This study investigated the development of divergent thinking (DT) in early childhood. We followed 107 4-year-olds for 1.5 years. Children's DT was assessed with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) every 6 months, four times in total. Within the AUT, children were asked to generate unusual uses of common objects while explaining how they came up with…

Although children's school success is a parental goal in most cultures, there is wide cultural variation in the qualities that parents most wish their children to develop for that purpose. A questionnaire contained forty-one child qualities was administered to 757 parents in seven cultural communities in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland,…

Rejection by peers has devastating effects on children's social-cognitive development. As language difficulties have been found to be one of the underlying causes of peer rejection, the present study focused on the relation between these two variables. Specifically, this study was the first to test a hypothesized model connecting children's level…

We examined whether typical developmental trends in suggestion-induced false memories (i.e., age-related decrease) could be changed. Using theoretical principles from the spontaneous false memory field, we adapted 2 often-used false memory procedures: misinformation (Experiment 1) and memory conformity (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 7- to…

Aim: The long-term outcome of the Dutch pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy cohort and correlations between patient characteristics and follow-up data were retrospectively studied. Method: Fourteen patients recruited from a national reference laboratory were included (four males, 10 females, from 11 families; median age at assessment 6y; range 2y…

Empathy is an important social skill and is believed to play an essential role in moral development (Hoffman, 2000). In the present longitudinal study, the authors investigated adolescents' development of perspective taking and empathic concern from age 13 to 18 years (mean age at Wave 1 = 13 years, SD = 0.46) and examined its association with…

We examined the relation between cognitive development and fear, anxiety, and behavioral inhibition in a non-clinical sample of 226 Dutch children aged 4-9 years. To assess cognitive development, children were tested with Piagetian conservation tasks and a Theory-of-Mind (TOM) test. Fears were measured by means of a self-report scale completed by…

This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre-schools to experienced German and Dutch pre-school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in…

This longitudinal study examined the question of change and stability in students' used learning strategies during the first 2 years of study at the university. A total of 188 students from Tilburg University in the Netherlands took part in the study, including 90 in law, 27 in art, 48 in economics, and 23 in the social sciences. The students…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

Examines the changes that occur from ages 5 to 11 in question/answer sequences of Dutch children. Function, content, form of questions, and listener response are analyzed. (EKN)

Examined effects of conceptually based instruction on development of students' procedural flexibility. Students in primary schools in the Netherlands participated in one of two instruction programs: the Realistic Program Design (RPD) or the Gradual Program Design (GPD). In both programs, conceptual understanding preceded procedural skill. However,…

The first objective of this study was to establish to what extent metacognitive skill development is associated with intelligence. As a second objective, the generality vs. domain-specificity of maturing metacognitive skills was investigated. Both issues have major implications for the training and transferability of metacognitive skills.…

Although it is generally believed that early intervention programmes are an effective means to stimulate children's cognitive development, many questions remain concerning programme design and delivery. This article reviews 19 studies into the effectiveness of early intervention programmes published from 1985 onward. The database comprised 85…

In this study Dutch subjects with four different levels of expertise (24 second-year, 24 fourth-year, 24 sixth-year medical students, and 24 internists with at least 4 years of experience) studied, diagnosed, and explained four clinical cases. Diagnostic accuracy increased with the increasing level of expertise. The number of concepts used and the…