Background: Shayer, Ginsburg, and Coe (2007) showed that children leaving primary school in Y6 entered secondary school with much lower levels of understanding of the physical conservations than in 1976. It seemed desirable to investigate cognitive development in the first three years of secondary education. Aims: By using two Piagetian tests of…

Background: Previous research has produced conflicting results regarding the effects of season of birth and age-position on cognitive attainments. In Northern Ireland the school year divides the summer season into two providing an opportunity to evaluate the relative contribution of season of birth and age-position effects. Aims: To investigate…

Recognizing relational similarity relies on the ability to understand that defining object properties might not lie in the objects individually, but in the relations of the properties of various object to each other. This aptitude is highly relevant for many important human skills such as language, reasoning, categorization and understanding…

The main goal of this cross-sectional study was to demonstrate that, in addition to a main change during childhood, the cognitive development of children with Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by interindividual variability in their cognitive functioning. Eighty-eight French children with DS took part in this experiment. They were divided into…

Research on theory of mind (TOM) has provided a major contribution to the understanding of developmental disorders characterized by atypical social behaviour. Yet, there is still little consensus relative to TOM abilities in Williams syndrome (WS). This study used visual and verbal tasks to investigate attribution of intentions in individuals with…

It is generally assumed that slowing after errors is a cognitive control effect reflecting more careful response strategies after errors. However, clinical data are not compatible with this explanation. We therefore consider two alternative explanations, one referring to the possibility of a persisting underlying problem and one on the basis of…

Nine-month-olds can respond to a change in rhyme when the conditioned head turn procedure is used [Hayes, R. A., Slater, A., & Brown, E. (2000). "Infants' ability to categorise on the basis of rhyme." "Cognitive Development, 15," 405-419]. However, it is not known whether infants are detecting the change in vowel, the change in coda, or both. In…

Four- to 10-year-old children (n = 50) participated in a 2D search task that included geometry (with- and without lines) and feature conditions. During each of 27 trials, participants watched as a cartoon character hid behind one of three landmarks arranged in a triangle on a computer screen. During feature condition trials, participants could use…

Research has demonstrated that differential parental scaffolding utterances influence children's development of executive function. Traditional conceptualizations of scaffolding, though, have difficulty in explaining how such differential effects influence children's cognitive development; they do not account for the timing of parental utterances…

This study examined the prevalence and determinants of spanking of children at 3?years of age and the associations between spanking and externalizing behaviour and receptive verbal ability at age 5?years. Overall, we find maternal spanking rates of 55.2% and paternal rates of 43.2% at age 3?years. Mothers facing greater stress and those who…

Alumni self-ratings of their personal growth were linked to their intellectual development during college four to seven years earlier. Graduates that were satisfied with their personal growth in the arts, creative thinking, making logical inferences, learning independently, exercising initiative, and tolerating other points of view had higher…

Raising a child with a disability often makes it difficult to find child care. Many families learn that child care programs are simply unable to meet the special needs of their children, while specialized facilities have limited space, and specialized private care is expensive. To meet the needs of all children, Head Start and Early Head Start…

I focus on the role of preschool intervention and developmental psychology researchers in defining the concept of the "disadvantaged child" and in designing and evaluating remedies to alleviate educational "disadvantages" in young children. I argue that preschool interventions concentrated especially on compensating for…

While early childhood education has received increasing attention in the developing world in recent years, relatively little evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa on its effects on child development and subsequent school enrolment. We use a prospective case-control design to evaluate the developmental impact of a community-based early…

Educators and policymakers have been concerned about the problem of early literacy performance for many decades. Despite educational reform to increase standards, many children consistently fail to read at levels that enable them to compete globally. The purpose of this study was to provide a data driven program evaluation of a reading…