Imitation of people on educational television is a potential way for very young children to learn new skills. Although toddlers in previous studies exhibited a "video deficit" in learning, 24-month-olds in Study 1 successfully reproduced behaviors modeled by a person who was on video as well as they did those modeled by a person who was present in…

The authors show how teachers can use nature explorations as a personal guide in implementing early learning standards. They describe five outdoor experiences of children in age groups ranging from 20 months to 5 years. A chart specifies which of the Nebraska state learning guidelines and Creative Curriculum goals the experiences meet, across the…

This article also serves as a rejoinder to TM 502 436, focusing mainly on Kagan's second and third themes: continuity between stages of development and resilience of human cognitive growth. (DEP)

Consistent age changes suggest 2 overlapping developmental dimensions: (1) The ability to deal with visible versus invisible displacements, and (2) with nonsequential versus sequential displacements. Other findings are included. (MH)

Suggests that, with the waning influence of Piaget and shortcomings of information-processing perspectives of cognitive growth, cognitive developmentalists lack a metatheory to guide their research. Posits developmental biology as metatheory for cognitive development. Introduces basic principles of evolutionary psychology, and examples of…

Deals with the changes in imagination that take place from childhood to adulthood. (CB)

Historically, developmental psychology has been split into the areas of social development and cognitive development, with the cognitive area most recently dominating the field. Nevertheless, basic questions about development often require more integrative approaches, cutting across social and cognitive areas, while taking advantage of recent…

Parents and policymakers are turning to preschools to better advance the school readiness and broader development of young children. Much remains unknown, including how preschool programs of varying quality affect diverse groups of children. This is particularly important as several California counties embark on ambitious and costly efforts to…

Across two studies, a wide age range of participants was interviewed about the nature of death. All participants were living in rural Madagascar in a community where ancestral beliefs and practices are widespread. In Study 1, children (8-17 years) and adults (19-71 years) were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. The…

Behavioral, neuropsychological, and brain imaging research points to a dedicated system for processing number that is shared across development and across species. This foundational Approximate Number System (ANS) operates over multiple modalities, forming representations of the number of objects, sounds, or events in a scene. This system is…

Children's understanding of the cardinal significance of counting is often assessed by the "give x" task, in which they are categorized as "counters" or "grabbers". Previous research indicates a sudden stage-like shift, implying insight into a principle. Employing a microgenetic approach, the present study was…

From the first moments of life, infants begin the exciting journey to gain control of their bodies. These beginning movements are an essential way of playing and learning for infants. During their first year, infants learn more motor skills than at any other time in their lives. Brain research has revealed that the motor area of an infant's brain…

Factors that influence the incidence of utilization deficiencies and other recall/strategy-use patterns on a strategic memory task were evaluated in two hundred and fourteen 7- and 9-year-old children. Both utilization deficiencies and the incidence of children showing increases in both recall and strategy use over phases were more likely to be…

The concept of intersubjectivity may be used to illuminate the way in which we observe and describe many of the interpersonal processes that begin in infancy. The more traditional psychoanalytic ideas of holding and containment, as well as relatively recent concepts such as attunement and reflective function, can be seen as belonging within this…

The medial temporal lobe memory system matures relatively early and supports rudimentary declarative memory in young infants. There is considerable development, however, in the memory processes that underlie declarative memory performance during infancy. Here we consider age-related changes in encoding, retention, and retrieval in the context of…