The use of a verbal rehearsal strategy (repeating the items to be remembered to oneself in serial order) has been identified as a key factor in explaining working memory (WM) development. However, the debate remains open with regard to the age at which children are able to use it, and the actual benefits of using such a strategy. Numerous…

Developmental differences in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and superior parietal cortex (SPC) activation are associated with differences in how children, adolescents, and adults learn from performance feedback in rule-learning tasks (Crone, Zanolie, Leijenhorst, Westenberg, & Rombouts, 2008). Both…

This study examined mother-child shared book reading behaviors before and after participation in a random-assignment responsive parenting intervention called Play and Learning Strategies (PALS) that occurred during infancy (PALS I), the toddler-preschool (PALS II) period, or both as compared with a developmental assessment (DAS) intervention (DAS…

Investigated whether and how children age 5 to 7 employed counting to measure and integrate the duration of two events, which were accompanied by metronome beats for half the children. The rhythm enhanced use of counting in younger children. By age 7, most counted spontaneously, using sensible counting strategies. (SKC)

Systematically varied the day-night task requiring children to say "night" to a sun picture and "day" to a moon picture to investigate why young children typically fail the task. Found that reducing memory load did not help performance. Reducing inhibitory demand by requiring an unrelated response or inserting a delay between…

In a study of children's use of encoding and strategy knowledge in domains in which problem-specific experience is lacking, children were tested for serial recall. Seven- and nine-year olds encoded contiguity relations, and encoding was related to strategy choices. Less consistent encoding of five-year olds did not influence strategy choices. (BC)

Three samples of 8- to 16-year olds were assessed three times at yearly intervals on eight water-level items. Within-child change over age was viewed as stochastic process of the child changing or remaining in one of three latent strategy states. Although there was improvement in task performance over age, the general finding was that strategy…

Observed gesture and speech to investigate patterns of change in third and fourth graders' strategies for solving mathematical equivalence problems before and after an intervention. Children who received instruction were more likely to generate new strategies. Gradual change was more common. Abrupt strategy change was more common in children who…

This study investigated whether the process of representational change undergoes developmental change or different processes occupy different niches in the course of knowledge acquisition. Subjects--college, third-, and sixth-grade students--solved gear system problems over two sessions. Findings indicated that for all grades, discovery of the…

Three experiments examined kindergartners' and second graders' retention in the context of two distinctiveness manipulations, the von Restorff and bizarre imagery paradigms. Results showed that: older children retained more information from lists of pictures or interactive images over 3 weeks than younger; younger children failed to benefit from…