College students (N=375) listened to taped segments of a counseling interview concerning a spouse's drinking problem with tapes varying client's age, gender, and cognitive behaviors. Found no main or interaction effects of age on subjects' ratings of client behaviors; female clients were perceived as having better memory and greater alertness than…

Two experiments comparing 114 good and poor readers in second and fourth grades as well as 26 college students found poor readers did not interpret spoken sentences as accurately as good readers and that their performance was like that of younger children suggesting a developmental lag in phonological processing skills. (Author/DB)

In 2 experiments, 13-year olds and college students were asked to make risky decisions in a game format. Results showed that the age groups differed in strategies, confidence, and types of options chosen, especially when the game became more complex. (Author/SW)

Two experiments investigated whether preschoolers attend to appearance instead of taxonomic relations in sorting sets of objects with conflicting appearances and taxonomic relations. Found that training and instructions have a significant effect on children's preference for sorting according to taxonomic relations or appearance, and that both…

Whether relations between intelligence test performance and information processing measures depend on individual differences in speed-accuracy preferences rather than capacity limitations and whether the impact of strategic variables changes with increasing age or extraversion was studied with 83 adults ages 50 to 79 years. Results are discussed…

Perspectives on reality monitoring and sociocultural learning were integrated in four studies of children's memory of contributions to the outcomes of collaborative exchanges. Findings suggested that reality-monitoring judgments reflect at least two cognitive processes, appropriation and attention to source of information, and may provide clues to…

A model of cognitive slowing is proposed that correctly predicts a positively accelerated reaction between latencies of older and younger adults and provides a unified account of the effects of task complexity, practice, speed-accuracy tradeoffs, and fluctuations in individual performance. (SLD)

Examined the conditions under which children's memory is resistant to suggestibility versus vulnerable to suggestibility. Results suggest that children have more accurate memory for an event that occurred to them frequently, and that they are less vulnerable to suggestive influences such as biased interviewing procedures than they would be for an…

This article responds to Sylvia Richardson (EC 602 667), noting a failure to address the definitional issues associated with dyslexia. A definition of dyslexia is offered that considers the nature of the processing limitation underlying the disorder as well as the developmental changes that occur in the manifestation of the disorder. (Author/DB)

Structure of measures of speed was studied by conducting simultaneous confirmatory factor analysis for 1 sample of 149 elderly adults and a sample of 147 young adults using 16 measures of speed. Five first-order factors of speed were found, as hypothesized, and three second-order speed factors were necessary. (SLD)

Hypothesized that, unlike second graders, most fourth graders are aware of the usefulness of category organization as a retrieval strategy and begin to deliberately activate category knowledge as a memory strategy during retrieval. Results of three experiments supported this theoretical view. Strategic competence is not mature among fourth…

Presents a theory of cognitive development that postulates a general cognitive processing system, a hypercognitive system governing self-regulation, and specialized structural systems responsible for processing different reality domains. Suggests five principles that serve as organizational pivots of developing cognition. Reports the results of…

Examined scientific reasoning and self-serving reasoning biases in 5th, 8th, and 11th graders. Found that scientific reasoning improved with age. Ratings of evidence quality and written justifications yielded mixed results regarding developmental trends in reasoning biases. Theoretical beliefs regarding religion and ego-protective motivations…

Demonstrates the need for a process-oriented, constructivist approach to understanding infants' categorization abilities. Suggests that emphasizing the distinction between perceptual and conceptual categorization has been an obstacle to forging an approach. Proposes a more microanalytic consideration of features available to infants at different…

Examined degree to which analytic and holistic modes of processing play a role in children's and adults' categorization of faces. Found a developmental trend from analytic to holistic processing and an effect of face inversion with increasing age. Seven-year-olds processed faces comparably to nonfacial visual stimuli, whereas a growing proportion…