In three studies, 5-10-year-old children and an adult comparison group judged another's certainty in making inductive inferences and guesses. Participants observed a puppet make strong inductions, weak inductions, and guesses. Participants either had no information about the correctness of the puppet's conclusion, knew that the puppet was correct,…

The children's gambling task (CGT [Kerr, A., & Zelazo, P. D. (2004). Development of "Hot" executive function: The children's gambling task. "Brain and Cognition," 55, 148-157]) involves integrating information about losses and gains to maximize winnings when selecting cards from two decks. Both cognitive complexity and control (CCC) theory and…

According to cognitive complexity and control (CCC) theory complexity depends on number of levels of a hierarchy of rules. According to relational complexity (RC) theory complexity is a function of the number of related variables in the task, and the most difficult tasks are those in which there is a constraint on decomposition into simpler…

A sixth-grade class investigated the ecologies of two local retention ponds over the course of one school year. In this context, instruction assisted development as students designed models of the pond in one-gallon jars and attempted to stabilize these jars in sustainable ecosystems that could be used to study questions about the ponds.…