Family socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly associated with children's cognitive development, and past studies have reported socioeconomic disparities in both neurocognitive skills and brain structure across childhood. In other studies, bilingualism has been associated with cognitive advantages and differences in brain structure across the…

This study aims to investigate the association between the mental state talk of mothers and their preadolescent children, with the hypothesis that an intergenerational transmission of mentalizing abilities may extend beyond early childhood. The participants were 41 mother-preadolescent child nonclinical dyads. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)…

The study of bilingual children shows that learning and using two languages may affect fundamental aspects of cognitive and neural development that influence how knowledge is acquired and used. The positive effects of bilingualism are seen most profoundly in what are known as executive function or self-control tasks, and in how the knowledge that…

The internal use of language during problem solving is considered to play a key role in executive functioning. This role provides a means for self-reflection and self-questioning during the formation of rules and plans and a capacity to control and monitor behavior during problem-solving activity. Given that increasingly sophisticated language is…

Uses the works of J. Piaget and N. Chomsky to develop a holistic theory of reading. (FL)

Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)

States that there is a strong cognitive basis to the appreciation of verbal music (the sound sequences of literary works) and that by using the framework explained, students will open themselves to verbal music and its expressive qualities and intensify their awareness of the work's content. (DF)

Research on how communicating human beings produce and understand language has focused mostly on what language is, less on how language is processed, and little on who produces and understands language. However, the interaction between what, who, and how is very significant. The importance of who does languaging is related both to the cognitive…

Examines the cognitive processes associated with speech and writing. (HOD)

Examines the relationship between formal operational reasoning and two language variables--subordinate clauses and tentative statements. Supports Piaget's position of independence between linguistic and cognitive development, showing how subordinate clause use and tentative statement use are not related significantly to performances on reasoning…

Preschool children were given a memory task that required repeating a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. Results confirmed a relationship between word span and language imitation in younger preschool children and the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appeared to…

This paper presents a means of evaluating answers to comprehension questions by analyzing the oral language used in the answers to the questions according to the average number of words per communication unit, a measure of linguistic and cognitive growth, in order to determine the effectiveness of comprehension questions asked at two cognitive…

Presents the results of three studies examining children's conception of the mind itself as an independent, active entity. Findings revealed a developing ability in children to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provided considerable evidence of children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an active agent…

Critically examines papers by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy. (AEW)

Phenomena are examined to support the conception that cognitive structures continue to reflect the numerous ways of apprehending the world that blend to some degree into each other. (AMH)