The present study examined the moderating effects of intellectual functioning and ASD symptom severity on the relation between age and adaptive functioning in 220 youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Regression analysis indicated that intellectual functioning and ASD symptom severity moderated the relation between age and adaptive…

Information flows continuously in the environment. As we attempt to do something, our senses receive large volumes of information. In any conversation, messages are exchanged rapidly. To understand meaning, we have to focus, record, choose and process relevant information at every moment, before it is displaced by other information. Often,…

Distributed brain areas support intellectual abilities in adults. How structural maturation of these areas in childhood enables development of intelligence is not established. Neuroimaging can be used to monitor brain development, but studies to date have typically considered single imaging modalities. To explore the impact of structural brain…

Aims: Our aim was to examine intellectual development in children with congenital hemiplegia from early childhood to adolescence. Method: Full-scale IQ (FIQ), Verbal IQ (VIQ), and Performance IQ (PIQ) scores were measured in 32 participants (19 males, 13 females) with congenital hemiplegia at mean ages of 4 years 6 months (SD 7mo; 31…

A recognition memory experiment with 8-, 11- and 20-year-olds investigated the hypothesis that, with age, semantic encoding becomes increasingly important relative to acoustic encoding. (CM)

This study investigates age differences in children's semantic expectations regarding causal relations in stories about three realistic goal situations (being friendly, getting a dog, and doing chores). Twenty children at each of three age levels (ages 6, 9, and 12) were asked to produce stories and answer probe questions about wanting and not…

The relationship between higher order reasoning and sex bias was investigated among children 7, 9 and 11 years old. Children read arguments enhancing their own or other gender, then rated argument intelligence, judged other children based on observations, and justified their arguments. Findings showed that own-gender reasoning biases declined with…

Testing, both in childhood and as adults, of 28 former pupils of special schools for the educable mentally retarded indicated that pupils who experienced most serious problems in childhood were less retarded as adults than persons who had experienced few or no problems. Results support hypothesis that the effects of early lack of environmental…

This study examined how children of different ages process social information from dramatic television programs. Second and eighth graders were shown edited versions of a television program that differed in complexity and the difficulty of inferring causal connections between the scenes. In addition, the scenes in half of the showings were kept in…

Two hundred Honolulu-area students from the fourth, fifth, eighth, and ninth grades participated in a study that examined the variables effects of five selected factors (developmental level, sex, reading ability, adult intervention, and variation in film content/form) on the ability of two age groups (nine and ten year old children and thirteen…

This study was conducted to explore the ability of children (6 to 12 years of age) to understand certain relatively complex relationships as they are commonly signaled syntactically in our language. It was hypothesized that development in language performance during this age range was, in some measure, a function of a growing ability to comprehend…

A review of literature pertaining to the effects of parental absence on children suggests that various types of absenteeism affect children differently. One-parent homes are examined with reference to effects on sex-role development, academic achievement, intellectual development and delinquency in children. (MS)

The hypothesized ability of adult native speakers to understand linguistic ambiguity was tested. An approach developed to determine linguistic competence tested the ability of 90 participants in individual interviews to interpret sentences having the potential for multiple interpretations. The hypothesis was not supported by the data. A hierarchy…

This special issue of the "Courrier," a journal for professionals concerned with issues related to the physical and psychological development of children, provides (1) an overview of 25 years of internationally coordinated research, (2) a selection of papers published by the research teams, and (3) a description of the teams and their…