking the above suggestion. One hundred and twenty children aged from 3 to 7 years were involved in both conditions. In the first, a modified perspective-taking and appearance-reality task, similar to that adopted in Barrett et al.’s study, was used. The task in the second addressed another aspect of representational understanding of the human mind, that is, the early emerging of the rule that knowledge is constrained by perception. The results of the study showed that younger children systematically treat God as a human protagonist regarding the representational properties they possess. Moreover, it was found that children are able to reason, accurately, about God’s representational properties, only upon reaching their 5th year of age, when their representational understanding of the human mind becomes stable and robust.

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Abstract: The study examined the accuracy with which parents and teachers can judge their children’s achievement in mathematics and the relations between parental beliefs and teachers’ beliefs. The participants were 40 first- and second-grade children from low-income families, their mothers and their teachers. Each child performed 28 mathematical tasks, and their parents and teachers predicted how well the child would perform each task. The parents’ and teachers’ predictions were accurate for most of the tasks but far from perfectly accurate, the main error being to overestimate the children’s ability to succeed in the tasks. Accuracy varied as a function of the age of the child (parents and teachers were more accurate for second graders) and across tasks. Parental beliefs and teachers’ beliefs were almost the same, indicating that everyday teacher-parent communication is a safe way of helping parents to form accurate beliefs about their children’s achievement in school. Results suggest that the key point of the cycle is the teacher, who must be educated to evaluate students accurately and then to inform parents so that they can form accurate beliefs.

Abstract: A recent study conducted by Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga (2001) suggested that children are able to conceptualize the representational properties of god before they achieve the representational understanding of the human mind. The four experiments described below aimed at validating this suggestion. The experiments used 79 children (aged from 3.1 to 7.11 years) and 66 children (aged from 3.3 to 7.11 years). In experiment 1 and experiment 3 children were tested, respectively, with a false belief task and a modified perspective – taking task similar to that adopted in Barrett et al.’s work. In the other two experiments, children participated in tasks addressed to earlier aspects of the representational understanding of the human mind, that is, the understanding of the subjective character of the human mind and the understanding of the rule that links perception with knowledge. In all experiments participants were asked about humans and god’s representational properties. The results of the study showed that children are able to reason accurately on god’s representational properties only when they have achieved an advanced level of understanding of the representational character of the human mind.

Abstract: The basic aim of this study was to investigate the effect of cultural context on the conceptual change regarding the concept of God as it is conceived by two different religious groups, namely Christian and Muslim elementary schoolchildren. The 128 Christian and 122 Muslim elementary schoolchildren participated in the present study, aged 7 - 12 years old, drew at the A4 paper their house and the house where God / Allah lives in. The results of the study showed that children from both religious groups start from the same conceptual basis based on the ontology of God (God is a human being living on earth), and follow the same developmental direction in the course of conceptual change (God is a human being-soul living in the clouds, and God is a spirit). However, the choice of the drawing that represents the concept of God seems to be culturally predetermined. Differences in the timing of the conceptual change have also been found.

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Abstract: The present paper was part of a larger project, which investigated the process of knowledge acquisition in Christian religion. The concept of God in particular is a core construct in any religion and it has been involved in a number of changes in the history of religions. Some of those changes were observed in the children’s constructions of the house that God lives in. Among children’s drawings we found changes which imply, in terms of Thagard (1992) not only belief revision, but also a conceptual change. However, hierarchy reinterpretation, in which the concept of God changes from the part of the cosmos to the creator (ontologically different from the creatures) we did not observe among the primary school children. The development of the different hierarchies we constructed on the basis of children’s drawings seems to follow the developmental changes, which took place in the history of Greek religions. Finally, there were some implications for Religious Education.

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Abstract: In the study of religious behaviour the terms intrinsic and extrinsic were used to differentiate two forms of motivation underpinning religious practices and thought. In this study, participation in religious practices of both children and their families was considered indicative of extrinsic motivation for the children, whereas religious experience considered indicative of intrinsic motivation. It was predicted that intrinsic motivation would lead to a higher level of religious thought than extrinsic motivation. One hundred and twenty Greek participants from eight to sixteen years of age took part in the study. Participants were interviewed with three sets of questionnaires. The first set investigated the existence of extrinsic motivation and the second the existence of intrinsic motivation. The third questionnaire tested five religious concepts. Multiple regressions analysis (Stepwise method) showed that only the effect of religious experience (i.e. intrinsic motivation) predicted a higher level of religious thinking; however, this effect was not equally strong for all the religious concepts tested. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to test the effect of the interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The multivariate analysis did not reveal second or first order interactions between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The main effect of religious experience was the only significant effect found.

