The aim of the current study was to investigate the performance of 6-, 8-, and 14-year-olds on an analogy-making task involving analogies in which there are competing perceptual and relational matches. We hypothesized that the selection of the common relational structure requires the inhibition of other salient features, in particular, perceptual…

Errors made by 5- and 8-year-old children asked to draw a model were investigated in two studies. Results from both indicated that 5-year-old children are more likely to produce visually accurate drawings than had previously been supposed; for both ages difficulty in producing accurate drawings occurred when drawing rules and conventions…

Second and sixth graders acquired information about a large-scale environment either actively or passively. They were subsequently asked to estimate distances in either active or passive response style. Unlike the older children, second graders did not estimate distances accurately when acquisition and response activities were incongruent.…

Elementary school students and adults were presented with a paired comparison task of visual complexity in which contour and presence or absence of structure in the patterns were manipulated. Results indicated that complexity judgments of all subjects were affected by the presence of structure at lower levels of contour. (GO)

Reports two experiments examining the contents and accessibility of a subset of the knowledge represented in long-term memory by preschool-age children. The knowledge domain of object locations in the home was selected for study. Among the results, very young children revealed considerable knowledge in this domain. (Author/RH)

This study used meaningful pictorial material to compare the functions relating complexity to two different response variables (voluntary looking time and preference) in 192 students from grades 1 to 8. Age differences were slight, and results are discussed in terms of theories postulating increases with experience in preference for complexity.…

Findings indicated that: (1) 10- and 13-year-olds had difficulty accepting contrary-to-fact premises as a basis for reasoning; (2) 15- and 18-year-olds found reasoning correctly more difficult with contrary-to-fact premises; and (3) among 5- and 7-year-olds, a fantasy context decreased the extent to which empirical knowledge interfered with…

Discusses a longitudinal study of young children's acquisition of complex sentences for expressing their beliefs about causally related events, in the transition in language development from simple to complex syntax. While most of the children's statements expressed subjective meaning overall, the acquisition of syntactic connectives was…

Three experiments investigated effects of attentional factors on children's learning set performance. Younger children's learning was differentially affected by two or more irrelevant dimensions. Practice improved performance for all ages. Results confirmed that irrelevant dimensions and within-problems exposure interact with age and amount of…

Three experiments investigated effects of complexity on 2- to 6-year-olds' understanding of a beam balance. Found that 2- to 4-year-olds succeeded on problems that entailed binary relations, but 5- and 6-year-olds also succeeded on problems that entailed ternary relations. Ternary relations tasks from other domains (transitivity and class…

Investigated ability of 32 children from grades one, three, five, and seven to distribute study time so that certain units of material were given more emphasis than others (differential allocation) and determine how much study time was needed to meet the study goal (sufficient allocation). Age differences, effect of order of study, and allocation…

Investigated effects of changing the level of motor planning demands in simple drawing tasks for which children aged 5-11 years completed or copied squares and diamonds. Results were consistent with previous studies. Low planning demands resulted in less difference between square and diamond performance than did tasks demanding higher planning.…