In the present study, the authors explored age differences in event-based prospective memory (PM) across adolescence. The tasks consisted of an ongoing task (OT; i.e., personality questionnaire items, math problems) and an embedded prospective task that required participants to remember to make a special response whenever they encountered a PM cue…

Data from over 3400 individuals ranging from 5 to 93 years of age were analyzed to investigate the structural organization of cognitive variables, and to use that structure to examine relations between cognitive abilities and neuropsychological variables. The results indicated that the variables could be organized into the same cognitive ability…

In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve-year-olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more…

This experiment examined delayed self-recognition in 24 2.5-year-old and 24 3-year-old children. Children were marked covertly with a sticker on their forehead while playing a game, after which their photograph was taken. When shown this photograph, the 3- but not the 2.5-year-olds reached to remove this sticker reliably. However, the older…

Cognitive and language skills of 39 siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) and 39 siblings of typically developing children (SIBS-TD) at ages 4, 14, 24, 36, and 54 months were compared. Twelve of the 39 SIBS-A revealed a delay in cognition and/or language (including one child diagnosed with autism) compared to only two SIBS-TD. Developmental…

A series of experiments investigated 5- to 17-month-olds' comprehension of adults' direction of gaze and manual pointing behaviors. Findings indicated that a change in the adult's direction of gaze and orientation of head does not seem sufficient to enable the infant to reliably localize a referent when the infant must choose between pairs of…

Investigations were made of the development of (1) children's abilities to produce and interpret requests with nuances, and (2) the ability to identify requests as being "bossy" or "nice." In the first study, the development of children's ability to produce bossy and nice requests and the linguistic means by which they do so…

Both forms of the Muller-Lyer illusion were presented to the normal and retarded subjects to determine possible changes in illusion strength in either or both forms of the illusion when age, amount of repetition, and IQ were varied. (Author/ED)

Attempts to clarify the basis for the unusual responses to observed movement by 7-year-old children, as compared to adults, discovered by Olum. Subjects were 40 first and third graders. Results indicate that these responses are genuine and that they go through a developmental evolution. (SDH)

A study examined differences in television viewing behaviors and attitudes across age groups of children in their home environment. Personal interviews were conducted with 162 children, ages 5 to 12, in a midwestern elementary school. The interview assessed home environment (1) television viewing relationships, including viewing companion and…

Case's cognitive developmental theory was used in an investigation of unconstrained drawings by children 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age. The objectives were: (1) to look for qualitative changes in drawing at these ages, (2) to relate whatever changes were found to qualitative changes in other tasks during the same period, and (3) to test whether a…

This paper summarizes several studies about children and childrearing within the broader context of questions about the processes of social and physical cognition of both children and adults. A brief background section covers some reasons for being interested in parents' ideas and discusses some general models, borrowed mainly from work on…

A study of the development of abstract noun definitions in children and adolescents had as its subjects 120 students evenly divided into age groups of 10-, 14-, and 18-year-olds, randomly selected from students scoring in the 40th to 88th percentiles on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (for 10-year-olds) and the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency…

Investigates the development and production of spatial deictic terms ("this/that", "here/there", "my/your") in the context of a hide-and-seek game using preschool children and college age adults. (Author/ED)