Abstract: The purpose of the present study was first to investigate the structure and the development of religious thinking, from childhood to adolescence. Second, to uncover the relations between the religious thinking and the other abilities of thinking described by the Demetriou & Efklides theory as Specialized Structural Systems (SSSs). Third to look into the factors responsible for the individual differences. The subjects included in this study were 120 children and adolescents from 8 to 16 years of age. They came from 3 different socio-economical status (SES). Two booklets were delivered to each subject: the first was on cognitive tasks especially on the qualitative, quantitative and causal SSS. The second was a religious questionnaire answered by interview. The results showed that the religious thinking is organised in networks in a base of a conceptual structure. Religious thinking is a complex cognitive process related to quantitative and causal abilities. The development of religious thinking follows the development of these abilities. Considering the individual differences, the effect of age, cognitive level and the religious experience was found to be significant. Also the interactions between age and SES was also found to be significant.

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Abstract: During the last two decades, there is an explosion of research regarding children’s theory of mind, that is, awareness about the nature and the functioning of the human mind (see Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Despite the vast body of the research on this area, we still know little about children’s understanding of certain aspects of the human mind, such as consciousness. With the exception of the studies conducted by Flavell and his colleagues (e.g., Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1995) there is no other empirical work regarding children’s knowledge about consciousness. Flavell et al. (1995) have shown that preschoolers have a limited understanding of consciousness. Specifically, they are not able to understand what James (1890/1983) called the stream of consciousness or to infer the object of a person’s thinking even in cases where clear evidence is available. However, these studies focused on children’s knowledge about consciousness regarding perceptual activities rather than higher cognitive activities such as problem solving. Moreover, these studies investigated children’s knowledge about primary consciousness rather than reflective consciousness, that is, the existence of thoughts about thinking itself (Fathring, 1992). The present study aimed at providing an insight into the knowledge children have about primary and reflective consciousness from a developmental perspective. Participants. For this purpose, 98 children 5, 6, 7, 9, 11 years old and young adults participated in the study. All participants came from middle class families. Material and procedure. Participants were tested individually with a battery consisted of seven illustrated stories. In each of these stories the protagonists were involved in the processing of a task demanding the activation of a general cognitive function (such as list memory, episodic memory, attention or understanding) or a specialized cognitive capacity, such as mathematical, verbal or imaginal capacity (Demetriou, Christou, Spanoudis, & Platsidou, 2002). Participants were asked a) to estimate whether the protagonist of the story is thinking (primary-consciousness activities), b) to determine the content of protagonist’s thinking, c) to determine whether the protagonist know what she/he is thinking (reflective consciousness activities), and d) whether protagonist could change the content of her/his thinking. Moreover, participants were asked to describe what the protagonist has to do for the effective processing of the task at hand. Results and discussion. The results of the study showed that even though preschoolers demonstrate efficient knowledge about various aspects of consciousness the development of this knowledge undergoes several changes during childhood. Specifically, it was found that the developmental milestones of the knowledge acquisition about consciousness vary across aspects of consciousness. Also, the development of children’s knowledge about consciousness is not necessarily linear. Moreover, it was found that children made significantly more consciousness attributions in specialized capacity situations than in general cognitive function ones. As for participants’ estimations regarding the way that the protagonists would follow for the processing of the task at hand, it was found that not until their 10 years children are able to specify accurately the mental functions and capacities required for the processing of the various tasks. The results are discussed with reference to the literature regarding children’s theory of mind as well as in relation to a ‘person – time – condition’ enacted conception of cognitive development.

Abstract: The aim of the present study was to investigate primary school children’s perceptions towards cheating. The way (moral vs social conventions) children classify cheating, the peers’ norms (positive vs negative), the form (passive vs active) of cheating and the age was examined. One hundred eighty primary school children completed a questionnaire constructed for the present study based on Eisenberg (2004). Results indicated that during childhood (a) cheating is considered as a social convention rather than as a moral issue; (b) children do not differentiate their attitude towards cheating according to their peers’ norms or (c) the forms of the cheating; (d) after the 10th year of age, children appear to be more positive towards cheating

Abstract: The paper describes two experiments aimed at investigating the conceptual hierarchies constructed around the idea of God among two culturally different groups, namely Christians and Muslims. The findings of the first experiment showed that, despite the similarities between the two religious groups in terms of the pattern of hierarchies they construct during childhood, the chronological milestones of the acquisition of the various levels of the hierarchies differed between the two groups. The findings of the second experiment showed that these differences diminished during the first years of adulthood. The social and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Proposals for future research are also presented.

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the nature of the conceptual change that takes place in the domain of religion. Specifically, it aims to investigate children’s initial knowledge about the ontology of God and in particular whether children use some epistemological and ontological presuppositions about the concept God that are based on their every day experience and that could be explained using the theoretical framework of conceptual change developed by Vosniadou and Brewer. Moreover, we are keen to explore whether children generate mental models in their effort to change their initial knowledge about the ontology of beings. We asked children and pre-adolescents about whether God has biological needs. We investigated two dimensions in particular: the need to sleep and the need to eat. All the children interviewed and from our data revealed an initial mental model, two synthetic mental models and one final one. The findings support the idea that children have presuppositions organised in a kind of a framework theory. Such presupposition is difficult to change by simple accretion of a new knowledge. It is necessary to reorganise their initial framework on the basis of the new ontological presuppositions. Internal consistency within the same investigated dimension seemed to be high, but decreased when the consistency between the two dimensions was checked.

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