Executive functioning skills develop rapidly during early childhood. Recent research has focused on specifying this development, particularly predictors of executive functioning skills. Here we focus on sustained attention as a predictor of inhibitory control, one key executive functioning component. Although sustained attention and inhibitory…

To obtain reliable information, it is important to identify and effectively question knowledgeable informants. Two experiments examined how age and the ease of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources influence children's ability to effectively question those sources to solve problems. A sample of 3- to 5-year-olds was introduced to…

A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children's Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied…

The current study investigated a new, easily administered, visual inhibition task for infants termed the Freeze-Frame task. In the new task, 9-month-olds were encouraged to inhibit looks to peripheral distractors. This was done by briefly freezing a central animated stimulus when infants looked to the distractors. Half of the trials presented an…

We present three studies exploring 2- to 4-year-olds' imitation on witnessing a model whose questionable tool use choices suggested her untrustworthiness. In Study 1, children observed the model accidentally select a physically optimal tool for a task and then intentionally reject it for one that was functionally nonaffordant. When asked to…

Imitation of people on educational television is a potential way for very young children to learn new skills. Although toddlers in previous studies exhibited a "video deficit" in learning, 24-month-olds in Study 1 successfully reproduced behaviors modeled by a person who was on video as well as they did those modeled by a person who was present in…

This response to Brainerd and Reyna's paper (in this issue), questions whether output-interference and resource theories can readily be differentiated empirically. Argues that dual-task studies, while important, do not serve as the critical tests of the resources hypothesis. (RH)

Investigated whether 4- to 6-year-olds' ability to reason about truths and lies influenced their truth-telling behavior. Found that children's performance on truth/lie questions did not predict their truth-telling. Regardless of performance on truth/lie questions, children receiving developmentally appropriate truth/lie discussions gave more…

Cognitive triage is the nonmonotonic relationship between the order in which children read words out of long-term memory and the strength of the memory of the words read. Two experiments with 7 and 12 year olds compared the fuzzy-trace theory with an effortful processing explanation. Findings consistently favored the fuzzy-trace theory's…

Measured cognitive processing time, imagery skill, and spatial memory span of 128 children and adults, ages 8 to 20 years. Found that performance on spatial memory span tasks was largely predicted by imagery skill, which in turn was strongly linked to processing time; age was much less of a predictor in both cases. (EAJ)

This response to Brainerd and Reyna's paper (in this issue) argues that the common resources hypothesis can be applied to a wider range of phenomena than can the output-interference hypothesis. Presents results of a dual-task experiment under bidirectional deficits. Concludes that dual-task studies do not provide critical tests of the resources…

Four studies tested claims that young children are inhibited in attempts to change drawings because of constraints by order in which representational elements are drawn. Found that procedural rigidity levels did not predict preschoolers' performance when asked to change their representation and that preschoolers could change rigid sub-procedures…

Examined the relationship between phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge in 4- and 5-year-olds in a one-year longitudinal study. Found that phonological sensitivity predicted letter knowledge growth, and letter knowledge predicted phonological sensitivity growth, when controlling for age and oral language abilities. Also found that the…

Evaluated hypothesis that cognitive antecedents of word recognition are domain-specific and unrelated to higher-order domain-general cognitive abilities in a longitudinal study of Hebrew-speaking children. Found that kindergarten domain-specific measures accounted for 33 percent of variance in Grade 1 word recognition, even after controlling for…