The main goal of this article is to discuss a new concept, the "Compensation Age Theory (CAT)", for individuals with intellectual disability (ID). The CAT is a holistic framework comprised of four dimensions: (a) the state of the art of the CAT; (b) the theoretical resources which are at the core of the CAT; (c) a series of empirical…

Dual-process theories have been proposed to explain normative and heuristic responses to reasoning and decision-making problems. Standard unitary and dual-process theories predict that normative responses should increase with age. However, research has focused recently on exceptions to this standard pattern, including developmental increases in…

Drawing developmental predictions from dual-process theories is more complex than is commonly realized. Overly simplified predictions drawn from such models may lead to premature rejection of the dual process approach as one of many tools for understanding cognitive development. Misleading predictions can be avoided by paying attention to several…

There is strong evidence to suggest that individuals with autism show atypicalities in multiple cognitive domains, including theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF), and central coherence (CC). In this study, the longitudinal relationships among these 3 aspects of cognition in autism were investigated. Thirty-seven cognitively able children…

Two experiments were conducted to compare the false belief understanding of children who have no siblings, but have classmates of different ages in kindergarten. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds completed two unexpected location tasks. We found that 4-year-olds with classmates of different ages performed significantly better than those with…

The aims of this research were to examine the development of teaching skills in preschool children and to explore the relation between teaching and theory of mind (ToM). After learning a new board game, 3.5-, 4.5-, and 5.5-year-old children (N = 46) were asked to teach a confederate who "doesn't know how to play the game." They also received two…

Provides a theoretical account of children's success on theory of mind (ToM) tasks and the discrepancies found across different ToM tasks, and examines the role of indexical and symbolic referencing. Found that 4- to 6-year-olds succeeded more on tasks with a high ratio of indexical to symbolic references than on tasks with a high ratio of…

Three experiments tested a model identifying object labels as discrete attributes of the object in which the relative weight of the label decreases with children's age. Results indicated that labels contribute to similarity judgment in a quantifiable manner, labels' weight decreased with age, and effects of labels were likely to stem from the…

Age-related changes in representational flexibility are a characteristic feature of declarative memory development. The authors suggest that a qualitative shift in the nature of infants' memory representations accounts for increasing memory flexibility with age. We will argue that a comprehensive theory of declarative memory development must (1)…

Two experiments with monolingual German-speaking 2.5- to 4.5-year-olds showed a consistent developmental gap between children's memory/inference of what someone wanted and what someone wrongly said or thought. Correct answers emerged with mastery of the false-belief task. It was concluded that the observed gap constrains de Villiers's linguistic…

Two studies compared how preschoolers through fifth graders and adults reasoned about psychogenic bodily reactions such as stress-induced headaches. Results supported a developmental path: younger children view psychogenic bodily responses as wholly physical, but with age, view them as both physical and psychological. (Author/KB)

Predictions about reaction times (RT) from Siegler's model were tested for the balance scale task with 6- to 22-year-olds. Regression analyses provided additional knowledge of the rules. Rule II was reformulated as a rule that always involves the encoding but not always the correct application of the distance rule. RTs provided evidence for use of…

Three experiments examined 3- to 11-year-olds' understanding of entropy, asking whether undifferentiated forces, such as the wind or objects being thrown into the air, could create order or disorder in a set of objects. Found that even 4-year-olds were sensitive to asymmetrical effects of such events. Older children applied this principle more…

Switching between tasks produces decreases in performance as compared to repeating the same task. Asymmetrical switch costs occur when switching between two tasks of unequal difficulty. This asymmetry occurs because the cost is greater when switching to the less difficult task than when switching to the more difficult task. Various theories about…

Examined how 6- to 9-year-olds and adults judged expected value of complex gambles in which alternative outcomes had different prizes. Found that participants at all ages used multiplication rule for integrating probability and value of each individual outcome, and based judgment of overall expected value on alternative outcomes. Even youngest…