We examined the problem-solving behaviors that 5th, 6th, and 7th graders used to negotiate a novel recreational video game. Students were characterized as frequent or infrequent players and instructed to think aloud during game play for 20 consecutive minutes. Comments were used to make inferences about the students' problem-solving behaviors…

Dual-process theories have been proposed to explain normative and heuristic responses to reasoning and decision-making problems. Standard unitary and dual-process theories predict that normative responses should increase with age. However, research has focused recently on exceptions to this standard pattern, including developmental increases in…

This study had three goals: (a) assessing the predictive association of externalizing and internalizing behaviors during childhood with sexual onset during early adolescence; (b) examining the interactive link of externalizing and internalizing behaviors with early sexual onset; and (c) investigating the moderating effect of gender in this…

This article examines age differences from childhood through middle adolescence in the extent to which children include factual and interpretive information in constructing autobiographical memory narratives. Factual information is defined as observable or perceptible information available to all individuals who experience a given event, while…

Contextual differences in the association between different forms of aggressive behavior and victimization were studied with a sample of 197 boys and 149 girls from mixed-sex schools and in 336 girls from all-girl schools (M = 10.21 years of age) in two cities in Colombia. Results showed that boys generally engage in more physical than relational…

Interpersonal touch has been little studied empirically as an indicator of parent- and peer-child intimacy. Undergraduate students (n = 390) were studied using a questionnaire survey regarding the frequencies of interpersonal touch by father, mother, same-sex peers, and opposite-sex peers during preschool ages, grades 1-3, grades 4-6, and grades…

What is the nature of learning to read Chinese across grade levels? This study tested 199 kindergartners, 172 second graders, and 165 fifth graders on 12 different tasks purportedly tapping constructs representing phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic processing, and subcharacter processing. Confirmatory factor analyses…

We examined whether the bystanders' behaviors in bullying situations influence vulnerable students' risk for victimization. The sample consisted of 6,980 primary school children from Grades 3-5, who were nested within 378 classrooms in 77 schools. These students filled out Internet-based questionnaires in their schools' computer labs. The results…

Drawing from sociocultural and anthropological perspectives, I present 3 case examples of bilingual, Mexican-origin students enrolled in a transitional bilingual educational program in an urban elementary school. By using the theoretical constructs of figured worlds, authoring, and "formas de ser" (ways of being), I examine how student identities…

This article describes how young children's early relationships with caregivers and other significant adults, such as teachers, do far more than introduce and mediate their literacy experiences. These relationships are the experience, and only with time and development do young children differentiate from these experiences the signs and symbols as…

Three studies examined whether mathematics can propel the development of physical understanding. In Experiment 1, 10-year-olds solved balance scale problems that used easy-to-count discrete quantities or hard-to-count continuous quantities. Discrete quantities led to age typical performances. Continuous quantities caused performances like those of…

Education specialists have written volumes on the best ways to help children learn to read and write, but who is helping them navigate the potentially treacherous waters of social interactions? While in school to study, children are also preoccupied with understanding the rules governing social relationships. Issues of trust and loyalty, rivalry…