Aim: This study investigated prediction of separate cognitive abilities at the age of 5 years by cognitive development at the ages of both 2 and 3 years, and the agreement between these measurements, in very preterm children. Methods: Preterm children (n=102; 44 males; 58 females) with a gestational age less than 30 weeks and/or birthweight less…

A longstanding and fundamental debate in developmental science is whether knowledge is acquired through domain-specific or domain-general mechanisms. To date, there exists no tool to determine whether experimental data support one theoretical approach or the other. In this article, we argue that the U- and N-shaped curves found in a number of…

There are two major hypotheses concerning the developmental trends of processing speeds. These hypotheses explore both local and global trends. The study presented here investigates the effects of people's different knowledge on the speed with which they are able to process information. The participants in this study are gifted children aged 9,…

This study investigated how 4- to 7-year-old children's second-order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared with Perner and Wimmer's (1985) original second-order false-belief task, a new task with reduced information-processing demands…

The ability of 31- to 36-month-old children to act in accordance with rules was assessed in 2 slightly different experiments using sorting tasks and knowledge tasks. Taken together, the results of both experiments imply a relatively rapid, age-related change culminating in the ability to systematically execute rules that require access to extant…

Five experiments examined 15- and 18-month olds' sensitivity to morphosyntactic dependencies. Results indicated that 18-month olds, but not 15-month olds, were sensitive to basic relationship between "is" and "-ing" and that 18-month-olds could track relationships between functor morphemes. Findings were consistent with hypothesis that 18-month…

Reports an attempt to test two interpretations of immanent justice responses as causal attributions rather than as moral judgments. Finds older children use causal chains to explain contiguity between misdeed and adversity. Data were interpreted as consistent with an information-processing model of immanent justice responses. (RMH)

Longitudinal study examined 6-year-olds' performance in tasks involving a protagonist with partial information about an object or a person. Found that children who demonstrated some understanding of the consequences of limited information access often made other errors. Despite intervening additions of contextual support and clarifications, the…

This study investigated the relationship of 3-year olds' reliance on desire when predicting behavior and their performance on false-belief tasks. Results suggested that young children may use the desires of the agent, rather than their own desires, to predict behavior in standard false-belief paradigms. Older preschoolers also have difficulty…

Two experiments investigated short-term visual person recognition in 8- and 10-year-olds and adults within Tanaka and Farah's part-whole paradigm. Results revealed that person recognition became more accurate between 8 years and adulthood but there was no developmental shift in visual information processes with face and whole person recognition.…

Examined changes from age 7 to 82 years in processes responsible for preparation and interference control underlying alternation between two tasks. Found a U-shaped function for switch costs, with larger costs for young children and older adults. Age-related variance in task-switching performance was partially independent from age-related variance…

This paper discusses a model of information storage and retrieval, the k-d tree (Bentley, 1975), a binary, hierarchical tree with multiple associate terms, which has been explored in computer research, and it is suggested that this model could be useful for describing human cognition. Included are two models of human long-term memory--networks and…

This article provides an empirical evaluation of an indexing technology, topic maps (ISO 13250), in the context of an academic task in a higher education context. Topic maps are a form of indexing that define and display the interrelationships between various topics in a given domain, as well as anchor these topics to specific resources that help…

Matching a teaching method with a learner's style of learning is suggested as a most efficient way of creating an opportunity for a learning experience. Over 80 teaching strategies or models have been identified and categorized into four groups by educational theorists. The first group is identified as "social interaction models"; these emphasize…

Results confirmed that children differentially use knowledge of results and suggested that any description of motor skill acquisition must account for the complex interaction between developmental level and the difficulty of the task at hand. (Author/DB)