Two experiments with children five and eight years of age examined the effects of different types of similarity on analogical problem solving and explored the cognitive components responsible for these effects. Results indicated that superficial and structural similarity facilitated the process of drawing analogies. (WJC)

Aims to assess relationships between phonological tasks, determine their degree of convergence, and investigate the predictive power of different tasks. Ten phonological awareness tasks were administered to 58 kindergarten children whose reading abilities were assessed one year later. Seven measures were moderately related to reading ability and…

Employed a modified dual task approach with 7- to 9-year olds to determine whether one of the classic M-power measures, the digit placement task, is indeed capacity-limited. Found that several critical assumptions concerning the use of the dual-task procedure were met; further testing revealed that the digit placement task is indeed…

Attempted to clarify whether fear is related to distorted cognitive processing of fear-related information. Administered card and single-trial formats of Stroop task to spider-fearing and control children. Found bias for spider words in both, regardless of format; further, processing biases assessed by the formats did not correlate, suggesting…

A reply to a rejoinder in which Pascual-Leone defended his quantitative model of children's information processing capacity. Trabasso focuses on empirical evidence in presenting his reply to this rejoinder. (BD)

An apparatus is described which permits one experimenter to obtain high quality audio and video tape recordings of young children's behavior in cognitive-linguistic tasks while leaving the experimenter free to concentrate on working with the child. (GO)

Three experiments investigated the developmental progression of reliance on object function versus object shape to extend novel words among 3- and 5-year olds and adults. Findings indicated that children focused on shape, whereas adults focused on function when extending novel words, suggesting a developmental change in the consideration of these…

Presents an analysis of Pascual-Leone's quantitative model for the measurement of the cognitive capacity of children. Presents an experiment in which 8-year-old children are asked to reproduce single actions and combinations of actions modeled by an experimenter. (BD)

Presented a battery of false belief tasks varying in type of belief questioned, target for belief ascription, presentation of reality information, and deception context to Head Start children. Found that performance was better on locations tasks than on contents tasks and with older children compared with younger children and that performance was…

Three experiments examined the exclusivity of perpetually defined categorical representations for animal categories in infants. Results indicated that infants have the capacity for making distinctions among high similar natural kinds but that such find distinctions cannot be made without appropriate exemplars. (SW)

A reply to a critique of Pascual-Leone's model of children's information processing capacity. (BD)

Investigated the emergence of class and propositional reasoning skills as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations with children from grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Found that children's reasoning follows a logical development sequence and that different groups of items account for…

Validated models of mental addition processing by testing children and adults in a production task paradigm. Examined individual-difference relations between strategy choice parameters and criterion-related measures of ability. Found that individual differences in the apparently calculative processes that underlie numerical facility are highly…