Compares gifted preschool boys and girls with both a CA (Chronological Age)-matched group and an MA (Mental Age)-matched group on their performance on a spatial projective task, a cognitive perspective-taking task, and an affective perspective-taking task. The data seem to support the hypothesis that psychometric brightness implies cognitive…

Exploratory behaviors of Down Syndrome and nondelayed young children between the mental ages of 16 and 32 months were examined in four situations in which they tried to find things which they saw reflected in a mirror. Down Syndrome and nondelayed children differed in number, type, and frequency of exploratory behaviors. (PCB)

This study with 12 elementary school children with mild mental retardationship found that the relation between lexical knowledge and mental age depended upon the nature of the vocabulary test. Results suggested that mental age in this population was more strongly related to knowledge of abstract relational terms than to knowledge of labels for…

Investigates the influence of chronological age, mental age, and handicapping condition on mothers' interactions with their handicapped young children. A total of 111 handicapped children ranging in age from 3 to 36 months and their mothers participated. Infants' general functioning and handicapping conditions were related to maternal…

Evaluates the relative contribution of a number of child characteristics to the prediction of social acceptance. Predictor variables included positive social interactions, occupied behavior when not interacting, mental age, chronological age, and sex. Results supported the efficacy of helping social isolates to interact positively with peers.…

Applies the confluence model to a longitudinal intact family data set. Also tests the data with simple linear models. Results suggest that the confluence model should be rejected as a useful model for these data based on principles of parsimony and predictability. (Author/AS)

The paper notes A. Hore and W. Tryon's support of the developmental position that persons with and without mental retardation of similar mental age show similar cognitive patterns, but suggests that mental age is psychometrically invalid and Piagetian tasks are inappropriate to evaluate this position. An information processing approach is…

Findings of three studies indicate that young children with Down syndrome perform similarly to typical controls matched on mental ages (MAs) of approximately 3 years. However, by developmental age of 4 years, children with Down syndrome performed worse than both MA-matched typical children and children with non-Down syndrome types of mental…

Examines differences in habituation in a visual attention task as a function of chronological age, mental age, and handicapping condition. Subjects were 102 children who ranged in age from 3 to 36 months and who were classified as Down Syndrome, cerebral palsied, developmentally delayed, or multiply handicapped. (Author/RH)

The study of affect comprehension in 15 children with pervasive developmental disorders (ages 7-10) and normal children matched for mental age found that the disabled children were impaired on affect matching compared to the controls and were impaired on face and affect matching relative to their own performance on object matching. (Author/DB)

Describes three experiments that tested autistic children's nonverbal and verbal categorization abilities. Concludes that autistic children do not suffer a specific cognitive deficit in ability to categorize and form abstract concepts. (HOD)

Since early research had shown that a total score on 27 Piagetian tasks was very highly correlated with a Wechsler and achievement composite, a study investigated the possibility of shortening the Piagetian test by means of classical analysis methodology. (HOD)

Examined the relation between a history of maltreatment and cognitive control functioning in two groups of preschool and early school-age maltreated and nonmaltreated children. Maltreated children showed developmentally impaired cognitive control functioning on a number of tasks. (RH)

The performance of 25 children with Down syndrome (DS) on delay of gratification tasks was compared with that of mental age-matched typically developing children. DS children were significantly less able to delay gratification on two of the three tasks. Results raise questions about using mental age as the method for matching children with DS and…

Comparison of 80 "good" and 80 "poor" readers of either average intellectual ability or with mild mental retardation found relatively consistent differences between "good" and "poor" readers in each sample. The "poor" readers in each sample met the discrepancy standard for learning disability.…