Four experiments examined 6-year-olds' performance on intentionality stories and one false belief story. Children answered according to their own knowledge in an intentional context, even though they responded by choosing a picture to insert into a protagonist's thought bubble rather than reporting the belief verbally. Children could correctly…

The Goldman Lock Box provides two measures of self-regulation, planfulness and maintenance of goal-directed behavior. Lock Box performance of 25 children with down syndrome was compared with that of 43 typically developing children, matched for mental age. Children in both groups showed similar levels of competence, planfulness and…

Defines "collective creation" as a collaborative process undertaken by actors/students and their director/teacher and the resulting creative product. Describes a study of a collective creation as an instructional practice. Suggests that collective creation teaching approaches might work effectively to serve social justice purposes in the…

Investigated bilingual 6- to 10-year-olds' reasoning about the stability of human psychological characteristics in relation to the obligatory distinction between the Spanish verb forms "ser" and "estar" and the corresponding English form "to be." Found that children treated "ser" and "to be" as…

Verbal and nonverbal components of pointing initiation by Down's Syndrome children when looking at books were studied. Analysis of initiation patterns and point duration revealed possible developmental progression from a stage where point and exchange duration are linked to a stage where pointing becomes more detached from the exchange. (21…

Reviews recent research on retention that is demonstrated without conscious recollection, such as the ability to tie shoelaces or drive a car. Suggests that future research in this field may have implications for such educational issues as the transfer of training and the carryover of abstract classroom learning to problems in other contexts. (EVL)

Evaluated relationship between Cognitive Levels Test (CLT) and two tests of academic achievement: Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests (WRAT) and KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test (KeyMath). Findings from children in kindergarten through second grade showed CLT to be rather highly correlated with KeyMath scores, modestly correlated with WRAT total…

Traditional notions of literacy have been transformed regarding usage, purpose, context, and symbolic meaning. The context of individual reading and writing efforts is always inherently social. To achieve full literacy for all students, students must use texts to empower action, thinking, and feeling in the context of purposeful social activity.…

Examines practical implications for assessing child's cognitive development and then facilitating developmental growth. Presents concepts of developmental counseling and therapy as systematic framework to integrate neo-Piagetian developmental theory into interview. Example of treatment of case of child abuse illustrates concept in action.…

Study of Israeli adolescents participating in summer camps revealed that active exposure to and assumption of variegated roles in different settings on volunteer basis, while performing meaningful and quasi-responsible actions by means of trial-and-error behavior, enhanced role and interpersonal differentiation, and hence personal differentiation,…

Two experiments involving students from grades 1-2 and 5-6 found strong connections between development and forgetting rates when the influences of learning ability were eliminated. Findings eliminated a hypothesis based on age variability in overlearning. (RH)

Cognitive triage is the nonmonotonic relationship between the order in which children read words out of long-term memory and the strength of the memory of the words read. Two experiments with 7 and 12 year olds compared the fuzzy-trace theory with an effortful processing explanation. Findings consistently favored the fuzzy-trace theory's…

Reviews evidence on development of competence in decision making during adolescence focusing on cognitive aspects. Discusses indicators of competence: choice, comprehension, creativity, compromise, consequentiality, correctness, credibility, consistency, and commitment. Evidence suggests that many adolescents show reliable level of competence in…

Performance on oddity transfer tasks was used to classify 40 mildly retarded, 6- through 9-year-old and 40 normally achieving children of the same age into their 2 respective groups. High levels of classification accuracy were observed with all 8 oddity types being sensitive to differences between the normally achieving and mildly retarded…

Studies the relationship between timing of puberty and spatial ability in 53 undergraduate women. Results do not show evidence for greater spatial ability on the part of those who have late maturation. (RJC)