Reviews recent research on brain development from the time of birth through the development of complex intellectual functioning. Contends that brain hemisphere functions have a significant impact on learning and behavior. Recommends that religious educators should learn how to use knowledge about cognitive development to encourage religious…

Sylwester says education must begin relying more on biology than social and behavioral science. All brain systems move from a slow, awkward functional level to a fast, efficient level. Contributions of metacognition, self-regulation, emotions, reflective and reflexive responses, comparison, and classification to cognitive development are…

Reviews research on the effect of stress hormones, particularly glucocorticoids, on the brain and early development. It describes the psychological and social processes that reduce stress hormone responses to threatening and painful procedures. Research on the cognitive and emotional effects of synthetic glucocorticoids is also discussed.…

Studying normal infant development is a challenge for cognitive scientists in general and for neuroscientists in particular because: (1) physiological indices of infant cognition are generally noisy and technically difficult to obtain; and (2) interindividual variability and a paucity of established results make data interpretation very complex,…

Social cognitive neuroscience can offer a scientific framework for developmental learning in the mentor-learner relationship.

There is evidence that IQ tends to be higher in those who were heavier at birth or who grew taller in childhood and adolescence. Although these findings imply that growth in both foetal and postnatal life influences cognitive performance, little is known about the relative importance of brain growth during different periods of development. We…

A view on music within the framework depicted in this article will show, first of all, that music is part of the semiotically organized connections between living creatures. Music is universally present in human culture, and if music is, as Francis Sparshott says, a system of its own, with elements such as intervals, keys, and scales that are…

In the present work, we developed a database of nonlinguistic sounds that mirror prosodic characteristics typical of language and thus carry affective information, but do not convey linguistic information. In a dichotic-listening task, we used these novel stimuli as a means of disambiguating the relative contributions of linguistic and affective…

This paper presents autoassociator neural networks. A first section reviews the architecture of these models, common learning rules, and presents sample simulations to illustrate their abilities. In a second section, the ability of these models to account for learning phenomena such as habituation is reviewed. The contribution of these networks to…

Growing international interest in the early childhood years has been accompanied by an expansion of public programs in Australia targeting young children and their families. This article explores some of the influences and rhetoric that frame these initiatives. It encourages critical examination of the discourses that shape the nature of early…

A scheme of classification is suggested for physicians faced with various prescriptions for remediation of children with learning disabilities. Three models of the causes of learning disability are suggested: (1) the difference model which stresses normal variability in the pattern of development of mental abilities; (2) the deficit model which…

The differing functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain are discussed and means of developing interaction between the two are described. (JD)

Argues that cognitive reductionism--seeking singular, unitary cognitive explanations for broad ranges of poor school performance--is an inadequate and culturally biased approach to the study of remedial writers. Surveys different approaches to cognition, and notes problems in applying these theories to the thought processes of poor writers. (MM)

Reviews current research on brain-behavior relationships in disabilities of arithmetic and mathematical reasoning from both a neurological and a neuropsychological perspective. Defines developmental dyscalculia and the developmental importance of right versus left hemisphere integrity for the mediation of arithmetic learning and explores…