Through examination of 613 students' narratives about self-selected important decisions, I investigated the student and situation characteristics related to provocation and use of self authored ways of knowing. The findings gesture toward both particular skills students may need to develop in order to self-author, as well as suggest that movement…

The hypothesis guiding this study stated that just world beliefs (i.e., the belief that the world is orderly and just) are primitive beliefs that lose their importance across age as they become replaced by more sophisticated forms of reasoning enabling individuals to handle a world that is neither orderly nor just. In addition, just world beliefs…

In the statistical and transcriptional analyses reported in this exploratory study, original rhythms of 6-11-year-old children (N=36) were examined. The hypotheses were based on a new model of musical development, and tested empirically using non-pitch rhythmic improvisation in a MIDI-environment. Several representational types were found in…

This study addresses the impact of functional adult literacy on the empowerment of women in the absence of formal schooling. It examines whether the effects of functional literacy are exclusively content specific or whether there are gains going beyond the obvious benefits and extending to other spheres of everyday functioning, such as…

Recent research using theory-of-mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is…

Four studies examined 3- and 4-year-olds' ability to judge accurately whether they acted intentionally. Children self-initiated action to attain an outcome, or their arm was moved by the experimenter to create an outcome. In Experiment 3, children in both age groups accurately claimed they were agents of self-guided action but not of passive…

Interest in U-shaped development has itself undergone a U-shaped progression. Twenty-five years ago, interest in U-shaped development was high. This interest was evident at a 1978 conference in Tel Aviv on "U-shaped Behavioral Growth" that resulted in the publication of a book of the same title 4 years later (Strauss, 1982). The breadth…

For infants and toddlers, education and care are "two sides of the same coin." The author briefly reviews current research on the importance of relationships to cognitive development and early language and literacy. Instructional strategies that are most appropriate to the early years include "intentionality" and "scaffolding." Intentionality…

Children aged from 4;10 to 12;9 attending either a Catholic school or a public, secular school in an eastern Spanish city observed a puppet show in which a mouse was eaten by an alligator. Children were then asked questions about the dead mouse's biological and psychological functioning. The pattern of results generally replicated that obtained…

There is considerable interest in the role of mental state language in theory of mind development. This study examines cognitive and desire state discourse of 43 mothers during play interactions with their two-year-old children and theory of mind as indicated by a battery of false belief tasks around the age of five. Desire state comments of…

Lennox-Gastaut (L-G) syndrome is an intractable generalized epilepsy of childhood onset, associated with spike waves at a slow rate and paroxysmal fast activity. These epileptiform discharge patterns are thought to reflect excessive neocortical excitability and arise from neuronal and synaptic features peculiar to the immature central nervous…

The number of children and adolescents accessing the Internet as well as the amount of time online are steadily increasing. The most common online activities include playing video games, accessing web sites, and communicating via chat rooms, email, and instant messaging. A theoretical framework for understanding the effects of Internet use on…

Number sense is easy to recognize but difficult to define and hence, to teach. In this article, number sense is defined in terms of the knowledge known to underline it, as identified in cognitive developmental theory and research. A preK-2 mathematics program, called Number Worlds, that was specifically developed to teach this knowledge is…

This article discusses the issue of schools limiting the opportunities for children's physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and creative development that recess affords. Red Rover, hopscotch, jump rope, chase, telling secrets, hanging out, making friends, losing friends--these familiar pursuits of childhood recess are vividly memorable. While…

Despite the dramatic increase in incarcerated mothers that has occurred in the past decades, there is a paucity of family research focusing on the children affected by maternal imprisonment. The present study investigated family environments and intellectual outcomes in 60 children between the ages of 2 and 7 years during their mothers'…