Evaluating evidence and restructuring beliefs based on anomalous evidence are fundamental aspects of scientific reasoning. These skills can be challenging for both children and adults, especially in domains where they possess inaccurate prior beliefs that can interfere with the acquisition of correct scientific information (e.g., heavier objects…

The recent proliferation of research on children's supernatural concepts is noteworthy, as this work is necessary for a full account of human cognition. Despite this advancement in our field, there is a lingering tendency for scholars to exotify supernatural concepts; to treat them as distinct or special. Arguments have been raised that these…

Children's understanding of death has been a topic of interest to researchers investigating the development of children's thinking and clinicians focusing on children's coping with the death of a loved one. Traditionally, researchers in cognitive development have mainly focused on death from a biological perspective. Current research suggests that…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the quantifier structuring processes of teacher candidates doing the Abstract Mathematics course of the Elementary School Mathematics Teaching program. Educational activities assisting the students' structuring of quantifiers were provided through transitions between verbal (written) expressions…

This study aimed to determine whether taking a chronological approach (CA) or topical approach (TA) to teaching developmental psychology resulted in different learning outcomes. Across two semesters, in four classes, 354 students participated (M[subscript age] = 19.76, SD[subscript age] = 2.93 years), 66% identifying as female. One instructor…

Young children must develop basic concepts of numeracy--one being that numbers have magnitudes that increase linearly--before they are able to succeed in mathematics. Children from low-income families have been found to be at a greater disadvantage in the development of numeracy, but this disadvantage can be overcome through the use of a simple…

Developing "Thinking and Understanding in Young Children" presents a comprehensive and accessible overview of contemporary theory and research about young children's developing thinking and understanding. Throughout this second edition, the ideas and theories presented are enlivened by transcripts of children's activities and conversations taken…

Previous research on children's conceptual and procedural understanding of fractions, and other arithmetic skills, has led to contradictory conclusions. Some research suggests that children learn conceptual knowledge before procedural knowledge, some suggests that they learn procedural knowledge before conceptual knowledge, and other research…

This article reviews some recent research on the development of temporal cognition, with reference to Weist's (1989) account of the development of temporal understanding. Weist's distinction between two levels of temporal decentering is discussed, and empirical studies that may be interpreted as measuring temporal decentering are described. We…

Two studies investigated the relationship between learning names and learning concepts in preschool children. More specifically, we focused on the relationship between learning the names and learning the intended functions of artifacts, given that the intended function of an artifact is generally thought to constitute core conceptual information…

Children with mental retardation have pronounced difficulties in using cognitive strategies and comprehending abstract concepts--among them, the concept of sequential time (Van-Handel, Swaab, De-Vries, & Jongmans, 2007). The perception of sequential time is generally tested by using scenarios presenting a continuum of actions. The goal of this…

What capabilities are required for an organism to evince an "explicit" understanding of gaze as a mentalistic phenomenon? One possibility is that mentalistic interpretations of gaze, like concepts of unseen, supernatural beings, are culturally-specific concepts, acquired through cultural learning. These abstract concepts may either require a…

Infants of 14 months of age demonstrated significantly improved understanding of containment as a result of a training intervention in which they played with cans and tubes in their homes for a month. After training, their test scores were similar to those of untrained 20-month-old children. (RH)

Acquisition of sentient-nonsentient distinction in 48 children between four- and seven-years-of-age occurred later than animate-inanimate distinction. The children's use of naturalistic or nonnaturalistic explanations depended on the logical nature of events in which objects were involved rather than familiarity with objects themselves. Ability to…

A study to investigate the development of children's ability to relate concepts and thus understand metaphors by examining their performance on three concept-relating tasks is reported. Abstract-metaphoric, concrete-metaphoric, and literal taxonomic relationships were embedded in an analogy-like binary choice task. In this type of task, the…