Defining intelligence is a puzzle that has challenged educators and researchers for years. More recently, professionals are acknowledging that individuals possess many facets of intelligence and that learning is a complex combination of genetic factors, environmental influences, and life experiences that affect learning in unique ways (Salvia,…

A body of literature has increased our understanding of ethnic identity formation among ethnic minorities, but there remains a dearth of research focused on the ethnic identity formation of biethnic adolescents. Biethnic adolescents are likely to have unique experiences related to ethnicity that significantly alter the course of their ethnic…

Children's understanding of counterfactual emotions such as regret and relief develops relatively late compared to their ability to imagine counterfactual worlds. We tested whether a late development in counterfactual thinking: understanding counterfactuals as possibilities, underpinned children's understanding of regret. Thirty 5- and 6-year-olds…

The way theory of mind takes part in comprehension of art is examined in this article. Because theory of mind and understanding of artwork involves some symbolic competency, the link between comprehending art (i.e., drawing, painting, sculpture, and music) and theory of mind is explained through symbolism. To understand a piece of symbolic…

Performance is often impaired linearly with increasing angular disparity between two objects in tasks that measure mental rotation or object recognition. But increased angular disparity is often accompanied by changes in the similarity between views of an object, confounding the impact of the two factors in these tasks. We examined separately the…

The observation of other people's actions plays an important role in shaping the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes of the observer. It has been suggested that these social influences occur because the observation of action evokes a representation of that response in the observer and that these codes are subsequently accessed by other…

This paper investigates the role of static and dynamic attributes for the animate-inanimate distinction in category-based reasoning of 7-month-olds. Three experiments tested infants' responses to movement events involving an unfamiliar animal and a ball. When either the animal or the ball showed self-initiated irregular movements (Experiment 1),…

Why is conceptual change difficult yet possible? Ohlsson (2009/this issue) proposes that the answer can be found in the dynamics of resubsumption, or the process by which a domain of experience is resubsumed under an intuitive theory originally constructed to explain some other domain of experience. Here, it is argued that conceptual change is…

There is strong evidence that developments in children's theory of mind (ToM) at 3-4 years are related to developments in language and executive function. However, these relationships might exist for 2 reasons. First, language and executive function might be necessary for the mature ToM abilities that children are in the process of developing.…

During adolescence, cognitive abilities increase robustly. To search for possible related structural alterations of the cerebral cortex, we measured neuronal soma dimension (NSD = width times height), cortical thickness and neuronal densities in different types of neocortex in post-mortem brains of five 12-16 and five 17-24 year-olds (each 2F,…

We studied developmental trends in 5 important reasoning tasks that are critical components of the operational definition of rational thinking. The tasks measured denominator neglect, belief bias, base rate sensitivity, resistance to framing, and the tendency toward otherside thinking. In addition to age, we examined 2 other individual difference…

How heritage learners successfully maintain their heritage language (HL) and literacy is a significant topic of discussion in the field of bilingual education. This study examines what factors are most closely associated with literacy competence by inspecting Korean heritage learners' language and literacy practice patterns and their literacy…

This research explores communicative influences on cognitive learning and educational affect in online and offline courses limited to only enrolled students. A survey was conducted of students (N = 147) enrolled in online and offline courses within a single department during Summer, 2013. Respondents were asked about their classroom communication…

Historically, the concept 'child' has a Lockean (1960) connotation, as empty slates, new born infants are considered weak and helpless, until the improvement of growth and age has removed this deficient state of childhood. In modern societies, including South Africa, children are still viewed as citizens-in-waiting, and as citizens who need to be…

This paper explores the importance of the home and school environments in explaining the gender gap in disruptive behavior. We document large differences in the gender gap across key features of the home environment--boys do especially poorly in broken families. In contrast, we find little impact of the early school environment on non-cognitive…