This study examined how 21 blind children (ages 3-8) performed perspective-taking tasks compared to 60 sighted children with and without blindfolds, under different conditions of distance and barriers. Results showed that, with increasing age, young blind children did not exhibit a significant increase in accurate perspective taking. (JDD)

This article uses a case study of a deaf-blind infant to examine issues in the early cognitive development of such infants. The study used an ecological approach involving naturalistic observation, videotaping, anecdotal accounts, and the use of four global developmental scales. (DB)

Examined whether preschool children focus on a small number of attributes or attend to whole exemplars in learning basic categories for fictitious animals. Found little evidence that children employed rules, but found strong evidence that children encoded exemplars as integrated wholes during category training. Discusses implications for theories…

Investigated age differences from early childhood to adulthood in the capacity to understand--in a psychologically meaningful way--traits in stories wherein main characters perform actions based on a positive, negative, or incidental motive that result in an emotional consequence for another character. Found that even 5- to 6-year-olds made trait…

Examined preschool children's inferences about the likely appearance of a target figure based on information about the figure's occupation or personality traits. Without explicit gender-category information, girls' performance on gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent trials was equivalent; boys performed better on same-sex attributes. With…

Three experiments examined children's understanding of functional relations in economics. Found that preschoolers understood effects of demand and second graders also understood effects of supply, but even fourth graders often failed to understand motivation and morality effects. Fourth but not second graders explained how motivation and morality…

Proposes an account of the development of temporal understanding, linking it with episodic memory development. Distinguishes between ways of representing time in terms of frameworks involved; describes perspectival and nonperspectival frameworks and those representing recurrent sequences or particular times. Describes emergence of new kinds of…

Interviewed mothers to examine the developmental significance of preschoolers' imaginary companions. Found that relationships with invisible companions were described as sociable and friendly, whereas personified objects were usually nurtured. Object personification frequently occurred as a result of acquiring a toy; invisible friends were viewed…

Analysis of effects of different starting points on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II Mental Scale found that starting at the child's chronological age consistently inflated scores, whereas starting at the lowest item set skewed results in the opposite direction. Testing downward until all items are passed and upward until all items are…

Evaluated statistically the effect of intranatal and early postnatal period factors on mental development of very low-birth-weight infants. Covariance structure analysis revealed direct influence of birth weight and gestational age in weeks on mental development at age 1, and of opthalmological aberrations and respirator disorder on mental…

Research on the effects of home computer use on children's development indicates that: computer access increases total time spent with the television or computer rather than other activities; computer games can build computer literacy; home computer use slightly increases academic performance; increased Internet use may increase loneliness and…

Examined the effect of functional values of stimuli on orienting response elicitation. Subjects were 50 4-month-old infants and were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions. Results suggested the importance of taking into account the functional value of stimuli when analyzing infant attention. (MOK)

Comparison of children and adolescents with Fragile X Syndrome (n=18) or autism (n=18) for changes in cognitive ability and adaptive behavior over 9 years found steeper decreases in IQ scores among Fragile X subjects with older autistic subjects autism exhibiting stable test-retest scores. Comparative declines in adaptive behavior scores were…

Maintains that recent theoretical and methodological advances have sparked renewed interest in studying children's learning. Describes consistent and interesting findings regarding how children learn and intriguing proposals regarding mechanisms underlying learning. Argues that increasing the focus on children's learning promises practical…

Makes a case for rereading the fact-value dichotomy that currently divides the contemporaneous literatures dealing with children's moral reasoning development and their evolving theories of mind. Presents findings from two research programs, in which children's beliefs about truth and rightness are combined, to illustrate the natural…