The purpose of this study was to examine the unique contributions of (social) cognitive skills such as inhibition, working memory, perspective taking, facial emotion recognition, and interpretation of situations to the variance in social information processing in children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities. Respondents were 79…

Background: In recent years, there has been increased research interest in the functioning of working memory in people with intellectual disabilities. Although studies have repeatedly found these individuals to have weak working memory skills, few investigations have distinguished between different degrees of intellectual disability. This study…

A longstanding and fundamental debate in developmental science is whether knowledge is acquired through domain-specific or domain-general mechanisms. To date, there exists no tool to determine whether experimental data support one theoretical approach or the other. In this article, we argue that the U- and N-shaped curves found in a number of…

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and n-back tasks we investigated whether, in 11-13-year-old children, spatial (location) and nonspatial (color) information is differentially processed during visual attention (0-back) and working memory (WM) (2-back) tasks and whether such cognitive task performance, compared to a resting state,…

Two experiments investigated short-term visual person recognition in 8- and 10-year-olds and adults within Tanaka and Farah's part-whole paradigm. Results revealed that person recognition became more accurate between 8 years and adulthood but there was no developmental shift in visual information processes with face and whole person recognition.…

In this article, time effects on intelligence test scores have been investigated. In particular, we examined whether the "Flynn effect" is manifest in children from the middle and higher IQ distribution range, measured with a child intelligence test based on information processing principles--the Leiden Diagnostic Test. The test was administered…

Examined persistence of sensory memory by studying developmental differences in recall of attended and ignored lists of digits for second-graders, fifth-graders, and adults. Found developmental increase in the persistence of memory only for the final item in an ignored list, which is the item for which sensory memory is thought to be the most…

Models of development and models of memory reflect either a mechanistic or organismic world view. A merger of the information-processing models of memory and qualitative models of development is suggested, and has valuable implications about the possible nature of "locus" of memory development (ST)

This Commentary supports Gathercole's (2006) proposal on a double deficit in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The author suggests that these children have a limited phonological storage combined with a particular problem of processing novel speech stimuli. According to Gathercole, there are three areas of skill contributing to…

Research performed, in part, while the author was a research assistant at the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning; remainder conducted at the University of Texas under a National Science Foundation - USDP grant. (VM)

This article compares two theories on why children with language impairment have slower response times when completing linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. First, the slowing is due to difficulty with a particular cognitive processes and second, the slowing is due to a general cognitive processing limitation. Clinical implications are discussed.…

Evaluates the findings and measurement techniques about the incidence and role of internal speech in the information processing abilities of preschool and primary-grade children. (RL)

Assessed possibility that developmental difference in social values is associated with development of information processing capabilities. Three- to 10-year-old children completed an individualized regression assessment of social values, a central-incidental memory measure, and a free-recall word list task. Results indicated age, sex, and memory…

Four groups of children (N=80; C.A. 6.6. to 12.5; M.A. 7.9 to 14.7) were tested for ability to reproduce five-element two- and three-dimensional patterns. Significant interaction and main effects were found. Three-dimensional pattern performance increased with age; all ages performed well on two-dimensional patterns. (Author/DB)

This article examines several sub-constructs of information processing and their potential association with the poorer language comprehension of children with specific language impairments (SLI). It argues that some of the language comprehension problems of children with SLI are related to certain information processing inefficiencies. Techniques…