This study examined whether children’s difficulties with stage-salient tasks served as an explanatory mechanism in the pathway between their insecurity in the interparental relationship and their disruptive behavior problems. Using a multimethod, multi-informant design, 201 two-year-old children and their mothers participated in 3 annual…

The present study was designed to identify sources of information in the human face and to determine how this information is processed by young children in solving problems. (ST)

Children 6 and 11 years of age were given a recall task in which the perceptual salience of the information and the type of conceptual evaluation required for solution (analysis or synthesis) were varied. (Author/JMB)

Compared 18 children's and 18 adults' ability to detect information conveyed through the representational hand gestures of videotaped children verbally and gesturally explaining their problem-solving reasoning. Found that children and adults recalled information conveyed through representational gestures. Mismatching gesture negatively affected…

The performance of children ages three through eight years on a series of class-inclusion problems was examined in two studies. Three patterns of performance were observed: three- and four-year-olds responded in an approximately haphazard pattern, five- and six-year-olds tended to be consistently wrong, and seven- and eight-year-olds showed a…

This study investigated the hypothesis that there is a developmental trend toward greater flexibility of strategies in visual selection. Subjects were 48 second and sixth graders. (Author/SDH)

Subjects categorized as either players who displayed make-believe in natural free-play situations or nonplayers whose behavioral repertoires did not include make-believe, were exposed to either a free-play, an imitation or a problem-solving condition and given an alternate-uses test. Free-play enhanced associative fluency among players who engaged…

This study tested three hypothesized mechanisms through which explanations might facilitate problem-solving strategy generalization in kindergarteners through second graders. Results suggested that explanations facilitated generalization through the creation of novel goal structures that enabled children to persist in use of the new strategy…

This study attempts to follow the development of an "awareness" of the importance of consistency in a logical system with three elements and one operation. Subjects were 127 male and female students, 9-, 11-, 14-, and 16-years-old. (Author/SDH)

Used descriptive analysis and a forced choice task to investigate childrens' and adults' production, interpretation, and judgment of notation. Results showed that young children may not impose the same symbol-meaning structure at decoding that was proposed at encoding. Only after this ability develops does a preference for one form-one function…

Results showed a clear shift in ways children ordered story units contained in their recall protocols. Children exhibited excellent mapping processes in nonisomorphic transfer problems, except when a salient feature of the base was mapped to a misleading cue in the target. (RH)

Uni- and multidimensional processing of 6- to 9-year olds was studied using recall tasks in which an array of stimuli was reconstructed to match a model array. Results indicated that both age groups were able to solve multidimensional problems, but that solution rate was retarded by the unidimensional processing of highly salient dimensions.…

Examined the development of proportional reasoning by means of a temperature mixture task. Results show the importance of distinguishing between intuitive knowledge and formal computational knowledge of proportional concepts. Provides a new perspective on the relation of intuitive and computational knowledge during development. (GLR)

Children's analogical reasoning has traditionally been measured by classical four-term analogy tasks or problem-solving tasks. Current theories of analogical development and the evidence on which they are based are reviewed. It is concluded that structural views of analogical development are wrong, and knowledge-based accounts of what develops are…