The goal of this study was to examine incidental and intentional spatial sequence learning during middle childhood and adolescence. We tested four age groups (8-10 years, 11-13 years, 14-17 years, and young adults [18+ years]) on a serial reaction time task and used manual and oculomotor measures to examine incidental sequence learning.…

Compared with object word learning, young children typically find learning color terms to be a difficult linguistic task. In this reflections article, I consider two questions that are fundamental to investigations into the developmental acquisition of color terms. First, I consider what constrains color term acquisition and how stable these…

Children's memory for a standardized, hierarchically organized event was tested in two experiments. Results indicated that the rudiments of a hierarchical structure had emerged after a single experience. Results are discussed in terms of implications for the development and organization of event memories. (PCB)

Reports on connectionist models that simulated the formation of global-level and basic-level representations in young infants; revealed a global-to-basic order of category emergence; uncovered formation of two global-level representations--initial "self-organizing" perceptual level and subsequent "trained," non-perceptual…

Examined 10- to 13-year-old boys' development of knowledge structure and sport performance in tennis by comparing skills and knowledge of experts and novices. Experts focused on higher concepts and exhibited greater decision-making ability because of their more highly developed knowledge structure. (SAK)

In this study, we investigated the development of basic effects that have been found in single-digit multiplication arithmetic: the problem size, five, and tie effects. Participants (9-,10-, and 11-year-olds and adults) performed a production task on simple multiplication. The procedure replicated Campbell and Graham's (1985) study ["Canadian…

Three experiments investigated the developmental progression of reliance on object function versus object shape to extend novel words among 3- and 5-year olds and adults. Findings indicated that children focused on shape, whereas adults focused on function when extending novel words, suggesting a developmental change in the consideration of these…

The current work examined age differences in the classification of novel object images that vary in continuous dimensions of structural shape. The structural dimensions employed are two that share a privileged status in the visual analysis and representation of objects: the shape of discrete prominent parts and the attachment positions of those…

Compares typicality effects in recall between good and poor junior high readers to determine the influence of knowledge base upon memory. Results suggest that poor readers have a different knowledge base for familiar categories than good readers and that cognitive differences between them are related to differences in their semantic memories.…

Investigated the emergence of class and propositional reasoning skills as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations with children from grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Found that children's reasoning follows a logical development sequence and that different groups of items account for…

Studied children's transitive inference where representation of premises provided contradictory information depending on position of two elements in a A, B, C series. Eight-year olds did significantly better on the more complex problems than did six-year olds, suggesting the presence of a developmental sequence of algorithms that enable children…

Investigated 48 preschool, kindergarten, and first grade children's use of perceptual and taxonomic memory organization strategies. Addressed age differences in qualities, coordination, and effectiveness of study and retrieval organization strategies, and age and individual differences in relationships between memory knowledge and strategy use.…

First and fifth graders participated in this assessment of ways in which differential experience with objects in a spatial array might establish relative landmarks within the array. Results suggest that different levels of experience can establish elements as relative landmarks in spatial memory. (Author/RWB)

Two experiments look at factors influencing the ways children construct an abstract representation of story structure that contains the characteristics described by story grammars. (RWB)

French-speaking children and adults heard silent comic-strip stories that differed by frame display mode, explicitness of the links between depicted events, and whether the topic changed on the last frame. Subjects' use of referents for the last frame indicated that manipulation of context was a good means of assessing speakers' acquisition of…