The degree to which judgments of ability, effort, and performance conform to the prediction of Harold Kelley's theory of causal schemata was examined at four age levels (kindergarten, third grade, fifth grade and college). Author/MP)

Testing procedures developed on younger groups are often inadequate when testing the elderly. Special tests and administration techniques that increase the likelihood that elderly examinees will do their best are described. Psychological examiners must receive special training in testing to do a credible job with the elderly. (Author/BEF)

The incidental learning paradigm supports two findings concerning selective attention: (1) the difference between central and incidental task performance increases with age, and (2) the correlation between central and incidental performance decreases with age. Neither of these findings clearly supports the view that attentional selectivity…

A visual search task for target letters in multiletter displays was used to investigate information- processing differences between college students and presecond-grade children. (Author/DB)

The developing directional preferences in writing and drawing that were observed in subjects between four years of age and adulthood suggest that two semiindependent motor systems are involved in writing: one for rapid and nonfigurative tasks, the other--which occurs later--for precision and symbolic functions. (Author/GT)

A potential cause for children's failure to transfer learning strategies was explored. Subjects were 68 first, third, and fifth graders. (MP)

Investigates increased use of metacognition (i.e., monitoring comprehension, developing expectations, learning information sampling strategies) as reading ability develops among sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade pupils and high school students. (Author/RH)

Three experiments evaluated color specificity knowledge and related semantic effects on recognition memory. (Author/SB)

Psychological and biological reasoning are intertwined yet differentiated in preschoolers' understandings of bodily processes and events. Three studies suggest that preschoolers distinguish biological phenomena from psychological ones in their causal reasoning, although their reasoning about biological phenomena is sometimes influenced by…

Presented a battery of false belief tasks varying in type of belief questioned, target for belief ascription, presentation of reality information, and deception context to Head Start children. Found that performance was better on locations tasks than on contents tasks and with older children compared with younger children and that performance was…

Two experiments examined the impact of slow development of processing differences among faces in the spacing among facial features (second-order relations). Computerized tasks involving various face-processing skills were used. Results of experiment with 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds and with adults indicated that slow development of sensitivity to…

This study examined 6- to 8-year-old Slovenian children's acquisition of matrix completion proficiency and compared microgenetic and age-related changes on the task. Microgenetic analyses indicated that: variability of children's errors increased before they discovered the correct strategy, the correct strategy became dominant shortly after…

Investigated mechanisms underlying reductions in susceptibility to interference from irrelevant information that are evident in the developing child. Used two experiments requiring attention to one stimulus out of many. Found that age changes in selective attention are mediated to an important extent by changes in the speed and efficiency of…

Investigated linkage between delay-of-gratification dimension of impulsivity and social information processing in 80 second-graders and 80 fifth-graders. Found that low-delay ability and younger participants made less use of social cues than did older and high-delay ability participants; however, these findings were qualified by grade and gender…