Three experiments examined 3- and 5-year-olds' recognition of faces in constant and varied emotional expressions. Children were asked to identify repeatedly presented target faces, distinguishing them from distractor faces, during an immediate recognition test and during delayed assessments after 10 min and one week. Emotional facial expression…

Research on age-related cognitive change traditionally focuses on either development or aging, where development ends with adulthood and aging begins around 55 years. This approach ignores age-related changes during the 35 years in-between, implying that this period is uninformative. Here we investigated face recognition as an ability that may…

This study addressed three related aims: (a) to replicate and extend previous work regarding the nonunitary nature of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory during development; (b) to quantify the rate at which processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory develop and the extent to which the development of these…

This study examined the development of executive function (EF) in a typically developing sample from middle childhood to adolescence using a range of tasks varying in affective significance. A total of 102 participants between 8 and 15 years of age completed the Iowa Gambling Task, the Color Word Stroop, a Delay Discounting task, and a Digit Span…

This study explores a common assumption made in the cognitive development literature that children will treat gestures as labels for objects. Without doubt, researchers in these experiments intend to use gestures symbolically as labels. The present studies examine whether children interpret these gestures as labels. In Study 1 two-, three-, and…

Recent research on children's thinking about the future has taken multiple directions, many of which are illustrated in the contributions to this special issue. In this commentary the topic is discussed in the context of research on children's understanding of time, and some of the adaptive challenges of thinking about the future are considered.…

Given its active and enquiry-driven character, fieldwork is seen as an important way to develop geographical understanding of the world, during which cognitive and affective learning reinforce each other. The present study aims to give insight into whether and how secondary school geography teachers in the Netherlands succeed in using fieldwork as…

This report provides a developmental perspective on what competencies young people need to be ready for college, the workplace, and the transition to adulthood. National hand-wringing about the lack of preparedness of high school graduates for college and the workplace has catalyzed researchers, educators, and policymakers to define the skills and…

"Research Connections" conducted a comprehensive search of its collection for resources focused on early mathematics. This Key Topic Resource List includes an overview of the early mathematics literature, as well as a listing of selected resources on the topic. Search results are grouped into five broad areas: (1) Programs and…

This study investigated the effect of two instructional strategies, segmented and holistic, on the progression over time of learners' mental models toward that of an expert with the moderator of cognitive flexibility. Sixty-four juniors and seniors in a college metabolism course were randomly assigned to one of the two strategies for instruction…

In cognitive load theory, element interactivity has been used as the basic, defining mechanism of intrinsic cognitive load for many years. In this article, it is suggested that element interactivity underlies extraneous cognitive load as well. By defining extraneous cognitive load in terms of element interactivity, a distinct relation between…

Recently, an increasing number of studies have suggested a role for the basal ganglia and related dopamine inputs in procedural learning, specifically when learning occurs through trial-by-trial feedback (Shohamy, Myers, Kalanithi, & Gluck. (2008). "Basal ganglia and dopamine contributions to probabilistic category learning." "Neuroscience and…

Extensive exposure to representational media is common for infants in Western culture, and previous research has shown that soon after their 1st birthday, infants can acquire and extend new information from pictures to real objects. Here we explore the extent to which lack of exposure to pictures during infancy affects children's learning from…

Lack of creativity is a problem often plaguing students from design-related departments. Therefore, this study is intended to incorporate analogical thinking in the education of architecture design to enhance students' learning and their future career performance. First, this study explores the three aspects of architecture design curricula,…

The present longitudinal study tested the roles of early childhood executive control (EC) as well as exposure to poverty-related adversity at family and school levels as key predictors of low-income children's EC in elementary school ("n" = 391). Findings suggest that children's EC difficulties in preschool and lower family income from…