Unlike children's early ability to navigate by continuous boundaries, their ability to extract geometric information from an array of objects emerges gradually over childhood. To investigate children's developing representation of object arrays for navigation and its relation to their mental representation of the global spatial layout,…

Adult observers are sensitive to the configuration of facial features within a face, able to distinguish between relative differences in feature spacing, and detecting deviations from typical facial appearance. How does the representation of the typical configuration of facial features develop? While there is a great deal of work describing…

The development of error monitoring is central to learning and academic achievement. However, few studies exist on the neural correlates of children's error monitoring, and no studies have examined its susceptibility to educational influences. Pedagogical methods differ on how they teach children to learn from errors. Here, 32 students (aged 8-12…

Errors differ in degree of seriousness. We asked whether preschoolers would use the magnitude of an informant's errors to decide if that informant would be a good source of information later. Four- and 5-year-olds observed two informants incorrectly label familiar objects, but one informant's errors were closer to the correct answer than the…

The effect of list length on children's false memories was investigated using list and story versions of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure. Short (7 items) and long (14 items) sequences of semantic associates were presented to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years old either in lists or embedded within a story that emphasized the list theme.…

Although labeling improves executive function (EF) performance in children older than 3 years, the results from studies with younger children have been equivocal. In the current study, we assessed performance in a computerized multistep multilocation search task with older 2-year-olds. The correct search location was either (a) not marked by a…

On belief-desire reasoning tasks, children first pass tasks involving true belief before those involving false belief, and tasks involving positive desire before those involving negative desire. The current study examined belief-desire reasoning in participants old enough to pass all such tasks. Eighty-three 6- to 11-year-olds and 20 adult…

Background: Down syndrome (DS) has been the focus of much cognitive and developmental research; however, there is a gap in knowledge regarding sustained attention, particularly across different sensory domains. This research examined the hypothesis that children with DS would demonstrate superior visual rather than auditory performance on a…

We explored how relational complexity and featural distraction, as varied in scene analogy problems, affect children's analogical reasoning performance. Results with 3- and 4-year-olds, 6- and 7-year-olds, 9- to 11-year-olds, and 13- and 14-year-olds indicate that when children can identify the critical structural relations in a scene analogy…

This study investigated the development of the understanding of class inclusion in children age 5, 7, and 9 years, whose performance on a qualitative class-inference task assessing their appreciation of the transitive and asymmetrical nature of inclusive relations within the animal domain was compared with their ability to make quantitative…

This study examined developmental changes in concept formation, rule switching, and perseverative behaviors of children in the WCST by altering visual features of the test and using a new test score--the "zigzag" error score--which shows the number of shifts made between two incorrect concepts or rules. Instead of the original four 3-dimensional…

Longitudinal study examined 6-year-olds' performance in tasks involving a protagonist with partial information about an object or a person. Found that children who demonstrated some understanding of the consequences of limited information access often made other errors. Despite intervening additions of contextual support and clarifications, the…

Two experiments examined relation between age-related changes in retention and age-related changes in the misinformation effect. Found large age-related retention differences when participants were interviewed immediately and after 1 day, but after 6 weeks, differences were minimal. Exposure to misleading information increased commission errors.…

Examined whether a detailed analysis of age-related changes in error patterns could reveal the mechanisms underpinning development in short-term memory. Tested developmental changes among 7- to 11-year-olds in their serial recall of lists of 6 letters, finding developmental differences in the patterns of errors. (JPB)

A study involving 26 Taiwanese children (ages 6-12) with autism and 52 controls found scores on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test were significantly higher for controls for categories completed and percent conceptual level. Scores on perseverative responses, perseverative errors, and non-perseverative errors were higher for those with autism.…