The present studies investigated children's and adults' intuitive beliefs about the physical nature of essences. Adults and children (ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old) were asked to reason about 2 different ways of determining an unknown object's category: taking a tiny internal sample from any part of the object (distributed view of essence)…

The counseling profession prides itself on its developmental focus. However, counselors, counselor educators, and supervisors have generally applied only "phasic," and not "stage," theories to counseling and supervision practice and have not incorporated developmental concepts into their teaching. This article continues the effort of rectifying…

The author reflects on Piaget's 1972 article, "Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood," addressed to questions regarding what he alleged to be the final, most advanced level of cognition in his developmental stage theory--formal operations, as described in his 1958 volume coauthored with Inhelder, "The growth of logical thinking from…

The development of an equally beneficial and efficient teaching and learning system implies the application of multiple educational theories and methods. One method that had become prominent throughout the years is ability tracking. Based on this method, elementary and middle-school students are grouped into levels that are designated to…

Past research in both the transitions to adulthood literature and cultural sociology more broadly suggests that the working class relies on traditional cultural models in their construction of identity. In the contemporary post-industrial world, however, traditional life pathways are now much less available to working-class men and women. I draw…

Loss of previously established behaviors in early childhood constitutes a markedly atypical developmental trajectory. It is found almost uniquely in autism and its cause is currently unknown (Baird et al., 2008). We present an artificial neural network model of developmental regression, exploring the hypothesis that regression is caused by…

In a 15-year longitudinal study, a retrospective quasipanel design was chosen to detect developmental patterns related to the students' (N = 78) self-ratings. In 1999 (grade 9), the students who were rated as part of the risk group (n = 22) by using their kindergarten teachers' initial socio-emotional behaviour ratings that were done in 1989, were…

The predictive relations between social capital depth (high-quality relationships across contexts) and breadth (friendship network extensivity) and early-adult life adjustment outcomes were examined using data from a prospective longitudinal study. Interviews at age 22 yielded (a) psychometrically sound indexes of relationship quality with…

Three studies compared beliefs about natural and late blooming positive traits with those acquired through personal effort, extrinsic rewards or medicine. Young children (5-6 years), older children (8-13 years), and adults all showed a strong bias for natural and late blooming traits over acquired traits. All age groups, except 8- to 10-year-olds,…

In this article we explored the theories of Arnold Gesell, Erik Erickson and Jean Piaget about how human beings development. In this component we will analyze the cognitive processes of how children perceive and develop, in particular children from a cross-cultural background. How learning takes place, and how the influences of culture, and…

According to the social-cognitive theory, students increase or decrease their self-efficacy and self-esteem based on previous performance, comparison with peers, and feedback from their learning environment. Similar studies have looked at self-efficacy and/or self-esteem; for example, a study was done at the University of Georgia in which they…

This study examined the developmental trajectories associated with response inhibition and error processing as exemplar executive processes. We present fMRI data showing developmental changes to the functional networks underlying response inhibition and error-monitoring, comparing activation between adults and young adolescents performing the…

When adults make a joint commitment to act together, they feel an obligation to their partner. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether young children also understand joint commitments to act together. In the first study, when an adult orchestrated with the child a joint commitment to play a game together and then broke off from their joint…

The most popular topic in theory-of-mind research has been first-order false belief: the realization that it is possible to hold false beliefs about events in the world. A more advanced development is second-order false belief: the realization that it is possible to hold a false belief about someone else's belief. This article reviews research…

The capacity to imitate facial gestures is highly variable in rhesus macaques and this variability may be related to differences in specific neurobehavioral patterns of development. This study evaluated the differential neonatal imitative response of 41 macaques in relation to the development of sensory, motor, and cognitive skills throughout the…