In one experiment, autistic children continued to fail a task that involved strategic deception when no opponent was present. In a second experiment that involved reaching for an object under direct and detour conditions, autistic children had greater difficulty with the task than did nonautistic, mentally handicapped children. Cites advantages…

Postformal thinking concerns questions of meaning and purpose, multiple perspectives, human dignity, freedom, and social responsibility. Curriculum and instruction based on postformalism involves detecting problems, uncovering hidden assumptions, seeing relationships, deconstructing, connecting logic and emotion, and attending to context. (SK)

Reviews "The Mind's Staircase: Exploring the Conceptual Underpinnings of Children's Thought and Knowledge," edited by Robbie Case. A main thesis of the book, which discusses theoretical issues and presents empirical evidence, is that children's cognitive development is guided by central conceptual structures, or networks of concepts that…

Reviews cognitive processes, control mechanisms, and structures in creative thinking, and examines the way these aspects of cognition develop from childhood to adulthood. The cognitive definition of creativity, cognitive approaches to novelty production, creativity and cognitive development, and mechanisms guiding cognitive processes are explored.…

Fifty-four gifted adolescents performed a creative generation task in which they imagined and drew fruit that might exist on another planet. They developed fruit that was rated as more original than developed by college students, and did so regardless of whether they were explicitly instructed to be more creative. (CR)

Four studies assessed a cognitive explanation for development of infants' preference for attractive faces: cognitive averaging and preferences for mathematically averaged faces, or prototypes. Findings indicated that adults and 6-month olds prefer prototypical, mathematically averaged faces and that 6-month olds can abstract the central tendency…

A case study of a 29-year-old woman with high functioning autism is presented. Examples of her use of puns, jokes, neologisms, "portmanteau" words, irreverent humor, irony, sarcasm, and word play based on her obsessional interests are provided and discussed in relation to current theories of autism and of normal humor. (Contains references.)…

Considers reasons for infants' selective looking and information gathering. Discusses three general theoretical issues raised by studies of selective looking, related to type of information gathered, speed of processing time, and the effect of prior exposure on processing time. Considers these issues in relation to Needham's study of infant…

Dual task procedures--elaborative strategy use and finger tapping--were used to examine both recall and mental effort demands of elaboration strategy use among second and third graders. Results indicated that boys and girls did not differ in recall of arbitrarily paired items, but for feminine pairs, girls recalled more than boys; for masculine…

This article discusses representation of information in neural networks and the apparent hyperspecificity that is often seen in the application of previously acquired information by children with autism. Hyperspecificity is seen as reflecting a possible feature of the neural codes used to represent concepts in the autistic brain. (Contains 12…

Reviews literature on effects of music on the brain in childhood development. Areas include: (1) early synaptic growth; (2) nature versus nurture; (3) background music; (4) musical practice; (5) music learning and cognitive skills; (6) transfer of music learning; (7) musical instrument practice; (8) children and music; and (9) transfer effects.…

The learning of eight children (ages 8-13) with Down syndrome was compared with typical children. The control group reached a criterion of learning much faster on a given task. When amount of learning was controlled, children with Down syndrome seemed to have less difficulty in activity-change with the task. (Author/CR)

Addresses how existing theories of implicit cognition may contribute to the understanding of spelling development. Reviews adult literature on implicit memory and implicit learning that may be applied to spelling development. Presents a multilevel model of representational redescription from which to investigate the interrelation of implicit and…

Conducted meta-analysis to examine empirical inconsistencies and theoretical controversies concerning false-belief tasks and understanding about mental states. Found that a combined model including age, country of origin, and four task factors accounted for 55 percent of the variance in false-belief performance. Findings are consistent with…

According to a recent account of infants' acquisition of their physical knowledge, the incremental-knowledge account, infants form distinct event categories, such as occlusion, containment, support, and collision events. In each category, infants identify one or more vectors which correspond to distinct problems that must be solved. For each…