A good deal of research purports that bilingualism has a positive effect on some aspects of cognitive functioning. However, this effect is not consistent, and little research examines trajectories of cognitive skill development in bilingual children. Moreover, it remains unclear whether different types of bilingualism impact how cognitive…

Young children can engage in diagnostic reasoning. However, almost all research demonstrating such capacities has investigated children's inferences when the individual efficacy of each candidate cause is known. Here we show that there is development between ages five and seven in children's ability to reason about the number of candidate causes…

Suor et al. (2017) present a compelling new evolutionary framework that offers an alternative interpretation of the well-established findings of cognitive deficits in children raised in harsh early environments. They argue that such findings do not convey a complete picture of those children's cognitive development, because children's cognition…

The complicated cognitive processes involved in natural (primary) bilingualism lead to significant cognitive development. Executive functions as a fundamental component of human cognition are deemed to be affected by language learning. To date, a large number of studies have investigated how natural (primary) bilingualism influences executive…

In this longitudinal study, 52 typically developing preschoolers engaged in a hiding game with their mothers when children were 42-, 54-, and 66-months old. Children's understanding of mind, positive affect, and engagement with the task were rated, and mothers' utterances were coded for role and content. Analyses confirmed that some facets of…

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition" was published and its…

The issues that prompt this study are based on current research indicating the positive effects of inquiry learning on the cognitive development of children. The purpose of this case study was to understand the effects of inquiry learning on the academic achievement and bilingual verbal ability of 5th grade bilingual students in a French/English…

This study assessed the influence of age and ability on linear syllogistic reasoning in early adolescence by presenting bright and average 11- and 13-year-olds with 64, 3-term series problems. Results showed a dramatic effect on performance due to ability. Age effect was only marginally significant. (JMB)

Preference scores were determined for several different groups of students ranging in age from seven to adult. In addition, instruments were administered to determine the cognitive level at which the students were capable of functioning. Comparisons between the students' cognitive level and preferences were made. The results indicated that the…

American thought has contained a strong metaphysical bias favoring a realist interpretation of the world, and this has led to the assumption that facts possess ontological status, however, facts are segments of human experience and students must acquire conceptual tools for extracting factual data from experience. (JD)

Discusses the nature of wisdom and its function in the developmental process and how it differs from cognitive ability. Compares these two constructs with respect to the domains of behavior they represent, the operational tasks used to assess them, and the relationship of logic and time in their development. (Author)

Reports that spatial ability was unrelated to formal reasoning task performance. Notes that sex differences occurred with balance tasks and pendulum tasks, suggesting male superiority at manifesting proportionality and isolating variables. (Author/RL)

Adolescents with mental retardation viewed a story enacted with props and were asked questions about the knowledge and beliefs of the characters. Subjects performed worse than did nondisabled children matched for mental age. Subjects did better on questions requiring first-order reasoning than on those involving second-order reasoning. (Author/JDD)

This research explored the development of reasoning about persuasion. First-grade, seventh-grade, and undergraduate subjects were individually presented with a hypothetical persuasive situation in which a young child attempts to obtain a toy from various "targets." Pairs of tape-recorded persuasive appeals were randomly presented to each…

Second and third graders and fifth and sixth graders were tested in a very large, unfamiliar environment to determine the relation of their knowledge of an abstract reference frame to performance on a spatial inference task. (HOD)