Kindergarteners and second-graders were shown pairs of pictures, one picture at a time, and asked to name each picture as rapidly and as accurately as possible. Pictures pairs were of four types which reflected the factorial combination of associative relatedness (high and low) with categorial relatedness (high and low). (SB)

Although adults and children were found to be equally accurate in their initial estimates of recall, adults used that information more skillfully in choosing what to study and deciding when they had studied sufficiently. (Author/JMB)

Uses results of laboratory and natural language analyses of 2- to 4-year olds' explanations of human behavior to argue for a theory-type view of biological, psychological, and physical domains of thought. Concludes that children as young as 2 years show three different reasoning systems in their explanations of everyday phenomena, especially human…

A group of 51 young and 52 older adults read science articles and predicted their future test performance. Predictions were compared to comprehension and memory tests. Both groups made similar predictions, but those of older adults were related to their assessment of ease of processing, those of younger adults to their assessment of comprehension,…

A study of 86 children (ages 5-16) investigated the relationship between age, IQ, and preferences for novelty. Children with higher IQs spent significantly more time responding to novel items than lower-IQ children. Older children with high IQs showed the most interest in novel items. (CR)

Reviews literature on development of children's and adults' long-term retention. Finds that forgetting is dominated by storage (not retrieval) failures; trace recovery is dominated by retrieval (not storage) operations; and storage failure rates decline with age in childhood, whereas only modest developments occur in retrieval recovery operations.…

Two studies of classification strategies of three and five year olds and adults found that five year olds and adults used different sorting strategies for each of two sorting tasks, whereas three year olds relied on the same strategy for both. Children most successful in producing correct groupings were most likely to modify their strategies…

Two experiments suggest that the empirical finding of age differences in automatic frequency processing depends on the extent to which subjects can or do strategically process task materials in a differential fashion. This interpretation is considered compatible with a modified conception of automatic encoding which views such encoding processes…

Two studies that avoided methodological problems associated with inconclusive previous reports found that 6-year-olds had less reliable feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments but greater FOK accuracy than did 10- or 18-year-olds. Moreover, 18- and 70-year- olds had equally reliable FOK judgments and equivalent FOK accuracy. (RH)

Children often confuse what is said and what is meant in referential communication. Five- and six-year olds were exposed as listeners or evaluators to a message in which they were either aware or not aware of the referent intended. Found that only six-year olds benefited from instructions to focus on the literal meaning of the message. (BC)

Studied children's grasp of make-believe transformations they had seen enacted. Children indicated the pretend outcome by choosing a picture depicting no change or a picture depicting the pretend change. Older children chose correctly, even with the addition of a picture of an irrelevant transformation, but younger children did not. Autistic…

Four experiments with children aged 5 through 12 tested the relationship between short-term memory (STM) and processing capacity. The results suggest that effects obtained with STM span do not provide clear indications of overall working memory development, because STM span and the processing space component of working memory entail distinct…

Compared toys and real items as props for facilitating children's reporting of an event. Indicates that the effects of props depend on the nature of the items and the age of the children with whom they are used. Suggests that real items may provide one means of supporting recall, to enable children to provide their most complete and accurate…

In four experiments, younger children and adults showed greater perceptual sensitivity and more extensive conceptual labeling for difference relations than for identity relations. Younger and older children demonstrated consistent dimensional selectivity in tasks involving free classification and the estimation of differences. (Author/BG)

Thirty-six children from grades 1, 3 and 6 observed and rewarded a peer who played an experimental game. Children experienced a developmental shift in the criteria they used to reward a peer's performance. References to intention-act matches increased with grade and with children's understanding of controllable and noncontrollable tasks and causal…