This study examined a model suggesting that personal variables (age and gender) and environmental variables (activity centers) affect social-cognitive aspects of children's play. A total of 80 children (32 boys and 48 girls) participated. Same-age and same-gender dyads from each of two age groups (4- and 5-year-olds) were observed playing in an…

It has been hypothesized that the use of techniques to enhance motor skill acquisition and retention in the elderly may retard the onset of retirement, result in the continuation of a productive professional career, allow continued participation in recreational activities, and possibly slow the decline in physiological functions that normally…

Recent studies of contextual attributes thought to be automatic have reported deficits among the elderly, raising the question of whether automatic memory processing does require some effortful attention and if so, whether such effort is needed during encoding, storage, or retrieval. This study used a secondary task methodology to examine these…

Age-related improvement of mnemonic performances of children has attracted many investigators wishing to determine developmental mechanisms which might produce this improvement. Potential explanations have been subsumed under three major categories: capacity, strategies, and knowledge structures. The present investigation, in focusing on…

Experimental research has firmly established the role of expectancies in determining the behavioral consequences of alcohol consumption. To ascertain whether these alcohol expectancies derive from direct pharmacological experience with alcohol or from nonpharmacological, social-learning factors, an adolescent expectancy questionnaire was…

The series of experiments reported here investigated dimensions of children's sex stereotypes. The first study revealed that children were aware of sex stereotypes as early as 2 1/2 years of age. Furthermore, the tendency to categorize according to sex increased through their eighth year. The second study investigated whether sex stereotypes…

A study of whether perceptual processes of children can be viewed within a structuralist frame of reference and whether the concept of the group of transformations and related notions can be used to formulate perceptual phenomena and to predict experimental results. (Author/CS)

In a visual recognition masking experiment, a target stimulus to be identified is either preceded or followed by a second stimulus called a masking stimulus. The experiments described here provide estimates of both developmental and aging differences in visual backward masking under conditions which maximize interference in the central visual…

This study examines the development of children's preference for task difficulty levels. Subjects were 78 boys and 66 girls, aged 63 to 105 months. The sample was separated into older and younger groups. Within each age group, half the children of each sex were randomly assigned to one of two forms to test their level of aspiration. Subjects were…

This study investigated the process of perceptual exploration and organization of children as a function of age and sex in two experiments. In Experiment I, 3- to 5-year-old children named the pictures of nine familiar objects arranged in 3 x 3 matrices (exploration tasks) and indicated preference for objects represented in pairs (pair-completion…

The relationship of lateral awareness and directionality with intellectual ability, academic achievement, and age was investigated with 288 first through third grade elementary school children. With the exception of first graders, Ss were administered three tests: the Lockavitch Test for Lateral Awareness and Directionality (LTLAD), the Short Form…

It was hypothesized that by age 8 children would manifest an adult meaning system, and that 5-year-old children would not. An adult meaning system allows an adult to transcend component word meanings and integrate, in the presence of a speaker, the underdetermined and the factual proposition into a meaningful whole. Subjects were 60 5- and…

The study paired-associate (PA) learning via the anticipation (ANT) and study-test (ST) procedures across second, third, fourth and fifth grades. Specifically, age differences in the rate of learning and examining PA learning according to the stage analyses were examined. Retention was also of interest: however, a ceiling effect negated the…

Two studies using the concepts and research techniques of J. Piaget were conducted to compare cognitive processes in 45 blind children (2-to-12-years-old) and a random sample of sighted children. (SB)