Tested children at 3 to 4 years of age, and again 13 months later, on false-belief tasks and on four tests of executive function, or processes underlying goal-directed behavior. Results suggest that young children's understanding of mind is grounded in their growing competence in strategic planning and mental flexibility. (Author/BC)

Distinguishes two types of executive theories: (1) emergence accounts; and (2) expression accounts. Asserts that the meta-analytic findings reported by Wellman, Cross, and Watson (2001) are fully consistent with emergence accounts of theory of mind and do not entirely rule out expression accounts. (Author/KB)

Despite a large body of research demonstrating the kinds of categories to which infants respond, few studies have directly assessed how infants' categorization unfolds over time. Four experiments used a visual familiarization task to evaluate 10-month-old infants' (N=98) learning of exemplars characterized by commonalities in appearance or…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether very young children have difficulty with dual representations when change in perspective has been eliminated, that is, the task no longer requires transfer between a traversable and surveyable array. In a preliminary experiment children 30 and 36 months of age attempted to transfer an action…

This article focuses on the cognitive factors that impact on students in the middle school years experiencing learning difficulties in basic mathematics. It begins with a review of selected literature providing information about the learning difficulties in mathematics. Focus then shifts to an implementation of the "Quicksmart"…

Reading difficulties and disabilities present serious and potentially lifelong challenges. Children who do not read well are more likely to be retained a grade in school, drop out of high school, become a teen parent, or enter the juvenile justice system. Building on the extant research and seminal studies, including the National Reading Panel and…

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…

In two experiments, the principles of cognitive load theory were applied to the design of alternatives to conventional music instruction hypothesised to facilitate learning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that spatial integration of visual text and musical notation, and dual-modal delivery of auditory text and musical notation, were superior to the…

This paper focuses on the changes in thinking involved in the transition from school mathematics to formal proof in pure mathematics at university. School mathematics is seen as a combination of visual representations, including geometry and graphs, together with symbolic calculations and manipulations. Pure mathematics in university shifts…

Broca's area encompasses opercular and triangular part of the inferior frontal gyrus, covered by Brodmann's areas 44 and 45, respectively. Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed that, in addition to classical language functions, Broca's area has novel and unexpected functions, serving as a likely interface of action and perception important for…

This paper studies the development of taxonomic processing as measured by an adapted version of the Wechsler Similarities subtest, which distinguishes between categorization of concrete and abstract words. Two factors--age and concreteness--are also tested by a recall task. The results show an age-related increase in taxonomic categorization,…

Generic sentences (such as "Birds lay eggs") are important in that they refer to kinds (e.g., birds as a group) rather than individuals (e.g., the birds in the henhouse). The present set of studies examined aspects of how generic nouns are understood by English speakers. Adults and children (4- and 5-year-olds) were presented with scenarios about…

Children with mental retardation have pronounced difficulties in using cognitive strategies and comprehending abstract concepts--among them, the concept of sequential time (Van-Handel, Swaab, De-Vries, & Jongmans, 2007). The perception of sequential time is generally tested by using scenarios presenting a continuum of actions. The goal of this…

Function has been considered important in numerous literatures in the study of cognitive development, yet little is known about what and how infants learn about function. Five experiments examined what 10-month-old infants (N=80) learn about functions that involve a sound produced when an object is acted on. Infants habituated to a single object…

Utilization of a footprint trail for locating a hidden person may indicate the extension of semiotics to the spatial domain of search. We sought to determine whether young children implemented footprint tracking, and found that at 3-years they successfully tracked footprints on only 3% of trials, at 4-years on 9% of trials, and at 5-years on 41%…