This study, with 180 deaf or hard of hearing infants and toddlers grouped into four age ranges, found highly significant interrelationships among the four categories of play and the four aspects of communicative development studied. The development of autosymbolic play, age of hearing loss identification, and symbolic object distribution accounted…

Used a popular children's picture book to explore preschool children's understanding of false beliefs. Found that, irrespective of age, children had a greater probability of demonstrating their understanding of false belief during the narrative task than during a traditional false belief task. (Author/KB)

Examines consequences of family poverty for child development, noting evidence that deep or persistent poverty early in childhood adversely affects children's ability and achievement. Argues that although the 1996 welfare reforms spurred many welfare-to-work transitions, their time limits and sanctions are likely to deepen poverty among some…

Discusses the role of collective creative activity in developing preschool children's multicultural understanding and ability to live together. Notes artistic and language-based activities used in French preschools to teach these concepts and develop critical and responsible behavior. (JPB)

Investigated the emergence of class and propositional reasoning skills as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations with children from grades 1, 3, 5, and 7. Found that children's reasoning follows a logical development sequence and that different groups of items account for…

Tested whether 2- to 4-year olds could reason with incongruent syllogisms when encouraged to use their imagination. Randomly assigned 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds to one of four conditions (no cue, word cue, fantasy planet, or imagery) and presented syllogistic reasoning problems with incongruent information. Found that in imagination conditions, 2-…

Two experiments examined toddlers' noun vocabularies and interpretations of names for solid and non-solid items. Results indicated that one side of the solidity-syntax-category organization mapping was favored. Seventeen- to 33-month olds do not systematically generalize names for solid things by shape similarity until they already know many…

Examines the role of creative expression in educational practices. Briefly outlines the work of educational leaders, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Howard Gardner, and Robert Sternberg, who are proponents of multi-faceted learning and creativity. Considers strategies for educational approaches that involve more creative invention, problem…

Meta-analysis of the A-not-B error was conducted, using logistic regression, on studies conducted before September 1997. Results replicated earlier findings, with exception that the number of trials at the A location was a significant predictor, and the number of locations was a significant predictor of the proportion of infants who searched…

Speeded performance on simple mental addition problems of 6- and 7-year-olds with and without mild mental retardation was modeled from a person perspective and an item perspective, both inferred from Siegler's work. Models from item response theory were used to test hypotheses. Found that all children follow same developmental path in acquiring…

Tests the hypothesis that an early adolescent brain growth plateau and spurt exists, and that this plateau and spurt influence students' ability to reason scientifically and to learn theoretical science concepts. Finds that measures of students' (n=210) prefrontal lobe activity correlated highly with scientific reasoning ability, and that these…

Two experiments investigated whether preverbal infants distinguish between humans and mammals. Study 1 found that 7-, 9-, and 11-month-olds distinguished humans from mammals in an object-examination task. Study 2 found that 7-month-olds but not 5-month-olds showed evidence for category discrimination with the 2-dimensional color photos of toy…

This response to Detterman and Thompson (1997) analyzes their criticisms of special education and presents evidence of the effectiveness of current instructional techniques for children with disabilities in contrast with the cognitive approaches favored by Detterman and Thompson. Assumptions about the significance of intelligence testing and…

Examined heritability of reading deficits in dyslexic subtypes. Found reading deficits were heritable in developmental phonological and surface dyslexics, with greater genetic contribution in the former. Findings suggest a partial independence in the development of cognitive processes involved in reading, and affirm accounts of surface dyslexia…

Three-year-old children (n=41) with mild learning problems and 41 typical children were given a battery consisting of seven simple cognitive tasks shown to contribute toward the differentiation of children with and without mild learning problems. Picture identification, oppositional concepts, identity discrimination, and semantic…