Verbal-to-spatial associations in working memory may index a core capacity for abstract information limited in the amount concurrently retained. However, what look like associative, abstract representations could instead reflect verbal and spatial codes held separately and then used in parallel. We investigated this issue in two experiments on…

One of the most controversial issues in foreign language (FL) teaching is the age at which language learning should start. Nowadays it is recognized that in second language contexts maturational constraints make an early start advisable, but there is still disagreement regarding the problem of when to start or the best way to learn in foreign…

Children (ages 5, 7, and 9 years) and young adults completed two visual attention tasks that required them to make a forced choice identification response to a target shape presented in the center of a computer screen. In the first task (high correlation condition) each target was flanked with the same distracters on 80% of the trials (valid…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

To examine the relationship between children's social-cognitive status and the production of persuasive arguments and to determine the effects of age and the channel of communication on these arguments, 16 first grade, 17 third grade, and 16 fifth grade students were asked to produce both oral and written persuasive messages and were administered…

The purpose of this paper is to review the relevant evidence concerning the relationship between knowledge and its effect on learning, with an end to answering the questions: (1) How important is knowledge to learning? and (2) How does the relative importance of knowledge change with development? The paper is divided into three main sections:…

The decision making processes of children in a probabilistic environment were studied within the context of the theory of signal detection (TSD). The relationship between the age of the child and his ability to revise decision criteria was examined, as well as the appropriateness of TSD measures and methodology with children. It was hypothesized…

The present study investigated the relationship between developmental shifts in the organization of materials and developmental changes in deliberate strategy use. Second- and fourth-grade children were presented with clusterable sort/recall lists representing the factorial combinations of high and low inter-item association and high and low…

In an effort to describe the linguistic relational categories used by elementary school children, 75 children in grades one through six were asked to complete a puzzle by placing each of three identical triangles on a drawing of a fish, one on the dorsal, one on the ventral, and one on the tail. A piece of Velcro was attached to the back of two…

A total of 61 Belgian boys and girls who were 5 and 7 years old participated in an experiment which aimed at enhancing their giving and helping behavior. Treatment basically involved the induction of empathy. Children in the experimental group were told stories by their teacher in which the hero meets secondary characters who are in need and acts…

Included in this booklet is an account of children's concepts of death at various ages. Specifically, the discussion examines the "average" or "normal" reaction of children from birth through 2 years; 3 through 5 years; 5 through 8 years; 9 through 10 years; and at 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 years. Children's reactions to the death of a pet and…

The research project described in this paper examined the development of analytic writing abilities in late high school and college level students. Following a brief discussion of the project, in which 135 students at different educational levels wrote position papers on an assigned topic, and 35 participated in protocol analysis, the paper offers…

Research on 128 children is presented as evidence of the superiority of a new clustering measure (X) over a more traditional "chance clustering" measure (sigma) as a means of organizing material to be learned to facilitate recall. X is shown to meet three criteria for a measure of a developmental process: X is more highly correlated with recall…

This report examines the results of a study designed to compare various aspects of sex role development among upper middle, middle, and lower class white and Spanish language heritage children in three different preschool daycare centers. The 168 children studied ranged in age from 30 months to six-and-a-half years. Measuring instruments were…

During socialization, individuals begin to understand increasingly broader and more abstract units of personal and social reality. Subjects (N=97) ranging in age from 13 to late middle age completed a linguistic task in which they could impose higher order conceptions on lower order descriptions by identifying different level similarities within…