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…

A sample of 116 children (M = 6 years 7 months) in Grade 1 was randomly assigned to experimental (n = 60) and control (n = 56) groups, with equal numbers of boys and girls in each group. The experimental group received a program aimed at improving representation and transformation of visuospatial information, whereas the control group received a…

Examined the effects of premature birth on ninety 11-year-olds' memory and processing speed, using the new Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT). Found that preterm subjects performed more poorly than their full-term counterparts on all CAT memory tasks, and that preterms were also slower on selected aspects of processing speed but not on motor speed.…

Two experiments examined whether the correlation between advances on theory-of-mind and executive function tasks results from the tasks posing the same executive demands among 3- to 6- year-olds. Findings indicated that performance on the dimensional change card-sorting task (a measure of executive function) was correlated with performance on the…

Two studies investigated the effect of language input on theory of mind by comparing the performance of deaf native-signing children (ages 4 to 8) raised by deaf signing parents and deaf late-signing children raised by hearing parents on "thought picture" measures of theory of mind. Findings indicated that deaf late signers showed…