Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga [Barrett, J. L., Richert, R. A., & Driesenga, A. (2001). "God's beliefs versus mother's: The development of nonhuman agents concepts." "Child Development," 72(1), 50-65] have suggested that children are able to conceptualize the representational properties held by certain super-natural entities, such as God, before…

We conducted a longitudinal analysis of the relative intensity and duration of interests associated with conceptual domains between the ages of 4 and 6 years, respectively. Results indicated a significant portion of preschool children do sustain an interest in conceptual domains during some portion of their childhood. Expected gender differences…

This study examined developmental changes in concept formation, rule switching, and perseverative behaviors of children in the WCST by altering visual features of the test and using a new test score--the "zigzag" error score--which shows the number of shifts made between two incorrect concepts or rules. Instead of the original four 3-dimensional…

Two experiments compared preschoolers' awareness of knowledge transitions involving behavioral changes to those involving vocabulary or general knowledge changes. Found that children tended to report they had learned something new when novel information was behavioral (e.g., counting in Japanese) and tended to claim prior knowledge when the novel…

Investigates numerical competence in five-month-old infants using a violation-of-expectation paradigm. Supports previous findings that young children possess not only the competence for limited numerical abstraction, but also the ability to carry out addition and subtraction operations. An alternative explanation, that infants' responses are based…

Explores the dissociation between the performance by children with autism on false belief tasks, on which they do poorly, and false photograph, false map, and false drawing tasks, on which they do well. Suggesting domain specificity in the development of representational system, the results supported the modularity of theory of mind and the…

Adapted Keil's predictability method to examine adults' and preschoolers' conceptions of numbers, focusing on the ontological distinction between numbers and sets of objects. Found that children, like adults, attribute spatial-arrangement properties to collections much more than to numbers, although both are considered to have quantitative…

Cognitive, home, and family factors that theoretically could influence whether or not preschoolers' interests were focused on domains characterized by the acquisition of knowledge concerning object concepts (e.g., dinosaurs, horses) were assessed in a short-term longitudinal investigation of 211 4-year-olds. Boys were six times as likely as girls…

Two experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' relative reliance on visual and verbal information in identification of animals and machines. Findings include both children and adults can use either visual or verbal cues in categorization, and a stricter definition is used in identifying animals. Results suggest that a perceptual to conceptual…

Study reports data on the acquisition of knowledge about astronomy in children from India, and the cosmological models they construct. Found that Indian children's cosmologies honor a variety of implicit assumptions governing the construction of initial cosmological models and that folk models are also incorporated to provide a psychologically…

Four studies examined preschoolers' use of the cue of action initiation to infer another's desired goal. Found that differences in action initiation play an increasingly important role in 3-year-olds' mentalistic explanations of action, and that this development may be related to other critical changes occurring in their developing theory of mind.…

Examined developmental differences in evidence evaluation skills among school children, non-college educated adults, and college students, utilizing plant growth variables. Found that children were more strongly influenced by prior beliefs and missing data than were the two adult groups. Age and educational differences were found in the…