Examined the relation between the spontaneous occurrence in play of simple two-part action sequences and the frequency of these sequences and their components following modeling at 12, 15, and 19 months of age. Play following modeling was typically more advanced but only 19-month-old children generally were able to imitate complete sequences.…

Results suggest that children can use the rules of conversational sequencing to evaluate the need for an inference to the speaker's intent when speakers deliberately violate a rule. This ability is acquired by six or seven years of age, but children do not correctly infer the speaker's intent until they are eight or nine years old. (Author/RH)

Results support the hypothesis that certain classification skills underlie two types of role-taking ability: (1) in which children were asked how another child would think a cartoon ended if shown only the beginning; and (2) in which children were asked how another child would think a cartoon began if shown only the end. (Author/DB)

The central idea behind this study is that at about seven years of age the concept of normative difficulty emerges, resulting in changes in interpretation of terms such as "hard" and "easy," as well as of normative cues. (Author/DB)

Relative contributions of form and function information to concepts of 10 objects were investigated with first, second, and third-grade subjects. For first graders, function information about objects took precedence. For second and third graders, form information took precedence. (Author/GSK)

Investigates two levels of the spontaneous inference of thinking in others (nonrecursive and recursive) in children of ages 10, 12, 14 and 16 using a person description task. (Author/SS)

Inference tasks emphasizing the acceptance of lack of closure (ALC), memory, and hypothetico-deductive reasoning were administered to 67 males and 74 females ranging in age from 5 to 12 years. Results suggest that the relationship of ALC to age is mediated by memory development rather than by logical development. (JMB)

Subjects examined crowded semirealistic layouts of toy objects, or photographs of these layouts, and then tried to identify added, moved or deleted items. The main study involved 96 subjects, 24 at each of four age levels (first, third, sixth grade, and adult). (MS)

Investigated the proposition that two distinct factors involved in life span cognitive development are mental speed and coordination efficiency. Results show dissociable speed of processing and working memory functioning over the life span and age-related differential effects of coordinative demands. (ET)

Links between theory of mind and episodic memory involving autonoetic consciousness were investigated in Japanese 4- to 6-year-olds. After age was controlled for, most theory of mind abilities showed no interrelations. Own and others' belief understandings on deceptive appearance tasks were solely related to source memory. Results suggest that…

This study examined whether 4- to 8-year-olds considered knowledge prerequisites for pretending and drawing. Children were asked if an artist (actor) who did not know what something was, yet whose drawing (behavior) resembled it, was actually drawing it (pretending to be it). Children performed similarly on pretending and drawing questions.…

Two studies investigated development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. Results indicated that 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes in line drawings, while 12- and 15-month-olds did not respond differentially. In condition using photographs, only 18-month-olds had reliable…

Three experiments investigated effects of complexity on 2- to 6-year-olds' understanding of a beam balance. Found that 2- to 4-year-olds succeeded on problems that entailed binary relations, but 5- and 6-year-olds also succeeded on problems that entailed ternary relations. Ternary relations tasks from other domains (transitivity and class…

This study examined preschoolers' performance on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. Findings indicated that in the observation task, there was significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes among all children. Most 3-year-olds, but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds,…