To investigate the development of children's knowledge of the intension and extension of four natural concepts (cup, scissors, money, and musical instrument), three questions were explored in an experiment involving one-hundred-and-twenty 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children (40 children for each age group). Extension was measured in a verbal labeling…

In this report on cognitive processes, a discussion of the rationale and assumptions used by investigators explains the experimental procedures. To determine actual cognitive problem-solving processes, (rather than inferring them from results), subjects in these studies were presented with a problem and allowed to ask a sequence of questions which…

The theory of a number of philosophers and psychologists, including Freud, is that humor is a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity and then the resolution of the incongruity. Without the mechanism of resolution, we cannot distinguish humor from nonsense. The punch line of a joke is seemingly incongruous with the preceding…

The papers included here are based on a 1971 symposium held at the annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association in San Francisco. The first three papers report the results of research carried out over the last few years at the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning. Levin's paper focuses on the effectiveness of…

Two experiments examined the possible role of children's semantic knowledge and their ability to encode it in a cued-recall test. Performance of children aged 7, 10, and 13 years was observed in encoding specificity tasks which used homographs as the to-be-remembered words. (MP)

Free recall learning and organization were measured for third, seventh and eleventh grade children under conditions which varied the type and amount of task structure. (BD)

Hong Kong Chinese and American adolescents were given three Piagetian tasks of formal operations in order to assess cultural, age, and sex differences. Significant effects were demonstrated with Americans, older subjects, and males performing at more advanced levels. (Author/JMB)

Examines development of processing speed in three backward masking studies, where presentation of second stimulus figure (mask) within a critical time interval from arrival of first figure (target) interrupts processing of first. Results indicate that processing time increases until early adolescence; changes are less marked after 13 years of age.…

Reviewed research with the Twenty Questions Task aimed at investigating problem solving across the life span. Research indicates use of an efficient problem-solving strategy increases during childhood and then decreases again during the later adult years. Elderly adults' performance was facilitated when the necessity of using an efficient strategy…

Reviews literature on hemispheric specialization. Argues that foundations of hemispheric specialization are present very early in life and that children's greater ability to recover functions following brain injury suggests developmental changes in brain organization. (CMG)

Uses the balance scale task to assess the development of compensation across versions of the task. Shows that fully reversible thinking may not be typical even in college students; many subjects used the compensation operation inconsistently. Preschoolers tended to use the given information in a way that was opposite to that required for correct…

Developmental changes in memory organization based on synonym and antonym relationships were examined in three experiments. Subjects were 64 second graders and 64 sixth graders. Some inadequacies of a false recognition paradigm for developmental research are identified and some alternative analyses are proposed. (Author/JH)

A study of the development of 6- to 12-year-old children's appreciation of verbal jokes was conducted within the framework of the incongruity and resolution theory of humor. Results revealed age differences indicating that older children appreciated both structural components while younger children appreciated the incongruity structure. (ST)

Given a chance to eat the candy or drink the juice in this study, the 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds and young adults failed to conserve and made choices based on what they said was appearance of greater quantity rather than upon the already established equivalencies. (Authors/CB)

Rejoinder to article PS 502 129. (MB)