Field work and field courses within undergraduate biology degrees have been under threat in recent years for multiple reasons and while there has been widespread support from learned societies, academic staff and students for the retention of field study, there has been little research to support the perceived value of field teaching within this…

This report describes the first prospective study specifically designed to assess children's verbal memory for a unique event 6 years after it occurred. Forty-six 27- to 51-month-old children took part in a unique event and were interviewed about it twice, after 24-hr and 6-year delays. During the 6-year interview, 9 children verbally recalled the…

The purpose of this article is to elaborate Cottrill et al.'s (1996) conceptual framework of limit, an explanatory model of how students might come to understand the limit concept. Drawing on a retrospective analysis of 2 teaching experiments, we propose 2 theoretical constructs to account for the students' success in formulating and understanding…

The present study explores the effects of parental scaffolding of children's problem solving on the development of executive function (EF). Eighty-two children were assessed at 2, 3, and 4 years of age on a variety of EF tasks and, at ages 2 and 3, on a problem-solving puzzle with which parents offered structured assistance (i.e., scaffolding).…

Aim: Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA) supplementation of infant formula may have a beneficial effect on cognitive development. This study aimed to investigate the effect of LCPUFA formula supplementation primarily on cognition and secondarily on behaviour at age 9 years. Special attention was paid to the potentially modifying effect…

The aim of the present study was to explore and compare systematically the developmental patterns of certain aspects of imitation, longitudinally from 2 to 10 months, in interactions of infants with grandfathers and grandmothers. Sixteen infants were video-recorded at home in the course of spontaneous dyadic interactions with maternal grandfathers…

Growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible [beta] ("Gadd45b") has been shown to be involved in DNA demethylation and may be important for cognitive processes. "Gadd45b" is abnormally expressed in subjects with autism and psychosis, two disorders associated with cognitive deficits. Furthermore, several high-throughput screens have identified "Gadd45b"…

Language plays a critical role in theory of mind (ToM) development, particularly the understanding of false beliefs (FB). Further, there is some evidence that the development of FB is important for metalinguistic development, such as the understanding of homonyms and synonyms. However, there is debate regarding the nature of this relationship.…

Research Findings: Two exploratory studies explored young children's views of brain function and whether these views can be modified through exposure to a brief classroom intervention. In Study 1, children aged 4-13 years reported that the brain is used for "thinking," although older children were more likely than younger children to…

In the current article, we contrast 2 analytical approaches to estimate the relation of parenting to executive function development in a sample of 1,292 children assessed longitudinally between the ages of 36 and 60 months of age. Children were administered a newly developed and validated battery of 6 executive function tasks tapping inhibitory…

This study examined relations between parenting, shared reading practices, and child development. Participants included 28 children (M = 24.66 months, SD = 8.41 months) and their parents. Measures included naturalistic observations of parenting and shared reading quality, assessments of child cognitive and language development, and home reading…

The increasing prevalence of media multitasking among adolescents is concerning because it may be negatively related to goal-directed behavior. This study investigated the relationship between media multitasking and executive function in 523 early adolescents (aged 11-15; 48% girls). The three central components of executive functions (i.e.,…

Dual-process theories have been proposed to explain normative and heuristic responses to reasoning and decision-making problems. Standard unitary and dual-process theories predict that normative responses should increase with age. However, research has focused recently on exceptions to this standard pattern, including developmental increases in…

A substantial amount of learning in schools takes place within social contexts and class-based group activities; however, social learning situations, communication and social cognition development for children with ASD can be a challenge for the children and their teachers. This paper explores what happens when children with ASD draw…

This study is part of an ongoing design research to scaffold preservice teachers' higher-order reasoning while solving technology integration problems. Informed by previous iterations, we designed and examined progressively increasing scaffolds that integrated multiple scaffolding functions to facilitate three technology-based lesson design…