How do children reason about academic performance across development? A classic view suggests children's intuitive theories in this domain undergo qualitative changes. According to this view, older children and adults consider both effort and skill as sources of performance (i.e., a "performance = effort + skill" theory), but younger…

Children perform worse than adults on tests of cognitive flexibility, which is a component of executive function. To assess what aspects of a cognitive flexibility task (cued switching) children have difficulty with, investigators tested where eye gaze diverged over age. Eye-tracking was used as a proxy for attention during the preparatory period…

Emerging executive control supports greater autonomy and increasingly adaptive behavior during childhood. The present study addressed whether children's greater monitoring of how they engage control drives executive control development. Gaze position was recorded while twenty-five 6-year-olds and twenty-eight 10-year-olds performed a self-paced…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…

The performance of the older subjects (10 years and up) was facilitated by the organizational cues, whereas that of younger subjects was not. (Author)

The relation of CA, MA, and IQ to conservation was examined by comparing the performance of bright, normal, and retarded children matched on the critical MA of six years. (Author)

In the first study, observation and labeling behavior were investigated in 5-, 8-, 11-year-olds, and adults. Subjects were asked to find differences in stimuli. In the second study, an attempt was made to determine whether children can learn to adapt their attention to tasks requiring exhaustive or selective observation and to transfer such…

Assessed delayed-response performance in 120 infants 7, 9, and 11 months old. Correct response was identified as either retrieval of a hidden object or a gaze toward its location. Performance improved with age, was above chance for each age group in each condition, and was more often correct for gaze response, suggesting a significant effect of…

Two naming tasks were simultaneously presented to either one visual field/hemisphere combination or were divided between visual fields/hemispheres. Hypotheses that bilateral presentation would improve performance by insulating conflicting tasks from mutual interference and that there would be a developmental shift in the bilateral advantage was…

When 48 first-, fourth-, and seventh-grade boys (classified as high, moderate, or low on an expectancy of success measure) were given a repetition choice task, a developmental trend in number of children choosing the interrupted task was found. When the task's difficulty level was matched to the child's grade, the trend was not found. (Author/JH)

Results of three experiments support the conclusion that tasks involving the localization of objects or events from mirror images are not direct indices of self-recognition among children between 14 and 22 months of age. Rather, they indicate the skill of infants in using the mirror as a perceptual tool. (RH)

Reports two studies examining the age/generosity relationship in children five to ten years old. With data gathered both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, studies demonstrated the existence of a nonlinear as well as a linear trend. (Author/MP)

A chronometric mental rotation paradigm was applied to examine manipulation of visual imagery in early adolescents in relation to age, sex, mental rotation ability, and socioeconomic background. Subjects were fifth- and seventh-grade boys and girls from a middle and lower socioeconomic background. (Author/MP)

Studied the effects of the relative and absolute salience of three dimensions (form, color and position) on the ability of four- and six-year-olds to employ multiplicative classification. (CW)

The present investigation, conducted within the framework of equity theory, was designed to determine the principles that preschool children use when they are given the opportunity to distribute rewards. (Authors)