More than a century ago, Galton and Spearman suggested that there was a functional relationship between sensory discrimination ability and intelligence. Studies have since been able to confirm a close relationship between general discrimination ability (GDA) and IQ. The aim of the present study was to assess whether this strong relationship…

Using nationally representative samples of 45,964 two- to nine-year-old children and their primary caregivers in 17 developing countries, this study examined the relations between children's cognitive, language, sensory, and motor disabilities and caregivers' use of discipline and violence. Primary caregivers reported on their…

Timing is essential for the development of cognitive skills known to be impaired in Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), such as social cognition and episodic memory abilities. Despite the proposal that timing impairments may underpin core features of ASC, few studies have examined temporal processing in ASC and they have produced conflicting…

This study investigates children's metarepresentational competence (MRC) with regard to listening to and making sense of simple sonic stimuli. Using diSessa's (2002) seminal work on MRC in mathematics and sciences as background, it aims to assess the relative importance children attribute to several criteria for representational adequacy…

The term "representational momentum" (RM) refers to the idea that our memory representations for moving objects incorporate information about movement--a fact that can lead us to make errors when judging an object's location (the RM effect). In this study, we explored the RM effect in a sample of children born very prematurely and a sample born at…

Two studies investigated how 5- to 10-year-olds integrate perceptual causality with their knowledge of the underlying causal mechanism, using two devices in which a bell would ring when a ball was dropped in, either immediately or after a delay, depending on the mechanism inside. Findings suggest a link between temporal contiguity and causality in…

Early childhood neglect can limit a child's normal cognitive development and result in behavior problems in the classroom. When normal attachment is disrupted, learning difficulties can result in problems with time awareness. It has also been shown that an awareness of time is a key concept for the formation of organizational and math skills. This…

Five experiments involving children of 4-11 years investigated partonomic knowledge and its relation to the use of taxonomic organization. Results suggest that children are sensitive to parts of common objects and appear to be able to use this sensitivity to group objects in abstract, function-based, superordinate categories. (RJC)

Three studies looked at kindergarten, third and sixth grade students' and adults' comprehension of different types of adaptation or contrast effects for weight and temperature. Results showed improvement up to college age and revealed the importance of using older children in studies of developing theories of the mind. (SAK)

Empirically describes the relative development of perceptual and conceptual understanding of left-right, back-front, up-down projective relationships between objects and provides a heuristic model of the cognitive processes involved in coordination of perspectives tasks. (Author/ED)

Comparisons of age and test score correlations, comparisons of cross-sequential means, and trends of means for diagnostic subgroups and normal controls suggest developmental delay for all measured skills at all ages for autistic and schizophrenic children. Findings also suggest a trend for steady prepubertal cognitive skill development, followed…

Repeated but unadvised attempts have been made by music educators to relate the Piagetian concept of concrete operational thought to children's understanding of music. The attempts have been focused on the apparent link between the child's detection of invariance in musical patterns and the concept of conservation. These attempts are unadvised…

It is proposed here that adults process orientation information at different levels and that these levels correspond to developmental stages in the coding of orientation in childhood. (Author)

Sensory thinking is the process of bringing experienced aspects of the child's world into his focal awareness, usually through a medium such as language. (Author/IRT)

Examines the development of children's ability to differentiate among informational, instructional, and persuasive television messages. Found high comprehension of narrative content even by the youngest children, but correct perception of message intent occurred primarily among older children. (PD)