In humans, effortful cognitive processing frequently takes place during social interaction, with eye contact being an important component. This study shows that the effect of eye contact on memory for nonsocial information is different in children with typical development than in children with autism, a disorder of social communication. Direct…

Distinguishes two types of executive theories: (1) emergence accounts; and (2) expression accounts. Asserts that the meta-analytic findings reported by Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001) are fully consistent with emergence accounts of theory of mind and do not entirely rule out expression accounts. (Author/KB)

The processes by which children construct images of anticipated end states of a transposition movement were examined on two tasks. Results support Piaget's (1977) hypothesis that reasoning on the basis of state correspondence defines a developmental level which precedes the development of transformational thought. (Author/MP)

A total of 48 children from five to six years of age were shown pictures of males and females performing sex-consistent and sex-inconsistent activities. Children were tested a week later for recall of these activities and the sex of the actor performing them. Sex-consistent activities were found to be more memorable than sex-inconsistent…

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)

Three studies examined whether preschoolers' difficulties with deception and false belief arise from lack of inhibitory control rather than conceptual deficit. Found that 3-year olds deceived frequently under conditions requiring relatively low inhibitory control, but not high inhibitory control. Findings were not due to social intimidation, and…

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)

Assesses whether a model of at least two levels of perspective-taking ability beyond egocentrism provides a more adequate account of the variance in subjects' responses across perspective-taking tasks. (Author/MP)

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…

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…

Two studies were conducted to investigate the specificity of the relationship between preschoolers' emerging executive functioning skills and false belief understanding. Study 1 (N=44) showed that 3- to 5-year-olds' performance on an executive functioning task that required selective suppression of actions predicted performance on false belief…

Results support the hypothesis that, with 6-year old children, the production of analytic responses on the Conceptual Style Test is a function of the instructions used. (Author/CB)

The interaction between age and conceptual tempo was a consistently significant finding. (Author)

Findings are interpreted in terms of search strategy and memory. (Authors)