There is general consensus that the representation of the human face becomes functionally specialized within the first few months of an infant's life. The literature is divided, however, on the question whether the specialized representation of the remainder of the human body form follows a similarly rapid trajectory or emerges more slowly and in…

Being able to see a talking face confers a considerable advantage for speech perception in adulthood. However, behavioural data currently suggest that children fail to make full use of these available visual speech cues until age 8 or 9. This is particularly surprising given the potential utility of multiple informational cues during language…

The neurocognitive development of moral and conventional judgments was examined. Event-related potentials were recorded while 24 adolescents (13 years) and 30 young adults (20 years) read scenarios with 1 of 3 endings: moral violations, conventional violations, or neutral acts. Participants judged whether the act was acceptable or unacceptable…

Sex differences in the latent general and broad cognitive abilities underlying the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities were investigated for children, youth, and adults ages 6 through 59. A developmental, multiple indicator-multiple cause, structural equation model was used to investigate sex differences in latent cognitive abilities as…

Children took a group test of disjunctive reasoning containing 48 inclusive and exclusive items varying in content of the premises, and affirmation or negation of the conclusion. Performance improved until seventh grade. Negative conclusions produced more correct answers. Implications were discussed in relation to cognitive developmental theory…

Two experiments compared the cognitive maps (mental representations of the spatial environment) of first graders, fifth graders and college students, and investigated developmental changes in the ability to manipulate cognitive maps mentally. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to move from stationpoint to stationpoint and at each, to…

Presented a battery of false belief tasks varying in type of belief questioned, target for belief ascription, presentation of reality information, and deception context to Head Start children. Found that performance was better on locations tasks than on contents tasks and with older children compared with younger children and that performance was…

This study examined 6- to 8-year-old Slovenian children's acquisition of matrix completion proficiency and compared microgenetic and age-related changes on the task. Microgenetic analyses indicated that: variability of children's errors increased before they discovered the correct strategy, the correct strategy became dominant shortly after…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

Piaget's egocentrism and Witkin's psychological differentiation are important constructs in theories of cognitive development. A comparison of these concepts could lead to an increased understanding of cognitive development in the older adult. In a test of Witkin's revised model of psychological differentiation, the Portable Rod and Frame Test…

Factor analysis of correlations among the measures of recall clustering, free sorting, and recognition errors revealed significant convergent validity for consistent use of a semantic perceptual organization strategy in the three tasks. Ten-year-old, adult, and elderly adult subjects relied on a semantic strategy; four- and six-year-olds encoded…

In this study, free play with toys having unambiguous functions was examined to test the hypothesis that a basic cognitive metamorphosis is associated with the new competences displayed in children at about 12 months. Functional play was observed in 64 children at 9 1/2, 11 1/2, 13 1/2, and 15 1/2 months of age. Six sets of toys with 36…

The relative effects of chronological age, mental age, IQ or Piagetian task performance were investigated among 143 Ss of high, average, and low IQ. Two kinds of group comparisons were made on fifteen tasks: (1) groups of the same chronological age, but different mental age and IQ, and (2) groups of the same mental age, but different chronological…

Studied the relationship between mental age and progression toward Piaget's stages of concrete operations and formal operations in a sample of middle class children. Formal operations in preadolescence and adulthood are discussed in relation to IQ. (GO)

Using a microcomputer "dart" game, this study of 61 primary school students investigated how children of different ages used counting to make numerical estimates. Results showed developmental differences in accuracy of estimation, fluency in counting and sophistication of self-reported strategy use. (BS)