The US Department of Justice released the final report on school violence and showed that middle school is the age when violence is high, accounting for more than 70% of all violence cases (Zweig et al., 2013). After having perpetrated, the probability that the perpetrator will commit violence again will increase significantly (Office of the…

Developmental cognitive neuroscience studies tend to show that the prefrontal brain regions (known to be involved in inhibitory control) are activated during the generation of creative ideas. In the present article, we discuss how a dual-process model of creativity--much like the ones proposed to account for decision making and reasoning--could…

The meaning, mechanism, and function of imitation in early infancy have been actively discussed since Meltzoff and Moore's (1977) report of facial and manual imitation by human neonates. Oostenbroek et al. (2016) claim to challenge the existence of early imitation and to counter all interpretations so far offered. Such claims, if true, would have…

The study of development vacillates between a focus on change (i.e., studying how and why infants are so different from adults) and excitement about early competence and continuity (i.e., studying how capable infants are, and marveling at how similar they turn out to be to adults). The study of memory development has been no exception. This…

This article provides a selective overview of recent event-related brain potential (ERP) studies in L2 morpho-syntax, demonstrating that the ERP evidence supporting the critical period hypothesis (CPH) may be less compelling than previously thought. The article starts with a general introduction to ERP methodology and language-related ERP profiles…

The current study examined group differences in cortical volume, surface area, and thickness with age, in a group of typically developing children and a group of children with ASD aged 6-15 years. Results showed evidence of age by group interactions, suggesting atypicalities in the relation between these measures and age in the ASD group.…

Pseudoneglect is a slight but consistent leftward attentional bias commonly observed in healthy young populations, purportedly explained by right hemispheric dominance. It has been suggested that normal aging might be associated with a decline of the right hemisphere. According to this hypothesis, a few studies have shown that elderly tend to…

In many instances, children and older adults show similar difficulties in reward-based learning and outcome monitoring. These impairments are most pronounced in situations in which reward is uncertain (e.g., probabilistic reward schedules) and if outcome information is ambiguous (e.g., the relative value of outcomes has to be learned).…

The development of attention is critical for the young child's competence in dealing with the demands of everyday life. Here we review evidence from infants and preschool children regarding the development of three neural subsystems of attention: selective attention, sustained attention, and attentional (executive) control. These systems overlap…

Previous studies on performance monitoring repeatedly found attenuated error-related negativities (Ne/ERN) in elderly, while findings for the correct-related negativity (Nc/CRN) are inconsistent. The present study aimed at clarifying inconsistent Nc/CRN results in elderly. Therefore, a refined design was employed to control for potential…

Previous volumetric developmental MRI studies of the brain have shown white matter development continuing through adolescence and into adulthood. This review presents current findings regarding white matter development and organization from diffusion MRI studies. The general trend during adolescence (age 12-18 years) is towards increasing…

A default mode network of brain regions is known to demonstrate coordinated activity during the resting state. While the default mode network is well characterized in adults, few investigations have focused upon its development. We scanned 9-13-year-old children with diffusion tensor imaging and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging.…

fMRI was used to explore age differences in the neural substrate of dual-task processing. Brain activations when there was a 100 ms SOA between tasks, and task overlap was high, were contrasted with activations when there was a 1000 ms SOA, and first task processing was largely complete before the second task began. Younger adults (M = 21 yrs)…

Recently, an event-related potential (ERP) study (Lorenzo-Lopez et al., 2008) provided evidence that normal aging significantly delays and attenuates the electrophysiological correlate of the allocation of visuospatial attention (N2pc component) during a feature-detection visual search task. To further explore the effects of normal aging on the…

The ability to keep information active in working memory is one of the cornerstones of cognitive development. Prior studies have demonstrated that regions which are important for working memory performance in adults, such as dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), and superior parietal cortex, become…