The articles in this special issue of the "Journal of Cognition and Development" examine the cognitive development of children who are following typical and atypical developmental pathways. The articles offer a mixture of theory-based considerations, reviews of the literature, and new empirical data addressing fundamental aspects of…

This study aimed to determine whether taking a chronological approach (CA) or topical approach (TA) to teaching developmental psychology resulted in different learning outcomes. Across two semesters, in four classes, 354 students participated (M[subscript age] = 19.76, SD[subscript age] = 2.93 years), 66% identifying as female. One instructor…

Research in non-human animal (hereafter, animal) cognition has found strong evidence that some animal species are capable of meta-cognitively monitoring their mental states. They know when they know and when they do not know. In contrast, animals have generally not shown robust theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. Comparative research uses methods…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. The 2012 winner is Laurie R. Santos for creative and insightful investigations of cognition across a broad range of species and psychological domains, illuminating cognitive…

Studies with infants show divergence between performance on theory of mind tasks depending on whether "direct" or "indirect" measures are used. It has been suggested that direct measures assess a flexible but cognitively demanding ability to reason about the minds of others, whereas indirect measures assess distinct processes…

Two experiments were conducted to explore the extent to which individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as well as young typically developing (TD) children, are explicitly aware of their own and others' intentions. In Experiment 1, participants with ASD were significantly less likely than age- and ability-matched comparison participants to…

Previous research has reported that children's numerical equivalence judgments are affected by surface similarity and counting ability (e.g. Mix, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1996; Siegel, 1973), a pattern that suggests categorization processes play a role in numerical development. However, because these studies involved memory for sets, large set…

Using data from the first 2 phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, the authors examine the links between maternal employment in the first 12 months of life and cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes for children at age 3, at age 4.5, and in first grade. Drawing on theory and prior research from developmental psychology as well as…

Most moral psychologists have come to accept two types of moral reasoning: Kohlberg's "justice" and Gilligan's "care", but there still seem to be some unresolved issues. By analysing and comparing Kohlberg's statement on some theoretical issues with some of Gilligan's statements in an interview in April 2003, I will look at some key issues in the…

Piaget's concept of "internalization" is analyzed and related to Bruner's representational theories of cognitive development. Cognitive structures are shown to be real exclusively in an actual representation. (Author/SDH)

The purpose of this study was to discover if there was a relationship in decisions made between adults and 11-year old students assumed to be at different levels of the formal operations stage in their responses to a situation calling for a moral judgment. (Author)

The present study was designed to explore the relationship between the theoretical models of cognitive development proposed by L. S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget. One hundred and four subjects aged four to sixteen years were selected. All subjects were in the average range of intelligence, were in the usual school grade for their age, and had no history…

Social learning theory is evaluated from a historical perspective that goes up to the present. Sears and others melded psychoanalytic and stimulus-response learning theory into a comprehensive explanation of human behavior. Bandura emphasized cognitive and information-processing capacities that mediate social behavior. (LB)

A study used structure mapping theory to examine the claim that children can understand metaphors based on shared object attributes before understanding those based on shared relational structure. The three kinds of metaphor used in the study varied in whether the shared information forming the basis for the interpretation was attributional,…

Contrasts work of Leontiev and Vygotsky. Suggests that Leontiev concentrated on social activity as a whole, whereas Vygotsky made semiotic mediation through culturally developed symbols a central aspect of his analysis. Maintains that they shared a philosophical base and that Leontiev used Vygotsky's ideas as a starting point to explore human…