Comments on a study by Schacter and others which proposes that insights into why infants make the AB error can be gained by examining the errors of brain-damaged adults on similar tasks. (The B in AB has a line over it in the title and in the article meaning "A not B.") (PCB)

Asserts that family sociologists lost interest in children in the postwar period and discusses reasons for the disinterest. Influences breaking down the division of labor between psychologists and sociologists are described. Characteristics of the studies in the present volume are pointed out. (RH)

Young children's understanding of the effects of ambiguous and informative messages on a listener's knowledge is studied in two experiments. (PCB)

Two studies are presented that document the spontaneous development by normal infants of nonverbal gestures to symbolically represent objects, needs, states, and qualities. These gestures are shown to be a typical phenomenon of early development and to function in ways similar to early verbal symbols. (PCB)

Maintains that Teyler and Fountain's presentation (1987) contains several limitations, namely, that the authors do not (1) distinguish between learning and memory, nor between storage and retrieval; (2) address the role of knowledge-based influences in memory and learning; or (3) employ concepts that can accommodate developmental phenomena in the…

Recent research on the development of children's abilities to comprehend and produce metaphorical language is reviewed. It is argued that the ability to produce and comprehend metaphorical language emerges out of children's undifferentiated similarity notions and gradually develops into a capacity to encompass an increased variety of conceptual…

Results of two experiments on kindergarten children in Japan indicate that young children can, and often do, apply personification as an analogy to animate objects to generate a reasonable prediction. It was also found that children try to constrain the personification by using additional knowledge. (PCB)

The developmental significance of unresponsive or uncooperative behavior of children in standardized developmental assessments made during the preschool years was investigated. Untestable children were significantly lower than testable children on a wide range of abilities at all ages from 12 through 72 months. (PCB)

Findings indicate that infants can detect regularity in spatiotemporal series; will develop expectancies for events in the series; and will act on the basis of those expectancies even when their actions have no effect on the stimulus events. (PCB)

This commentary, written in response to Witelson's work (1987), examines alternative ways of determining how the developmentally stable functional asymmetry (hemispheric specialization) observed in neurologically intact children can be reconciled with the dramatic recovery of function often displayed following unilateral brain damage. (PCB)

Data from a battery of spatial tests taken by children six to 18 years old indicate that a male advantage in spatial performance appears reliably by age 10, and that the magnitude of the advantage remains constant through age 18. (PCB)

A sharp improvement in children's understanding of the role of visual perception and linguistic communication in knowledge functions was found between the ages of three and five years. (PCB)

In three experiments, children five- to 10-years-old were assessed on their comprehension of simple and compound comparatives using a picture-question answering task. Ability to use appropriate reference points increased with age on both the simple and compound comparative relations. (PCB)

Developmental changes in the conceptualization of empathy were studied by testing and interviewing kindergartners, first graders, and fourth graders in Sweden. (PCB)

A comparison of vocal development in deaf and hearing infants indicates that well-formed syllable production is established in the first 10 months of life by hearing infants but not by deaf infants, suggesting that audition plays an important role in vocal development. (PCB)