Suggests some difficulties and challenges in understanding and teaching Piaget's new theory. Outlines some differences between Piaget's new and standard theories, such as the diminished status of the emergent skills that mark the onset of concrete operational thinking and the perception of achievements in concrete operations as empirical…

Five experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. Results suggest that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately six years of age. (HTH)

Two experiments examined theory of mind in middle childhood by examining changes in the organization of mental verbs of knowing. Found that older children and comprehension monitors placed greater emphasis on the certainty aspects of mental activity than did younger children and comprehension nonmonitors, suggesting that important aspects of a…

Classified children's use of cognitive strategies on a multitrial sort-recall task. Compared to fourth graders, more second and third graders were classified utilizationally deficient; fourth graders were more likely to be classified as quasi-utilizationally deficient. Levels of recall and clustering were higher for younger utilizationally…

Three experiments investigated 14-month olds' capacity for superordinate-level inductions, using animal and vehicle domains. Found that infants did generalize properties in these domains, and that their inductions were more influenced by conceptual category than by perceptual similarity. (HTH)

Argues that causal understanding is a developmental primitive: children develop core concepts of causality at a very early age, causality plays a necessary role in subsequent development across many domains, and basic causal processes can be activated automatically or implicitly. (HTH)

Sees Levenson and Crumpler's liberative model as idealistic, and critiques apparently anti-materialistic implications of the model. Maintains that Levenson and Crumpler's suggestion that the goal of adult development is to free the individual from environmental and biological influences is bad science but constitutes a valuable sermon. (BC)

Explored developmental regulation in adults at different ages. Assessed developmental goals, expectations about goal attainment and control, control strategies, life satisfaction, and age identification. Found that, with increasing age, participants expressed increased focus on age-appropriate goals, stronger tendency for compensatory secondary…

Two experiments are discussed--one with normal 3 to 5-year-olds and one with language impaired 4 to 5-year-olds--that investigated the role of inflections in verb learning. Findings point to a developmental period during which children treat inflectional cues as reliable guides to verb meaning. Focuses on the rise and fall of such inflectional…

Reviews the feasibility and validity of the various methods that have been used to measure puberty and summarizes the evidence-base as to whether the age at menarche and the age at onset of puberty has decreased in recent years. Provides a summary of the findings of relevance to those critically reviewing the current evidence surrounding age of…

Sought to verify research findings that suggest there may be a U-shaped developmental trajectory for final syllable lengthening (FSL). Attempted to determine whether vocal maturity and deafness influence FSL . Eight normally hearing infants and eight deaf infants were examined at three levels of prelinguistic vocal development. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the factors that underpin the establishment, development, and maintenance of partnerships between employers and vocational rehabilitation agencies. The identified factors were similar to those obtained from previous research. However, it was also found that these characteristics may differ according to the stage of development of…

Suggests that the systematic omission of functional material by young children, contrary to current beliefs, argues for the presence of functional structure,because in the absence of such structure what is expected is not a systematic omission of functional material but rather its random use. (Author/VWL)

Reviews research examining whether children can use information in the Chinese writing system to pronounce characters. Argues that the overarching graphophonological insight in reading Chinese characters is the phonetic principle --the principle that the phonetic components of compound characters provide information about character pronunciation.…

Ego identity was assessed for 30 mildly retarded adolescents, 30 nonretarded peers, and 30 nonretarded preadolescents. Results suggest that subjects' identity did not reflect a simple developmental lag but rather a unique profile. Subjects' ego identity was related to social adjustment and level of functioning, even after controlling for…