Parenting is traditionally conceptualized as an exogenous environment that affects child development. However, children can also influence the quality of parenting that they receive. Using longitudinal data from 650 identical and fraternal twin pairs, we found that, controlling for cognitive ability at age 2 years, cognitive stimulation by parents…

Children frequently encounter computers in many aspects of daily life. It is important to consider the consequences not only on children's cognitive development but on their emotional and self-development. This paper reports on research undertaken in Australia with 52 children aged between 44 and 79 months to explore the existence or not of a…

In an examination guided by cognitive developmental and attribution theory of how explanations of wealth and poverty and perceptions of rich and poor people change with age and are interrelated, 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds (N = 88) were asked for their causal attributions and trait judgments concerning a rich man and a poor man. First graders, like…

Both drawing and language are fundamental and unique to humans as a species. Just as language is a representational system that uses systematic sounds (or manual/bodily signs) to express concepts, drawing is a means of "graphically" expressing concepts. Yet, unlike language, we consider it normal for people not to learn to draw, and consider those…

Research on learning within interactive play spaces have shown how learning for players is far from merely a matter of acquiring information, but rather their participation and interactions bear upon the enculturation of relevant dispositions, demeanor, and outlook. Not only are players constantly engaged in co-appropriation of knowledge and…

While programs to improve students' working memory are among the hottest new education interventions, new studies are calling into question whether exercises to improve this foundational skill can actually translate into greater intelligence, problem-solving ability, or academic achievement. Working memory is the system the mind uses to hold…

Can young children discriminate impossible events, which cannot happen in reality, from improbable events, which are unfamiliar but could possibly happen in reality? When asked explicitly to categorize these types of events, 4-year-olds (N = 54) tended to report that improbable events were impossible, consistent with prior results (Shtulman &…

Little has been documented about the needs for information, guidance, and support of parents of school-age children with hearing loss, particularly those whose children are about to enter or are in the often turbulent stage of adolescence. The purpose of this study was to provide new knowledge about the specific needs of parents of adolescents and…

Blocks are one of the most popular playthings for children. The purpose of this article is to describe the use of block play in developing parent-child relations. This paper has two major parts. First, a brief historical overview highlights the critical roles of child's block play in learning and development. Block play contributes to children's…

The metrics of self-efficacy and self-assessment were surveyed and analysed in order to examine the effectiveness of note taking instruction on emotional aspects of participants during a blended learning course. The changes of emotional aspects due to student's individual characteristics were also analysed. Participants were surveyed twice during…

The effects of psycholinguistic variables are critical to the evaluation of theories about the cognitive reading system. However, reading research has tended to focus on the impact of key variables on average performance. We report the first investigation examining variation in psycholinguistic effects across the life span, from childhood into old…

Students' thinking about the relation between effort and ability can influence their motivation, affect, and academic achievement. Students sometimes think of effort as inversely related to ability (such that people with low ability must work harder than people with high ability) and other times think of effort as positively related to ability…

Piaget's classic work on cognitive development showed that engaging learners in critical discussions with peers about ideas that are "different" than theirs leads to deep conceptual understanding. Implementing such an approach in college-level STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) courses has some specific challenges: (a) Short…

Auditory processing capabilities at the subcortical level have been hypothesized to impact an individual's development of both language and reading abilities. The present study examined whether auditory processing capabilities relate to language development in healthy 9-month-old infants. Participants were 71 infants (31 boys and 40 girls) with…

The study developed multiple independent scales of early childhood teacher experiences (ECTES). ECTES was co-constructed with preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teachers in a large urban school district. Demographic, ECTES, and teaching practices data were collected from 584 teachers. Factor analyses documented three teacher experience…