The time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004) assumes that during complex working memory span tasks, attention is frequently and surreptitiously switched from processing to reactivate decaying memory traces before their complete loss. Three experiments involving children from 5 to 14 years of age…

The author's understanding of Piagetian theory is compared to the "construction of reality" process hypothesized by Piaget. (JB)

Responds to three commentaries about a review paper by Lane and Pearson (Merrill-Palmer Quarterly; v28 n3 p317-37 Jul 1982). Commentaries were authored by John W. Hagen and Kim P. Wilson (v28 n4 p529-32 Oct 1982), Wendell E. Jeffrey (v28 n4 p523-28 Oct 1982), and Richard D. Odom (v28 n3 p339-45 Jul 1982). (RH)

The study described confirms previous research that has found delayed cognitive development of Down's Syndrome (DS) children. However, errors committed in task performance by DS infants did not conform to characteristic patterns for normal infants, indicating that cognitive development among DS children differs in important respects from that of…

The proposed conceptualization of logical competence has 3 dimensions; principles, content, and complexity. (SB)

Explores some of the constraints on knowledge development through a multi-perspective examination of a project in which there was an intention and enacted process to develop knowledge. Engaged with the generic question of what the conditions that facilitate knowledge creation in organizations are, considers data from three theoretical…

Two studies tested three year olds' understanding of five mental states in a false belief scenario. Results indicated that children understand that desires can differ from reality before they understand that beliefs can. Results concerning children's understanding of pretenses, and dreams that differ from reality are discussed. (BC)

Jerome Bruner points out in his prologue to the first volume of the English translation of The Collected Works that Vygotsky flirts with the idea that language creates free will. This article attempts to consider the influence of the Dutch seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza on Vygotsky. An account of Spinoza's anti-Cartesian conception of…

Recent infant studies indicate that goal attribution (understanding of goal-directed action) is present very early in infancy. We examined whether 6.5-month-olds attribute goals to agents and whether infants change the interpretation of goal-directed action according to the kind of agent. We conducted three experiments using the visual habituation…

Minority is a term that has become particularly visible within the rehabilitation literature due to the increasing focus on the application of minority models to the understanding of the disability experience. At the same time, it is also one of the most ill-defined and misunderstood terms. In this article, the authors explore the meaning of…

Despite the fact that work is a fundamental part of life for nearly half of all undergraduate students--with a substantial number of "traditional" dependent undergraduates in employment, and working independent undergraduates averaging 34.5 hours per week--little attention has been given to how working influences the integration and engagement…

Using three waves of data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, this study examines differences in cognitive, academic, and affective well-being of youth first placed in nonkinship foster care (N=259) and youth first placed in group care (N=89). To compare nonrandomized groups, propensity score matching was used. Results…

Two explanations for deficits underlying autism were tested: weak central coherence (WCC) and executive dysfunction. Consistent with WCC, Happe ("British Journal of Developmental Psychology" 15 (1997) 1) found that children with autism failed to use sentence context in pronouncing homographs. In an alternate approach, we investigated whether…

Artifact knowledge requires integration of information from different areas of human commonsense knowledge--our everyday understanding of object mechanics and our everyday psychology. Here, we address the question of artifact conceptual structure, outlining evidence from tasks involving categorization, function judgments, and problem solving.

In this paper I aim to show that the creation and manipulation of written vehicles is part of our cognitive processing and, therefore, that writing transforms our cognitive abilities. I do this from the perspective of cognitive integration: completing a complex cognitive, or mental, task is enabled by a co-ordinated interaction between neural…