The use of tests is a well-established tradition in the study of children's learning. Most of these tests claim to establish a child's general understanding, independent of situations and well-known contexts. I have studied narratives told by a four-year-old boy who failed to pass a false belief test (a test designed to examine whether a child is…

This article argues that the theory of cognitive apprenticeship could inform those who teach and work with doctoral students in ways that enable them to provide students with more systematic preparation, more focused guidance and scaffolding, more explicit feedback, and enhanced preparation for participating in a collaborative way in communities…

Objective: In this exploratory study, we observed the process in which children make food choices from a cognitive development perspective and the implications that these choices have on the areas of cognitive development and health and nutrition education. Design: This was a cross-sectional case study that involved an in-depth examination of the…

The authors review a viewpoint on human functional brain development, interactive specialization (IS), and its application to the emerging network of cortical regions referred to as the "social brain." They advance the IS view in 2 new ways. First, they extend IS into a domain to which it has not previously been applied--the emergence of social…

Socio-dramatic play (SDP) creates a zone of proximal development in which optimum cognitive development occurs. To participate successfully in this kind of play children and their partners must create shared meaning, or what is referred to in the socio-cultural literature as intersubjectivity. Based on intersubjectivity and SDP, this study…

This paper examines the tie between knowledge and behavior in a noun generalization context. An experiment directly comparing noun generalizations of children at the same point in development in forced-choice and yes/no tasks reveals task-specific differences in the way children's knowledge of nominal categories is brought to bear in a moment. To…

Although previous research has identified a number of interesting aspects of future thinking in adults, little is known about the developmental trajectory and coherence of future-oriented behaviors during early childhood. The primary goal of this study was to explore these issues by administering a battery of tasks assessing different aspects of…

To date, little work has been done investigating prospective memory in children, particularly using a delay-execute paradigm. Two experiments were conducted to investigate this issue with children aged 5-11 years. While playing a computer driving game, children's ability to carry out a delayed intention either immediately a target cue appeared or…

The chapters in this issue revisit the social origins of the development of executive function (EF) through both empirical examination of the contexts in which EF development occurs (in vivo), as well as its social antecedents and consequences. Importantly, they also point to new directions in studying the social foundations of neurodevelopment,…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to respond to A. G. Kamhi's (2007) challenge to consider two points of view on reading--the broad and the narrow. Each point of view includes a component of the reading process; namely, comprehension and word recognition. Taken separately, each point of view is insufficient for our understanding of the…

An important developmental task during adolescence is learning to make decisions, experiencing the related positive and negative consequences, and learning from these outcomes. However, a youth's ability to make competent decisions is sometimes called into question because adolescence is also often a time of engagement in risky behaviors. This…

This paper presents a case study of a young child, demonstrating evidence of a connection between "enveloping" objects and understanding presence and absence of a temporary and permanent nature. The starting point for the researcher was: an interest in identifying schemas or repeated patterns in order to understand cognitive development and; a…

Infant sleep is a major source of concern for many parents. The aims of this longitudinal study were to assess: (a) the development of sleep patterns among infants, (b) the development of maternal cognitions regarding infant sleep, and (c) the relations between these domains during the 1st year of life. Eighty-five mothers were recruited during…

Young children show significant changes in their mental-state understanding as marked by their performance on false-belief tasks. This study provides evidence for activity in the prefrontal cortex associated with the development of this ability. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as adults (N = 24) and 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old…

Ability tests play an important role in the assessment programs of many schools. However, the inferences about ability made from such tests presume that students understand the tasks they are attempting. Task familiarity can vary by student as well as by format. By design, nonverbal reasoning tests use formats that are intended to be novel. The…