The current prospective cohort study investigated whether early perceptual abilities, measured at preschool age, could predict later intellectual abilities at school age in a group of 41 autistic (9 girls, 32 boys) and 57 neurotypical children (29 girls, 28 boys). More than 80% of the autistic children were considered minimally verbal.…

The recent introduction of inclusive schooling settings in France has allowed children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as young as 3 years to benefit from teaching adapted to their special needs, while sharing the same educational environment as their typical peers. The present study examined (1) whether children with ASD attending an…

We examine the effect of the transition to a separate middle school after grade six on student cognitive, non-cognitive, and perceptual developments in China. We use an approach that combines inverse propensity score weighting and discrete factor approximation to address the endogeneity of the transition. We find that transitioning students report…

The expert performance approach, initially proposed by Ericsson and Smith (1991), is reviewed as a systematic framework for the study of "expert" learning. The need to develop representative tasks to capture learning is discussed, as is the need to employ process-tracing measures during acquisition to examine what actually changes during…

Perceptual development which depends on ability of learning and maturity, is the most important process of mental development. It is commonly believed that the mental development of children is limited due to city life. Children can learn perceptual elements through movement participation. This improves the cognitive development, which triggers…

How does perceptual learning take place early in life? Traditionally, researchers have focused on how infants make use of information within displays to organize it, but recently, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how infants perceive objects differently depending upon their recent interactions with the objects. This experiment…

This report summarizes research about development during the first 3 years of life. It highlights research in domains that are foundational for later school readiness and success, including: (1) perceptual, motor, and physical development; (2) social and emotional development; (3) approaches to learning; (4) language and communication; and (5)…

During infant development, objects and their functions are learned by means of active exploration. Factors that may influence exploration include reaching and grasping ability, object properties and the presence of developmental disorders. We assessed the development of exploratory actions in 16 typically-developing (TD) infants and 9 infants with…

More than a century ago, Galton and Spearman suggested that there was a functional relationship between sensory discrimination ability and intelligence. Studies have since been able to confirm a close relationship between general discrimination ability (GDA) and IQ. The aim of the present study was to assess whether this strong relationship…

Using nationally representative samples of 45,964 two- to nine-year-old children and their primary caregivers in 17 developing countries, this study examined the relations between children's cognitive, language, sensory, and motor disabilities and caregivers' use of discipline and violence. Primary caregivers reported on their…

Although some evidence indicates that even very young children engage in rudimentary forms of strategic behavior, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. This study tested the hypothesis that uncertainty monitoring underlies such behaviors. Three-, four-, and five-year-old children ("N" = 88) completed a perceptual…

Timing is essential for the development of cognitive skills known to be impaired in Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), such as social cognition and episodic memory abilities. Despite the proposal that timing impairments may underpin core features of ASC, few studies have examined temporal processing in ASC and they have produced conflicting…

Practicing a visual task commonly results in improved performance. Often the improvement does not transfer well to a new retinal location, suggesting that it is mediated by changes occurring in early visual cortex, and indeed neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies both demonstrate that perceptual learning is associated with altered activity…

This study investigates children's metarepresentational competence (MRC) with regard to listening to and making sense of simple sonic stimuli. Using diSessa's (2002) seminal work on MRC in mathematics and sciences as background, it aims to assess the relative importance children attribute to several criteria for representational adequacy…

TS school starters had enhanced receptive and expressive language on standardised assessment (CELF-P) and enhanced rhyme judgements, spoonerisms, and lexical decision, indicating enhanced phonological skills and word representations. There was marginal but consistent advantage across lexico-semantic tasks. On executive tasks, speeded naming of…