Examined developmental differences in the acquisition and extension of an organizational strategy in 2 experiments involving 242 children in grades 3, 4, 5, and 7. Levels of performance were greater for sets of typical items than for sets of atypical items at all grade levels. (RJC)

The hypothesis was investigated that, in a structured interview, older children and children from divorced families would express more complex, abstract, and integrated reasoning about marriage and divorce than younger children and children in intact families. It was further hypothesized that children with divorced parents would reach a more…

Experiments on the development of face recognition showed that young children can ignore featural information when it has no discriminative value and attend to the internal attributes of the face and indicated a lack of developmental differences in face recognition styles, as well as a tendency to rely on configurational information more than…

Examined developmental differences in children's decision making using an information-board procedure. In Experiment 1, fifth and eighth graders remembered more initial, relevant information from decision situations than second graders. In Experiment 2, visual cues were provided which increased fifth graders' search of relevant information more…

A study of effects of age and schooling in grades five and six on raw scores from a variety of general ability tests found that schooling: (1) is the major factor underlying the increase of intelligence test scores as a function of age; and (2) has a larger effect on verbal than nonverbal tests. (RH)

The relation of domain knowledge to achievement, and changes in this relation that occur with age and type of memory task, are discussed. First, different mechanisms through which domain-specific knowledge relates to strategy use in memory tasks are summarized. Then, empirical evidence that indicates direct effects of the knowledge base on memory…

The development of linguistic politeness in 7- and 9-year-old Italian children was examined. A total of 80 subjects, 40 males and 40 females, produced requests according to different contexts which were graphically presented. Factors considered for such contexts were: sex of the speaker; sex of the addressee; status of the addressee, either peer…

The importance of maintaining students' interest in art is underscored by the decline in both self-confidence and interest in art that children commonly begin to display during middle childhood. This study explored developmental differences in art motivation, investigating whether the expected decline could be explained by changes in beliefs…

Positively correlated were verbal fluency scores and scores for strategies expected to distinguish levels of verbal fluency among 64 third-graders and 71 sixth-graders. When a smaller sample of similarly aged students completed expanded versions of tasks, results revealed grade and gender differences in strategy use and level of task performance.…

This study examined the receptive vocabulary of 102 first-, third-, and sixth-grade Spanish/English bilingual students of Hispanic origin. It found that, although students in all three grade levels functioned comparably well on the Spanish instruments, performance on the English instruments increased with grade level. (41 references) (MDM)

A three-phase developmental model of sex-role stereotyping that viewed the acquisition of sex-role stereotypes as part of the broader process of the development of social understanding was proposed. Phases in the model included: (1) beginning awareness of sex-role differentiation; (2) rigid sex-role stereotyping; and (3) flexible sex-role…

When first, fourth, and fifth grade speakers played a referential communication game with a fictitious listener, they were more likely to give redundant messages to listeners with whom they had no common shared experience or to strangers than to listeners with whom they had shared a previous experience. (RH)

Development of self-concept, self-esteem, and self-ideal was examined in second, fourth, sixth, and eighth graders (approximately 50 boys and 50 girls in each grade) from Chile, Mexico, and the United States. Results suggest there are substantial similarities in such development across national groups; there is a tendency for differences between…

Examined free recall of kindergartners and third and eighth graders. The use of organizational strategies, which was demonstrated by third and eight graders, led to increased performance only for eighth graders. These results suggest a phase in strategy development when production of a strategy results in little benefit in performance. (LB)

A study found that differences in children's ability to regulate their emotional responses, and in their social and cognitive development, are implicated in developmental differences in children's strategies for influencing others' mood states. (BB)