Examined effect of age and conceptions of ability on information seeking, performance, and motivation among middle graders. Found that students who had acquired the concept of ability responded to the task condition with strivings to learn and requests for information relevant to acquiring mastery, and to the ego condition with strivings to…

French-speaking children and adults heard silent comic-strip stories that differed by frame display mode, explicitness of the links between depicted events, and whether the topic changed on the last frame. Subjects' use of referents for the last frame indicated that manipulation of context was a good means of assessing speakers' acquisition of…

Examined links between theory-of-mind status among Singaporean and United Kingdom preschoolers and their social pretend play. Found that ratings by Singaporean and UK teachers yielded measures of facilitation, shared meaning, and thematic maintenance of interactive play. Rater nationality did not affect ranking patterns. Findings indicated a link…

Suggests that children construe the world as they develop relationships with other individuals. Offers considerations regarding developmental changes marking the first year of life and argues that cognition is framed in public social exchanges and private dialogical thinking. (DLH)

Investigates whether experience with a balance beam task at which children succeed could be transferred to a related problem (balancing familiar everyday objects) and the extent to which transfer of knowledge was assisted by adult scaffolding and a condition where children worked alone. Finds that the scaffolding condition was most effective. (CMK)

Investigated whether 3- to 6-year-olds in a Montessori school created more symmetrical than asymmetrical designs when working with building materials. Found that symmetry occurred in designs of children as young as age 3, with the tendency increasing with age. Examined the need for increased use of building materials for teaching symmetry in the…

Compared adolescents' (14 to 20 years) and young adults' (21 to 37 years) wisdom-related knowledge and judgment related to difficult and ill-defined life dilemmas. Rated responses along five wisdom criteria. Found that adolescents performed at lower levels than young adults but also demonstrated substantial age increments in performance.…

A study employed mixed effects regression growth curve analysis to assess the developmental course of discrepant (n=51) and nondiscrepant (n=89) poor readers identified in third grade and retested in fifth, eight, and twelfth grades. Discrepancy status did not differentiate the developmental course of basic reading skills or reading comprehension.…

A study examined the impact of a gifted enrichment program on 80 Israeli students (grades 4-8) from disadvantaged neighborhoods. After program participation, girls' performance on an intelligence test was higher than boys'. While girls started out with slightly lower scores, they ended up with slightly higher scores than boys. (Contains…

Previous work by our group has shown that infant emotional vitality (EV), the lively expression of shared emotion both positive and negative, predicts cognitive and language abilities in toddlerhood. Specifically, infants who demonstrated a pattern of high emotional expression combined with high bids to their caregivers, fared significantly better…

Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM), like all adolescents, have the right to be able to develop emotionally and cognitively to their fullest potential in host countries (Article 6, Convention of the Rights of the Child, 1991). URM make up a very special and vulnerable population of young people under the age of 18 who have been separated from their…

The present study explores how suppositions which conflict with accepted beliefs are represented and reasoned about. Two studies test the predictions regarding the nature and developmental changes in children's ability to represent and reason about hypothetical or make-believe suppositions which violate their everyday knowledge and beliefs. In…

This paper conceptualises a basis for understanding learning in workplaces. This comprises a duality between how access to workplace activities and guidance is afforded, on the one hand, and how workers elect to engage with what is afforded to them, on the other. This reciprocal basis for thinking, acting and learning is referred to as…

We articulate and explicate a mechanism for mathematics conceptual learning that can serve as a basis for the design of mathematics lessons. The mechanism, reflection on activity-effect relationships, addresses the learning paradox (Pascual-Leone, 1976), a paradox that derives from careful attention to the construct of assimilation (Piaget, 1970).…

D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (this issue) examine various technical issues related to six studies of perinatal PCB exposure and neurodevelopment and one study of adult PCB exposure and motor function. They raise questions about possible imperfections of the studies, but many of their assertions are unsupported or frankly…