To test whether the critical language learning period applies to second languages, the English proficiency was studied of 46 Asians varying in age at which they moved to America. Results on a grammaticality judgment task support the hypothesis; early arrivals were significantly superior to later arrivals in English proficiency. (TJH)

Studied play development in 35 Down syndrome and 41 nonhandicapped young children during the transition from sensorimotor to representational functioning. During the transition, children with Down syndrome developed in a manner similar to that of nonhandicapped children, but at a slower pace. (RJC)

This study of 114 children between seven and nine years used a procedure for directly observing child-produced and experimenter-produced strategies to examine the transitional period of strategy development. Findings revealed gradual changes in children's ability to produce, and to benefit from, a strategy of selective attention. (RH)

The study of affect comprehension in 15 children with pervasive developmental disorders (ages 7-10) and normal children matched for mental age found that the disabled children were impaired on affect matching compared to the controls and were impaired on face and affect matching relative to their own performance on object matching. (Author/DB)

Two studies on M-capacity found factor-analytical and correlational evidence that five M-capacity tests share a common source of variance and that, as subjects' increase in age, scores increase at a similar rate. Results suggest that, in the 6-11 age range, M-capacity can be measured with a battery of tests. (AA)

Verbal and figurative classification tasks were presented to 30 blind and 30 sighted children (ages 6 to 11). Although younger blind children were significantly less efficient on tasks, older ones reached or were close to the level of their sighted peers. Analysis illustrates how the blind children adjusted their conceptual knowledge to their…

Explores the extent of preschoolers' knowledge of mixed emotions, and whether difficulty in discerning mixed emotions stems from beliefs about how emotions are portrayed on the face. Found that both four- and five-year olds can identify mixed emotions. Only five-year olds (with appropriate scaffolding and with simple, clear stories) can…

Observed the reactions of 3.5-month-old infants looking at a carrot that should have but did not appear in a window after passing behind a screen. The results of this and several similar experiments indicated that 3.5-month-old infants are able to represent and reason about hidden objects. (BC)

Examined children's ability to describe, understand the causes of, and realize the value of three types of pain. Preschoolers, elementary school students, and college students were interviewed using open-ended questions. Although older children had more complex and precise understandings of pain, this pattern differed according to the type of pain…

In one experiment, second and fourth graders used more categorical information when they made inferences than did preschoolers. In two other experiments, second graders, but not preschoolers, distinguished between categorical information and appearance when they made inferences about known concepts and familiar properties. (BC)

This study tested the predictions of Fischer's skill theory for Kitchener and King's reflective judgment model. A total of 156 14- to 28-year-old students were tested, utilizing the Reflective Judgement Interview (RJI) and Prototypic Reflective Judgement Interview (PRJI). Subjects scored higher on the PRJI than they did on the RJI. There was a…

The ability of 10 9-month-old infants with Down's syndrome to acquire a simple contingency was assessed. Unlike a group of nondisabled infants, the Down's syndrome infants did not, in general, learn the contingency. Results are related to the possibility of a decline in conditionability with age and a relationship between conditionability and…

During a seven-year period, cognitive training by means of a pretest-posttest was used in a study of old adults' problem solving in regards to figural relations. Results showed significant training effects at each phase, with the largest gains occurring at the first phase. The performance of old adults after the last phase was significantly above…

Infants' visual fixations were monitored while they viewed predictable and unpredictable sequences of stimuli. Analyses of anticipatory fixations indicated that by two months of age, infants form expectations for the reappearance of visual stimuli positioned opposite to each other. By three months, infants rapidly form expectations for asymmetric…

Recent work on memory independence and memory interference in cognitive development has been conducted under fuzzy trace theory. Both memory-to-reasoning and reasoning-to-memory interferences were detected in 3 studies of inferences from stories by 94 4- and 5-year olds and 94 7- and 8-year olds. (SLD)