Susan E. Carey, winner of the 2009 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, is cited for groundbreaking studies of the nature of concepts and conceptual change. Her research deepens understanding of the development of concepts, and of the belief systems in which they are embedded, over human childhood, over the history of science, and…

The aim of this study was threefold: first, it was to explore the profiles of student teachers' mental time travel ability; second, it was to examine the relationship between student teachers' mental time travel ability and self-efficacy beliefs; and third, it was to investigate the role of self-efficacy beliefs in relationship between the past…

Background: Several authors have highlighted areas of overlap in symptoms and impairment among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI). By contrast, loss of language and broadly defined regression have been reported as relatively specific to autism. We compare the incidence of language loss…

Learning to identify objects as members of categories is an essential cognitive skill and learning to deploy attention effectively is a core component of that process. The present study investigated an assumption imbedded in formal models of categorization: error is necessary for attentional learning. Eye-trackers were used to record participants'…

Background: This study examined the association between prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) and autonomic regulation at 13 months of age. Methods: Measures of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were obtained from 156 (79 exposed, and 77 nonexposed) infants during baseline and during tasks designed to elicit positive (PA) and negative affect (NA).…

Research Findings: The present study employed a time lag design to assess temporal relationships between motivation, academic achievement, and cognitive development. Eighty-one children from 2 preschool programs were measured twice, with an 11-week time lag, on 2 measures of motivation (marble drop task, bean bag toss task), 2 measures of…

The effects of associative strength and gist relations on rates of children's and adults' true and false memories were examined in three experiments. Children aged 5-11 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott false memory task using DRM and category lists in two experiments and in the third, children…

Background: Significant advances in understanding brain development and behavior have not been accompanied by revisions of traditional academic structure. Disciplinary isolation and a lack of meaningful interdisciplinary opportunities are persistent barriers in academic medicine. To enhance clinical practice, research, and training for the next…

Utilizing a diverse sample of 356 four-year-old children attending Head Start, this study examined the degree to which behavioral aspects of school readiness, including classroom participation, prosocial behavior, and aggression control were related to direct assessments of child cognitive readiness (academic knowledge, executive function skills)…

This study investigated how young children's increasingly flexible use of spatial reference frames enables accurate search for hidden objects by using a task that 3-year-olds have been shown to perform with great accuracy and 2-year-olds have been shown to perform inaccurately. Children watched as an object was rolled down a ramp, behind a panel…

This research investigated the development of affective decision-making (ADM) during early childhood, in particular role of difficulty in learning a gain/loss schedule. In Experiment 1, we administrated the Children's Gambling Task (CGT) to 60 Chinese children aged 3 and 4, replicating the results obtained by Kerr and Zelazo [Kerr, A., & Zelazo,…

Like adults, infants use working memory to represent occluded objects and can update these memory representations to reflect changes to a scene that unfold over time. Here we tested the limits of infants' ability to update object representations in working memory. Eleven-month-old infants participated in a modified foraging task in which they saw…

We investigated differences in drinking behaviors and sources of alcohol among Native American (n = 361) and White adolescents (n = 1,735), ages 11 to 19. Native American youth were more likely to have consumed alcohol in their lifetime and been intoxicated in the last 30 days than Whites. Native American drinkers were almost twice as likely to…

Author stresses the great need for each teacher to use all of the available resources along with his own fresh look at the child in his situation in order to discover the meaning of the child's behavior from the child's own point of view. (Author/RK)