Examined children's readings of wordless picture books to explore ways they assign meaning to visual signs and cues. Found that children used processes similar to those for reading print-based texts; constructing meaning using prior learning, attention to intertextual clues, multiple perspective taking, reliance upon story language and rituals;…

Explored four- to six-year olds' approach to drawing and related writing tasks. Participants, unschooled in writing, were asked to depict common objects with a drawing and a written name. Analysis of videotape revealed systematic differences (random, continuous marks versus discrete, left-to-right marks). Results suggest that young children have…

Examines results and interpretations from recent books, journal articles, policy studies, and media stories on how the emerging understanding of brain development and neural function could revolutionize educational practice, focusing on: the neuroscience and education argument; synaptogenesis; critical developmental periods; enriched environments…

Participants were interviewed about the biological and psychological functioning of a dead agent. In Experiment 1, even 4- to 6-year-olds stated that biological processes ceased at death, although this trend was more apparent among 6- to 8-year-olds. In Experiment 2, 4- to 12-year-olds were asked about psychological functioning. The youngest…

"Little by little, the child develops," wrote an undergraduate in a friend's cognitive development class, and so, for the most part, it is. But what explains the U's of cognitive development? Namy, Campbell, and Tomasello and Cashon and Cohen take a standard approach to understanding U-shaped curves: as the product of a mix of different cognitive…

Earlier investigations have found mixed evidence of source monitoring impairment in autism. The present study examined three types of source monitoring ability in children with autism and typically developing children. In three different conditions, participants were presented with word lists after which they were required to recall the source of…

In this article we describe the development, analysis, and interpretation of a novel item format we call Ordered Multiple-Choice (OMC). A unique feature of OMC items is that they are linked to a model of student cognitive development for the construct being measured. Each of the possible answer choices in an OMC item is linked to developmental…

Two tasks of word identification were proposed to children in their last year of upper preschool classes. The results show that identification is not based on an holistic processing but on an analytic one: some letters are enough, especially the first ones. Moreover, their order does not matter. During this period where reading is visuo-semantic…

If developmental psychologists were asked to nominate the most exciting, cutting-edge research area in the field's recent history, many would vote for the area popularly known as theory-of-mind development, the childhood acquisition of everyday, common-sense knowledge and beliefs about the mental world. This article deals with several research…

An empirically-based theory is proposed that relates media's most essential modes of presentation--their symbol systems--to modes of cognitive representation and to the acquisition of knowledge. This book draws upon scholarship in such areas as the study of symbol systems, cognition, cognitive development, psycholinguistics, and mass…

In two studies, children participated in route-planning tasks in which they were asked to find the shortest path to retrieve certain items. In Study 1, children participated in two versions of the task (standard versus feedback) differing in the amount of contextual support. Forty-eight children, ages 6, 8, and 10 years, had to help their…

Cognitive development is driven by experience, but is mediated by domain general processes, which include learning, induction, and analogy. The concepts children understand, and the strategies they develop based on that understanding, depend on the complexity of the representation they can construct. Conceptual complexity can be defined in terms…

This study examined children's explanatory style for health- and safety-related events. Fifty children (ages 8 to 11) were interviewed using 12 health-related questions based on Seligman's Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) method. Children and their mothers also completed a health status form, which included questions on the…

A major theoretical issue in the study of language processing and language acquisition is whether language development is independent of other aspects of cognitive development, encapsulated in a "language module." This issue is discussed as it relates to lexical processing. The paper begins with a historical contextualization of the modular view…

Deaf children's thought processes are analyzed in regard to J. Piaget's theory of cognitive development. (Author)