Working memory training improves children's cognitive performance on untrained tasks; however, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. This was investigated in 32 typically developing children aged 10-14 years (19 girls and 13 boys) using a randomized controlled design and multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (Devon, UK;…

Residential mobility has received notable attention in the literature, yet there remains limited consensus on how and when mobility is associated with detriments to children's development. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of 19,162 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study followed from kindergarten through eighth grade, this…

This study investigated transfer effects of gaze-interactive attention training to more complex social and cognitive skills in infancy. Seventy 9-month-olds were assigned to a training group (n = 35) or an active control group (n = 35). Before, after, and at 6-week follow-up both groups completed an assessment battery assessing transfer to…

Cognitive impairment is common among children born very preterm (VPT), yet little is known about how this risk changes over time. To examine this issue, a regional cohort of 110 VPT (= 32 weeks gestation) and 113 full-term (FT) born children was prospectively assessed at ages 4, 6, 9, and 12 years using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of…

This study examined differences in visual attention as a function of label learning from 6 to 9 months of age. Before and after 3 months of parent-directed storybook training with computer-generated novel objects, event-related potentials and visual fixations were recorded while infants viewed trained and untrained images (n = 23). Relative to a…

Infants can imitate a novel action sequence from television and picture books, yet there has been no direct comparison of infants' imitation from the 2 types of media. Varying the narrative cues available during the demonstration and test, the current experiments measured 18- and 24-month-olds' imitation from television and picture books. Infants…

A. Karmiloff-Smith's (1990) task of drawing a nonexistent object is considered to be a measure of cognitive flexibility. The notion of earlier emergence of cognitive flexibility in bilingual children motivated the current researchers to request 4- and 5-year-old English-Hebrew and Arabic-Hebrew bilingual children and their monolingual peers to…

A test of advanced theory of mind (ToM), first introduced by F. Happe (1994), was adapted for children (mental, human, animal, and nature stories plus unlinked sentences). These materials were closely matched for difficulty and were presented to forty-five 7- to 12-year-olds with autism and 27 control children. Children with autism who showed ToM…

This study assessed executive function and mental state understanding in Korean preschoolers. In Experiment 1, forty 3.5- and 4-year-old Koreans showed ceiling performance on inhibition and switching measures, although their performance on working memory and false belief was comparable to that of Western children. Experiment 2 revealed a similar…

Among a group of 103 children with a mean age of eight years, full-scale IQ correlation was significantly higher for monozygotic than dizygotic pairs. Monozygotic pairs also showed significantly greater concordance for subtest profile than dizygotic pairs. The usefulness of profile analysis is examined, and directions for future research are…

Findings suggest that semantic knowledge for concrete objects is represented and organized in similar ways in autistic, retarded, and normal children. Previous findings on cognitive deficits in autistic children are more likely related to their inability to use cognitive representations in an appropriate and flexible manner. (Author/RH)

Examines the performance on verbal, nonverbal, and memory tasks of 11 girls (ages 8 to 11 years) identified as having an extra X chromosome at birth. Results showed that the triple-X girls were markedly inferior in their performance on the tasks, indicating a rehearsal deficit, an inability to use list structures, and weaker language skills.…

When equated on level of maturity, preterm infants were indistinguishable from full-term infants in their rates of response decrement to stimulus repetition and their subsequent response to a novel stimulus. Responsiveness to auditory novelty at four months was a strong predictor of 18-month mental performance for females but not for males. (RH)

Examined empathy and conservation abilities of nonretarded children with autism and compared their performance to that of normally developing children. Autistic children performed surprising well, but not as well as normal children. There was a closer association between cognitive abilities and affective understanding among the autistic children…