Previous research shows that children evaluate the competence of others based on how effectively someone accomplished a goal, that is, based on the observed outcome of an action (e.g., number of attempts needed). Here, we investigate whether 5- to 10-year-old children and adults infer competence from how efficiently someone solves a task by…

The Terman Study of the Gifted presents a unique opportunity to study the implications of achievement for life satisfaction in adulthood and aging. This article uses a life-span developmental perspective to summarize research concerning the lifetime achievement of the Terman sample, their appraisals of living up to their intellectual abilities,…

Adults need certain capabilities to get and keep a job, provide responsive care for children, manage a household, and contribute productively to the community. When these skills have not developed as they should, or are compromised by the stresses of poverty or other ongoing adversity, our communities pay the price. But where do these capabilities…

How does the development and consolidation of perceptual, attentional, and higher cognitive abilities interact with language acquisition and processing? We explored children's (ages 5-17) and adults' (ages 18-51) comprehension of morphosyntactically varied sentences under several competing speech conditions that varied in the degree of attentional…

A geographer and a developmental psychologist collaborated on an investigation of the development of children's ability to comprehend, produce, and use graphic representations of space. Such representations are called "geo-graphics" in this paper. The researchers held that children's mastery of maps is dependent on their developing…

Subjects were 30 participants at each of 4 ages: 5, 7, and 10 years, and adult. Subjects described objects ordered in pairs. Children of 5 and 7 years improved their ability to understand visual metaphors which display a topic-visual interaction. From age 5 to adulthood, subjects improved their ability to comprehend metaphoric similarity. (RH)

Two studies of classification strategies of three and five year olds and adults found that five year olds and adults used different sorting strategies for each of two sorting tasks, whereas three year olds relied on the same strategy for both. Children most successful in producing correct groupings were most likely to modify their strategies…

Describes a model of adaptation to the environment across the life span. Proposes that an individual's performance in an activity is affected not only by cognitive capacity but also by perceptions and definitions of the activity. Empirical support for the model, based on a survey of individuals' everyday experiences and on laboratory studies, is…

Individuals with Down syndrome (n=49) were assigned to three groups: those showing cognitive deterioration, those comparable in age, and those not showing cognitive deterioration but younger. Those experiencing cognitive deterioration were less likely to receive day services, had more impoverished life experiences, and required more support.…

Used cross-sectional life span data from normative sample for Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery to examine independence of age-related cognitive changes in childhood and adulthood. Found that majority of age-related differences were shared across different cognitive variables and were well predicted by individual differences in…

Two studies of adults between the ages of 18 and 87 were conducted to determine the relations among age, motor speed, perceptual speed and 3 measures of cognitive performance: study time, decision time, and decision accuracy. Results indicated that increased age was associated with lower accuracy as well as with longer study and decision time.…

Recent investigations have demonstrated greater variance in change in intellectual performance between different generations or age groups than is true for generalized developmental change across chronological age. Such findings have led to a careful investigation of certain environmental factors which might account for such change. A new…