Two studies examined progression in children's and adults' ability to monitor attempts to recall event details and the dependence of metamemory on question format. Only with an unbiased question format did subjects give higher confidence ratings after correct than after incorrect answers. When interviews contained misleading questions, children…

Discusses conception of moral formation. Traces progress to moral maturity through well defined stages of cognitive, conative, and/or affective growth. Explains that logical status of developmental theories are not clear. Argues that the accounts are more evaluative than descriptive. Explores the problematic moral educational implications of this…

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…

Explains a strategy called "What Do I 'S'ee? What Do I 'T'hink? What Do I 'W'onder?" (STW) which helps students look carefully at pictures in storybooks and think about a story's character, setting, and events. Notes that the STW strategy provides opportunities for students with varying reading abilities and diverse experiences to work together…

In this longitudinal study of African American and Caucasian students from 18 4-year institutions, objective tests were used to estimate the cognitive effects of race in college, while applying statistical controls for an extensive set of confounding influences. Found that Caucasian students scored higher than African Americans on standardized…

Four studies explored children's beliefs about the stability of positive traits among three groups. Findings indicated that younger children were more likely than older children or adults to believe that negative physical and psychological traits would change positively, that they could control the expression of a trait, and that extreme positive…

Investigates whether introductory college chemistry students today differ from those a generation ago in terms of Piagetian cognitive functioning, aptitude, and achievement, and whether the gender differences in Piagetian cognitive development functioning found in 1981 are still evident today. Suggests that today's students are different in a…

Explores secondary school, undergraduate, and graduate level learners' mental models of bonding with ionic substances through an interview protocol involving the use of physical substances and a focus card containing depictions of ionic bonding and structure. Suggests that teachers and university faculty need to provide stronger links between the…

The complex relationship between cognitive developmental research and children's science curricula is explored, focusing on the tendency to attribute shortcomings in performance to the child's age, the confounding of weak knowledge with developmentally based deficiency, and emphasis of stage-based constraints on children's thinking. (SLD)

A study of 86 children (ages 5-16) investigated the relationship between age, IQ, and preferences for novelty. Children with higher IQs spent significantly more time responding to novel items than lower-IQ children. Older children with high IQs showed the most interest in novel items. (CR)

Explored whether a system between written place-value system and base-10 manipulatives helped children understand place-value. Found evidence that the intermediate system helped children differentiate between face values and complete values of digits in multidigit place-value number representations, and to grasp that the sum of the digits'…

Examines Piaget's and Vygotsky's conception of the relation of the social to the individual, including individualism versus holism, Piaget's alternative of relationalism, and Vygotsky's views of the nature of the social. Suggests that Piaget's denial and Vygotsky's advocacy of explanatory emergence leads to the question of domain-general versus…

Effects of type of prompt on the use of external strategies were examined with 272 children (ages 7-17) with or without mental retardation. A task requiring memory for object placement was performed under one of four conditions: no prompt, verbal prompt, physical prompt, verbal and physical prompt. Results suggested that strategy use by older…

Examined cognitive profile and multiple-deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Compared 30 Chinese dyslexic children with average readers of the same chronological age (CA) and 30 average readers at the same reading level (RL) in several rapid naming, visual, phonological, and orthographic tasks. Found that dyslexic children…

The use of rules on nonverbal balance scale problems was studied among 5- to 19-year-olds. Latent class analyses indicated that children used rules, that different rules were used by children of different ages, and that both consistent and inconsistent rule use occurred. A model for the development of reasoning about the balance scale task was…