Examined development of ability to inhibit thoughts within free speech by manipulating the content requirements of overt streams-of-consciousness. Investigation with kindergartners, second graders, fifth graders, and adults revealed a developmental improvement in inhibitory ability over the middle-childhood years; results are consistent with…

Three studies investigated how experiencing nearby locations together in time influenced memory for location in 7-, 9-, and 11- year-olds and adults. Findings suggested that experiencing nearby locations together in time increased the weight children assigned to categorical information in their later estimates of location. Results were similar…

Two experiments with monolingual German-speaking 2.5- to 4.5-year-olds showed a consistent developmental gap between children's memory/inference of what someone wanted and what someone wrongly said or thought. Correct answers emerged with mastery of the false-belief task. It was concluded that the observed gap constrains de Villiers's linguistic…

Investigated the hypothesis that the meaning young children attribute to the word "big" may depend differentially on the object of reference. Children three and five years of age who were shown pairs of buildings and pairs of cars used a height rule for both classes of objects when interpreting big. (NH)

Five experiments involving children of 4-11 years investigated partonomic knowledge and its relation to the use of taxonomic organization. Results suggest that children are sensitive to parts of common objects and appear to be able to use this sensitivity to group objects in abstract, function-based, superordinate categories. (RJC)

Two experiments demonstrated that by the age of four years, children can use the difference between an object's initial and final state to work out what happens to an object when it changes. In contrast, three-year-old children have difficulty in using the difference between initial and final states to make a causal inference. (RH)

Used the Piagetian interview and observation to investigate the understanding of death of 378 children of 2-10 years. Results showed that most children revealed a well-structured understanding of death at 4-5 years. (RJC)

Examined two- to four-year-olds' and adults' internalized representations of the sizes of buttons, plates, and shoes in five experiments. Results suggested that three- and four-year-olds had accurate knowledge of the typical sizes of buttons and plates. Two-year-olds demonstrated accurate internal representations of the sizes of shoes. (RJC)

Sixty young children were tested for their understanding that a person who is mentally focused on one thing devotes little or no simultaneous attention to another, totally irrelevant thing. Though most 6- and 8-year olds demonstrated an understanding that task-oriented thought and attention were selectively focused, most of the 4-year olds showed…

Revealed that 6-month-old infants are unable to access either an original memory or a reactivated memory after lengthy intervals. Despite the fact that their memory processing is more rapid during encoding and retrieval than that of infants half their age, their facility for accessing an original or reactivated memory is weaker than that of such…

The ability of 31- to 36-month-old children to act in accordance with rules was assessed in 2 slightly different experiments using sorting tasks and knowledge tasks. Taken together, the results of both experiments imply a relatively rapid, age-related change culminating in the ability to systematically execute rules that require access to extant…

The results of four studies involving three to seven year olds revealed that, by age three, some children (1) appreciated conservation of matter despite visual disappearance and the existence of invisible particles; and (2) made use of the particle concept to explain how a particle can continue to exist and maintain its properties despite visual…

In one task, preschoolers pretended to use common objects. Three- and four-year olds used gestures in which body parts represented the objects. Five-year olds used gestures that involved imaginary objects. In a second task, preschoolers were asked to imitate gestures modeled by the experimenter. Three-year olds could not imitate imaginary object…

In three experiments, children were asked whether animals, plants, and artifacts that had been damaged could heal through regrowth and whether a person could mend them. Four-year olds realized that both animals and plants could regrow and that artifacts had to be fixed by humans. Three-year olds were less knowledgeable than four-year olds. (MDM)

This study investigated the role of semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms with 80 children (kindergarten and grades 1, 3, and 4). Idioms varied in the degree that the meanings of their parts contributed to their figurative meanings. Findings indicated age differences with younger children better understanding the…