The current study examined children's spontaneous private speech during the vertical and the horizontal Tube Task to shed light on the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes underlying tool innovation. Tool innovation is defined as solving a novel problem by using or modifying objects in a new and useful way without prior instructions.…

Recent work in embodied cognition has proposed that representations and actions are inextricably linked. The current study examines a developmental account of this relationship. Specifically, we propose that children's actions are foundational for novel representations. Thirty-two preschoolers, aged 3.4 to 5.7 years, were asked to solve a set of…

In the present experiment, we used a reversed-contingency paradigm (the windows task: [Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The windows task as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects. "British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9," 331-349]) to explore the effect of alterations in the task…

Four experiments examined children's inferences about the relation between objects' internal parts and their causal properties. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds recognized that objects with different internal parts had different causal properties, and those causal properties transferred if the internal part moved to another object. In Experiment 2,…

The purpose of this sequence of a working paper intended for inclusion in a curriculum manual to be published in the future, is to provide the child with concrete experience, opportunities to represent things symbolically, and to learn the nature of symbols and how to read them. Examining objects, acting them out, and experimenting with them, the…

Discussed are results of studies of the cognitive development of 2- and 3-year-old children which suggest that the mind makes gains in the ability to think as gains in language development are made. "Thinking" in this context refers to the judgments children made as they selected objects and maneuvered them into one arrangement or…

Describes materials mastery and symbolic development as two discrete but related processes that preschool children learn. Uses the preschool setting to identify the developmental stages of construction play. (AS)

Depending on age and the demands of the task, people may use different processing strategies in object categorization. Three-year-olds used a wholistic approach with strong effects of object typicality on three categorization tasks. Older children and adults showed differential effects of typicality, suggesting various strategies including…

This paper reports on an experiment undertaken to delineate more clearly the relationship between the naming process in children and certain aspects of the environment which may play a role in that process. The investigation concerned the effect of manipulation and of object novelty on naming. Sixteen children, ten girls and six boys, ranging in…