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…

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…

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)

A total of 120 children between four to eight years of age were administered four sets of visual perspective-taking tasks. Results supported the hypothesis that children's task competence would be a fraction of the number and type of spatial relationships embedded in the stimulus displays. (Author/MP)

To assess children's understanding of intentions as distinct from desires, this study presented 3- to 7-year-olds and adults with situations in which intentions were satisfied but desires were not, or vice versa, in a story-comprehension task and target-hitting game. Findings indicated that younger children were unable to differentiate desires and…

A total of 80 Israeli 5, 7, and 10 year olds working in either a match-the-standard or a competitive condition copied a drawing and then evaluated their copies. Competing 5 year olds overestimated the quality of their copies. With age, self-assessments became less positive and better correlated with adult judgments. (RH)

In a study of four-, six-, and eight-year olds, communication about the left-right dimension proved to be particularly difficult for four-year olds. Frames of reference that children incorporated into their directions changed with age and differed for directions about front-back and left-right dimensions. (RH)

Investigated children's representational ability as a cognitive factor underlying the suggestibility of their eyewitness memory. Found that the eyewitness memory of children lacking multirepresentational abilities or sufficient general memory abilities (most 3- and 4-year-olds) was less accurate than eyewitness memory of those with…

Examined development of infants' relational coding in spatial orientation problems. Found that 6-month-olds performed poorly in a peekaboo task in which they had to turn to a target after displacement to a novel position and direction. Twelve- month-olds solved the tasks whether or not target was located between two landmarks; 8.5-month-olds…

Two studies examined age differences in conditional reasoning. Results indicated that 8-year-olds performed better when antecedents were weakly associated with consequents than on strongly associated antecedent/consequents, with no difference among 11-year-olds. Eight-year-olds did better on ad hoc premises than on causal premises, with no…

Examined in 4 experiments 2-year-olds' knowledge of solidity in search tasks. Found no evidence that 2-year-olds represented solidity and support constraints on trajectories of falling objects; two experiments included 2.5-year-olds who succeeded on search tasks. Explored implications of 2-year-olds' poor performance in light of very young…

Three experiments assessed children's abilities to track behavioral, representational, and truth aspects of conventions. Three- and 4-year-olds recognized that conventional stipulations would change behavior, but not how stipulations might affect representations. Three- and 5-year-olds confused pretenses and conventions; 7-year-olds consistently…