Two studies examined executive functions in children with autism. Results indicated that subjects performed like normally developing children when either no arbitrary and novel rules were involved or the output was verbal. Results support the hypothesis that these children are challenged by executive tasks because they are unlikely to encode rules…

Investigated with 58 gifted children (in grades 5 or 6) were differences in right and left hemispheric brain functions in the context of J. Piaget's theories of stages of cognitive development. (DB)

Ten language impaired and 10 language normal children, aged 3-5), were asked to solve verbal and nonverbal problems requiring color and size judgments. There were no group differences on the verbal tasks, but the language impaired children performed less well on the nonverbal tasks especially on problems dealing with size. (Author/DB)

A battery of immediate memory tests was given to eight mentally retarded Down's Syndrome Ss, eight controls matched on chronological age (CA), and eight controls matched on mental age (MA). All Ss were required to identify both receptively and expressively 24 items from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. There was no significant difference…

Three experiments tested whether qualitative differences in processing of verbal materials result from congenital hearing impairment. Subjects were children with reading levels equivalent to grades 4 to 6. Experiment 1 used repeated measurements with two modes of response and two kinds of cues; experiment 2 used acoustic similarity to produce…

After intensively studying for several years the thinking processes of members of a tribal group in Western Africa, the Kpelle, the authors examine the relation between culture and cognitive development. The following issues are discussed: (1) an analysis of the terms "culture" and "cognition"; (2) an ethnographic description of the Kpelle…