Studied the sociocultural context in which Brazilian children acquire and use everyday mathematics in terms of currency use. Participants were 105 children, ages 4 to 11, and their parents. Found decreased use of currency with increasing age. Children also used currency to aid their problem solving and progressed from global estimates to the…

Examined 5- to 12-year-olds' judgment regarding the behavior of balance scales and other levers whose arms varied in a causal or a noncausal variable. Results indicated age-related increases in correct judgments about the influence of physical features of objects at an earlier age than about spatial relations between objects. (MOK)

Three experiments explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people were made by children and adults. Results indicated that children often predicted that people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological events. Older children…

Explores the factors associated with expected outcome of emotional expression and likelihood of expression among 125 first-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children. Results suggest that socialization practices tend to be directed towards the suppression of sadness among males. (RJC)

Four experiments investigated phonemic and visual similarity effects in 5- and 10-year olds. Results suggested that young children rely on modality-dependent codes, which are probably automatically activated, and do not use a speech-based memory code for drawings and words. This pattern of findings appeared to be independent of culture and…

Examines subjects' processing in misleading test items. Suggests that the M-power for children, when assessed behaviorally, may increase with age in a discrete manner, and have the potential to generate interval scales of measurement. In addition, suggests that, in light of the results, what statisticians often consider "error of…

Investigated children's understanding of meaning of the cognitive verb "know" (as defined by an abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy). Found that knowledge increased with development, and low levels of meaning were mastered before high levels, and more rapidly. Understanding in audio-taped stories was more difficult than in video-taped…

Tested children with apparatus that dropped balls through clear or opaque interwoven tubes. Found that older children could solve configurations with greater number of tubes than younger children. Success with clear tubes did not transfer to opaque tubes. Significantly, errors were consistently directed to location directly below ball's last seen…

Assessed the beliefs of first, third, and fifth graders about their ability and achievement and their motivational responses to challenging puzzles. Suggests that individual differences in children's cognition about ability and achievement are related to their motivational responses throughout the school years. Points out ways that these…

Investigated effects of object reinstatement on event recall by 6- and 9-year olds'. Subjects were interviewed either 10 days and again 10 weeks after an event, or only 10 weeks after an event. Interviewing included free recall, prompts, and questions. Found that age, delay, and object reinstatement all affected amount and accuracy of recall. (JW)

Measures of vocabulary, phonological memory, nonverbal intelligence, and reading were taken from 80 children at ages 4, 5, 6, and 8 years. Comparisons revealed a significant shift in the causal underpinnings of the relationship between phonological memory and vocabulary development before and after age five. (Author/LB)

A 7-month longitudinal study of 20 2- and 3-year-old children shows that children at an early age already know that counting words each refer to a distinct numerosity, although they do not know to which numerosity. It takes children a long time to learn the latter. (SLD)

A total of 30 kindergarten and second, fourth, and sixth grade students from Taiwan and the United States were asked to make category inclusion and typicality judgments for 6 categories. Findings suggested that cultural familiarity with instances plays an important role in the development of category knowledge. (RH)

Presents results of an analysis of a collection of statements about God written by German students between 16 and 22 years of age. Examines results from a psychoanalytic and cognitive-developmental perspective. Also considers the ways in which adolescents talk about the relationship between God and the church. (BB)

Used a cross-sectional natural language database to investigate the parent-child conversations of 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds. Found that 4-year-olds and, to a greater extent, 5-year olds reliably used explicit contrastives. All the children regularly elicited mentalistic responses from their parents and, in some cases, these parental responses were…