The expert performance approach, initially proposed by Ericsson and Smith (1991), is reviewed as a systematic framework for the study of "expert" learning. The need to develop representative tasks to capture learning is discussed, as is the need to employ process-tracing measures during acquisition to examine what actually changes during…

The expert performance approach, initially proposed by Ericsson and Smith (1991), is reviewed as a systematic framework for the study of "expert" learning. The need to develop representative tasks to capture learning is discussed, as is the need to employ process-tracing measures during acquisition to examine what actually changes during…

Bhatt and Quinn (2011) present a compelling case that human learning is "early" in two very different, but interacting, senses. Learning is "developmentally" early in that even infants show strikingly robust adaptation to the structures present in their world. Learning is also early in an information processing sense because infants adapt their…

Brain Gym[R] (BG; BGI, 2008) is a popular commercial program sold by Brain Gym[R] International (BGI). Making extravagant claims for improved intellectual and physical development, it is used in more than 80 countries. While BGI's claims are persuasive, to date there is little empirical evidence validating the approach. We examine some theoretical…

Research indicates that gender influences how children learn. Those findings do not necessarily mean that boys learn one way and girls another. Still, there are significant differences with respect to gender and how our brains develop. Researchers have found that no single area of development influences those gender differences: rather, a…

This article examines how children's construction of relationships in exploring materials helps to explain the constructivist foundations of the Reggio Emilia approach. A quasi-naturalistic study of 12 preschool children, ages 3 and 4 years, individually exploring different kinds of collage papers reveals a range of constructivist categories…

Four studies examined 10- to 18-month-old infants' ability to detect and encode correlations among features in a motion event. Findings indicated that the youngest infants process static features in an event independently but do not process correlations among dynamic features; the oldest detect correlations between all three features when the…

Very little cognitive development research has been done among African children, and most of the completed studies have relied on "translated" versions of Western test materials that are inappropriate to the African milieu. This paucity of research has had two affects: (1) rural African children have been represented as somewhat less…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine empirically whether an individual's cognitive style differentially influences his hypothesizing behavior within a relatively simple information processing task. A characteristic of cognitive style explored is the manner in which an individual perceives and analyzes a stimulus configuration;…

This essay concerns the development of cognitive and perceptual skills in children from birth to the age of nine. It surveys issues, beliefs, and information about perceptual and cognitive procedures. It discusses the issues of nature-nurture, maturation-learning, continuity-discontinuity, and critical periods. It describes the development of…

Describes two experiments that examined the effects of quantity and depth of processing on elementary school children's time perception. (HOD)

Discusses hypotheses suggested for consideration by those black educators and parents who are involved in the educational process with the black child; these hypotheses are based on extensive clinical investigation and research. It is contended that black independent schools are facing the same complex problem that has plagued Western…

Tested 32 4-year-olds and 32 6-year-olds for free and cued recall following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions and assessed them for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. Younger children recalled more items under sort-and-remember, whereas no recall differences were found for the…

Critical thinking alone is reactive, in that it lacks the creative elements necessary for social progress. Accordingly, the author has developed the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) program to teach the two aspects of perception: breadth (developing a perceptual map) and change (using the map to discover solutions). (TE)