Sensitivity to auditory rhythmic structures in music and language is evident as early as infancy, but performance on beat perception tasks is often well below adult levels and improves gradually with age. While some research has suggested the ability to perceive musical beat develops early, even in infancy, it remains unclear whether adult-like…

To successfully navigate an uncertain world, one has to learn the relationship between cues (e.g., wind speed, atmospheric pressure) and outcomes (e.g., rain). When learning, it is possible to actively manipulate the cue values to test hypotheses about this relationship directly. Across two studies, we investigated how 5- to 7-year-olds actively…

Experiencing the moral emotions of gratitude and moral elevation are responses to witnessing virtuous deeds of others. Both emotions have been found to share similar features and behavioral consequences, including the stimulation of personal development. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions indicates that gratitude and elevation…

Three experiments with preschool- and young school-aged children (N = 75 and 53) explored the kinds of relations children detect in samples of instances (descriptive problem) and how they generalize those relations to new instances (inferential problem). Each experiment initially presented a perfect biconditional relation between two features…

This study explores how psychosocial development and personality traits are related. In particular, the study investigates the predictive power of the successful resolution of the Eriksonian psychosocial crises for the Big Five personality traits beyond age and gender. Four hundred university students in mainland China responded to the Measures of…

Current higher education is characterized by a proliferation of distance education programs and by an increasing inclusion of nontraditional students. In this study we investigated whether and to what extent nontraditional students are particularly at risk for attrition (vs. graduating) from distance education programs. We conducted a secondary…

The extent to which the resolution of the Eriksonian final stage-related crisis of ego integrity versus despair is predicted by the resolution of earlier conflicts and by personality constructs was studied with 520 older adults. Results are consistent with Eriksonian theory of continuous personality development. (SLD)

In four tasks, 42 children between three and five years of age were asked to identify materials and familiar objects, and to predict which items would adhere to a magnet. No age differences were found in the ability to identify objects, but significant differences occurred in identification of materials and prediction of magnetic attraction. (RH)

Reports three studies that examined developmental changes in the integration of ability and effort information to predict performance. Children aged 6-11 years and adults were used as subjects. Findings involved developmental progression in the integration process, use of both cues in forming judgements, and the importance of effort. (Author/SDH)

Examined the development of proportional reasoning by means of a temperature mixture task. Results show the importance of distinguishing between intuitive knowledge and formal computational knowledge of proportional concepts. Provides a new perspective on the relation of intuitive and computational knowledge during development. (GLR)