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…

Since adolescent depression has become more frequently recognized, its manifestations need to be identified. To explore cognitive-perceptual distortions in depression as a function of generational (adolescent vs. adult) differences, 25 adult and 25 adolescent female inpatients diagnosed as depressed were administered the Beck Depression Inventory…

Recent efforts have been made to develop more age-appropriate intelligence measures for the elderly to determine the nature of age differences and changes in adult cognitive development. Spatial and reasoning performances of young, young-old and old-old individuals were compared on traditional versus familiar and presumably more meaningful…

Age-related and test-retest changes in reflection and impulsivity were investigated among preschool and school age subjects and senior adults. A study of each age group was conducted using either the Matching Familiar Figures test (MFF) or the Kansas Reflection-Impulsivity Scale for Preschoolers (KRISP). In all three studies the procedure was to…

Thirty-six children between four and seven years of age were asked a series of questions to determine their degree of insight (meta-cognitive awareness) regarding the way four common variables influence the ease with which a person can perform the three cognitive tasks of remembering, communicating, and attending. The four variables were the…

The purpose of this study was to measure social causality (skin-color attributions) of white children on a Skin-Color Probe, and to explore the developmental concomitants related to children's explanations of skin color. Seventy-two white children, including equal numbers of males and females, were divided into three age groupings (27-59 months,…

The purpose of this study was to cross-sectionally and longitudinally examine the developmental process of search behavior in infancy. Subjects were 23 Japanese normal infants (11 males and 12 females) who were individually tested once a month from the age of six to 13 months in laboratory settings. Small toys and three white opaque cubic boxes…

Two experiments, designed to examine the developmental changes in the modification of visual memory by verbal information, are described in this paper. In both experiments, first, third, and fifth grade children and college students were shown slides of short episodes followed by oral questions. Questions either described or did not describe…

Five studies investigated the development of imitation in children 1-3 years old. Results indicated that children as young as 12 months possess the cognitive capability of translating a perception of an action into their own behavior, but imitation varies as actions requiring direct social commerce with the examiner are imitated less frequently…

This paper reviews nine studies which report conflicting results in assessing the relationship between children's role-taking ability and communication skills. The studies included satisfy three criteria: (1) role-taking and communication efficiency are measured independently; (2) tasks used to measure the two skills are significantly different in…

Review of reversal learning data obtained from Ss of various developmental phases suggested that overtraining increases perseveration in pre-school children, and decrease perseveration in older (e.g., 1st grade) children. The present experiment tested this apparent trend. Children of two age groups (X = 4 yrs., 4 mos., vs. X = 6 yrs., 5 mos.)…

Two studies were designed to examine the relationship between moral judgment and role-taking in young children. In Study I, 30 lower class and 30 middle class five-year-olds were presented with affective, cognitive and perceptual role-taking tasks. Task performances were then examined in relation to four dimensions of moral…

Eighty subjects 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age inductively identified partially uncovered silhouettes of three simple pictures. Subjects removed as few as possible covering pieces, according to their own strategies, to correctly name the pictures. Performance generally improved with increased age on the two dependent measures, inductively inferring…

Analyzes and compares the exploration, play, and problem-solving activities of typically developing (average) and at-risk infants when they manipulate novel objects. (BB)

Explores the underlying knowledge that children have about the relationship between the structure of requests and the relative status of speakers and listeners. Shows that the three age groups (preschoolers, 5-year-olds, and 10-year-olds) could systematically differentiate the requests by means of syntactic directness or semantics. (HOD)