Infants' responses to typical and scrambled human body shapes were assessed in relation to the realism of the human body stimuli presented. In four separate experiments, infants were familiarized to typical human bodies and then shown a series of scrambled human bodies on the test. Looking behaviour was assessed in response to a range of different…

Pregnancy and early motherhood involve uncertainty and change, which can evoke mental health problems. We identified maternal mental health trajectories in pre- and postnatal period, and examined their association with later child mental health and development. Finnish mothers reported psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire [GHQ-36])…

Two experiments examined pictorial humor as an unusual but legitimate way to approach the study of children's representational activity and the transition from implicit to explicit knowledge. In both experiments, the participants were 3- and 4-year-old children. Experiment 1 studied the understanding of two pictorial jokes using two conditions,…

This study examined developmental differences in, and cognitive bases of, coping flexibility in children with and without ADHD. Younger (age 7 to 8) and older (age 10 to 11) children with and without ADHD (N = 80) responded to hypothetical vignettes about problematic interactions with peers that shifted from controllable to uncontrollable over…

Seven-, ten- and seventeen-year-olds (N=72) in control and experimental conditions were used to test the role of metamemory and metamemory activation in the development of mnemonic performance. Metamemory was found to be a necessary condition for mnemonic performance. Developmental differences were found. (Author/DB)

Research conducted on the same women at age 30 and at age 70 indicated relative stability in all cognitive, most personality, and several personality-social variables measured over the 40-year interval. (Author/DB)

After distinguishing between neocortical abilities for executive control and subcortical sensory motor skills for proprioceptive and vestibular integration, we compare a sample of 116 normal preschoolers with a sample of 31 preschoolers receiving occupational therapeutical treatment. This is done in an experimental design controlled for age (mean:…

Studies seven experiences of 69 infants of 12 1/2 and 17 1/2 months in dyadic play with mothers, fathers, and first-borns. Mothers and fathers were more alike than different in the amounts of play experiences they created, and infants experienced a more enriched environment with parents than with first-borns. (RJC)

Reviews two models of thinking and intellectual development: Scandura's deterministic model of structuralistic learning, and a generalization of Rasch's probabilistic latent trait model. Models are compared by means of two experiments with balance scale tasks. (RH)

Research on children's understanding of emotion has rarely focused on children from nonindustrialised countries, who may develop an understanding at different ages as compared to children reared in industrialised countries. Quechua children from an agro-pastoralist village were given an adapted version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to…

On the basis of a study involving 40 first-grade students, compares Pascual-Leone's and Keating and Bobbitt's developmental theories of information processing by contrasting their predictions about a classification task. Results falsified Keating and Bobbitt's model. Predictions from Pascual-Leone's theory were almost wholly confirmed. (RH)

Reviews evolutionary, psychoanalytic, social learning, and cognitive developmental approaches to the development of altruism and proposes a framework that integrates the approaches. The four approaches are compared in terms of three general issues: the origin of altruism, the conception of altruism as a state or a trait, and individual differences…

Reports on a longitudinal study of cognitive and motor development among infants born to adolescent and adult mothers when race, parity, socioeconomic status and prenatal care were controlled and home environment evaluated. (HOD)