In this article, we integrate two constructionist approaches--the theory of constructed emotion and rational constructivism--to introduce several novel hypotheses for understanding emotional development. We first discuss the hypothesis that emotion categories are abstract and conceptual, whose instances share a goal-based function in a particular…

The authors recently studied how well schools were teaching a a range of complex, higher-order skills. Their findings were grim. Out of 25 skills that researchers have found to be critical to success in life and work, just three were the focus of most instruction: recall, application, and (occasionally) analysis. Even when teachers explicitly made…

Can young children discriminate impossible events, which cannot happen in reality, from improbable events, which are unfamiliar but could possibly happen in reality? When asked explicitly to categorize these types of events, 4-year-olds (N = 54) tended to report that improbable events were impossible, consistent with prior results (Shtulman &…

At the present, human capital theory (HCT) and neuroscience reasoning are dominant frameworks in early childhood education and care (ECEC) worldwide. Popular since the 1960s, HCT has provided an economic understanding of human beings and offered strategies to manage the population with the promise of bringing improvements to nations. Neuroscience…

Malformations of cerebral cortical development include a wide range of developmental disorders that are common causes of neurodevelopmental delay and epilepsy. In addition, study of these disorders contributes greatly to the understanding of normal brain development and its perturbations. The rapid recent evolution of molecular biology, genetics…

Many theories of human cognition postulate that people are equipped with a repertoire of strategies to solve the tasks they face. This theoretical framework of a cognitive toolbox provides a plausible account of intra- and interindividual differences in human behavior. Unfortunately, it is often unclear how to rigorously test the toolbox…

This article evaluates the learning outcomes of a month-long cities in film course offered during an intensive, four-week semester at a liberal arts college in the United States. The course was divided into four shorter units that explored specific cities and subregions in detail through multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives. It begins…

To design an effective computer science curriculum, educators require a systematic method of classifying the difficulty level of learning activities and assessment tasks. This is important for curriculum design and implementation and for communication between educators. Different educators must be able to use the method consistently, so that…

One surprising feature of cognitive and emotional development in the moral domain is the so-called happy victimizer phenomenon, which is commonly explained by a lack of moral motivation. Concerning this general approach, there are two pieces of news in this chapter. The bad news is that moral motivation is a highly problematic concept and its…

Is processing of conceptual information as robust as processing of perceptual information early in development? Existing empirical evidence is insufficient to answer this question. To examine this issue, 3- to 5-year-old children were presented with a flexible categorization task, in which target items (e.g., an open red umbrella) shared category…

The authors investigated the ability of 9- to 11-year-olds and of adults to use similarity-based and rule-based processes as a function of task characteristics in a task that can be considered either a categorization task or a multiple-cue judgment task, depending on the nature of the criterion (binary vs. continuous). Both children and adults…

Two studies examined how children between ages 4 and 6 use body shape (i.e., the waist-to-hip-ratio [WHR]) for sex categorization. In Study 1 (N = 73), 5- and 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, selected bodies with increasingly discrepant WHRs to be "most like a man" and "most like a woman." Similarly, sex category judgments made by 5- and…

Studies of the development of racial awareness have used--albeit asystematically--stimuli of varying degrees of realism (dolls, drawings, photographs). Although researchers have weighed the advantages and disadvantages of using one or the other type of material with young children, there are no empirical studies that determine whether the nature…

Fourteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and fourteen age-matched typically-developing (TD) controls were tested on an adapted version of the Twenty Questions Task (Mosher and Hornsby in Studies in cognitive growth. Wiley, New York, pp 86-102, "1966") to examine effects of content, executive and verbal IQ factors on category use in…

Studies of communication in early infancy and childhood have highlighted the significance of rhythm, sound and music for emotional and social development. There is, however, little detailed empirical data on the emergence of naturalistic music-related behaviour by children in the early years. The aim of this work is to examine instances of…