Ninety-seven children aged 4-11 (49 males, 48 females, mostly White) were given the opportunity to improve their problem-solving performance by devising and implementing a novel cognitive offloading strategy. Across two phases, they searched for hidden rewards using maps that were either aligned or misaligned with the search space. In the second…

To examine whether need for approval (NFA) and antisocial behavior (ASB) moderate the effects of socioemotional stimuli on cognitive control, 88 girls (M[subscript age] = 16.31 years; SD = 0.84; 65.9% White) completed a socioemotional Go/No-go and questionnaires. At high approach NFA, girls responded more slowly during appetitive than control (b =…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were utilized in an investigation of 21 six-month-olds' attention to and processing of global and local properties of hierarchical patterns. Overall, infants demonstrated an advantage for processing the overall configuration (i.e., global properties) of local features of hierarchical patterns; however,…

In accord with increasing recognition of the situation specificity of childhood social behaviors, individual and contextual differences in children's responses to potential peer conflict were examined (hostile attribution, behavioral strategies, and affective reactions; N = 367, 9-2 years, 197 girls). Situational cues from 2 sources, the…

Individual differences in affective decision making were examined by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) while 74 typically developing 8-year-olds (38 boys, 36 girls) completed a 4-choice gambling task (Hungry Donkey Task; E. A. Crone & M. W. van der Molen, 2004). ERP results indicated: (a) a robust P300 component in response to feedback…

This study examined the effect of exemplar typicality on reaction time and accuracy of categorization. High-functioning children (age 9-12), adolescents (age 13-16), and adults with autism (age 17-48) and matched controls were tested in a category verification procedure. All groups showed improved processing throughout the lifespan for typical and…

The relations among early cumulative medical risk, cumulative environmental risk, attentional control, and brain activation were assessed in 15-16-year-old adolescents who were born preterm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging found frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex activation during an attention task with greater activation of the left…

Assesses the effectiveness of different child-generated classification schemes on preschool children's memory performance. Children who organized pictures according to taxonomic categories (e.g., animals, vehicles) demonstrated significantly greater recall than children classified as nontaxonomic. (Author/MP)

Five experiments tested four-month-old infants' ability to recognize degraded visual targets as a function of individual differences in fixation duration. Found that short-looking infants were able to recognize degraded forms in both vertex (top or highest point)-absent and vertex-present conditions, but the vertex-absent discrimination was more…

Children 10 to 14 years of age tried to identify and remember words presented visually with a backward mask. On different tasks, children recalled freely or serially, recognized by making a rapid forced-choice response, or simply named words as they were presented. Results were interpreted as identifying two sources of developmental and individual…

Twenty-five infants were tested every two weeks on the AB Object Permanence Task, from the time they first reached for a hidden object until they were 12 months old. Results indicate that the AB provides an index of the ability to carry out an intention based on stored information despite a conflicting habitual tendency. (Author/RH)

It may be concluded that reflective and fast-accurate Ss differ from impulsive Ss of the same grade in the strategies used to solve problems. These strategy differences may or may not lead to more efficient performance, depending on the structure of the task, but they are indicative of different levels of cognitive development. (Author)

Employs a clinical interview methodology to examine some of the creative thinking strategies commonly used by children in elementary school grades. Results suggest that children use several strategies on creativity tasks. (RH)

Examined the developing relationships between false belief understanding and an awareness of the individualized nature of personal taste as well as a maturing grasp of the interpretive character of the knowing process. Results indicated that the concept of interpretation appears to involve a more complex and significantly later arriving…