In a study of the effect of task demands on attention allocation, 20 9-year-olds and 20 13-year-olds were presented with a primary and a secondary task. Subjects were instructed either to respond to the primary task or to respond to both tasks. Overall, findings indicate that ability to allocate attention in accordance with task demands improves…

Compares second-, fifth- and eighth-graders' reasoning about their relative ability and that of another child (who applied more or less effort) with their reasoning about the relative ability of two others (who differed in effort). Responses to specific questions may be more sensitive to situationally induced motivational influences than responses…

A total of 50 children between 6 and 13 years of age were tested for a predicted, eight-step sequence of family role concepts. Dolls representing typical roles were used as props, and each child was asked questions concerning role explanations and increasingly abstract family definitions. The sequence was found to be scalable and age-related.…

Results suggest that adolescent values can be used to illuminate the facets of social competence in adolescence. Supports Ford's (1982) definition of social competence, which requires that explicit value judgments be made prior to defining social competence for any given group or setting. (RH)

Examines the effects of word duration on memory span in subjects of different ages. Concludes that developmental increases in short-term memory span can be explained in terms of increases in speech rate. Suggests that increases in speech rate with age reflect increases in the speed of articulation of individual words. (Author/AS)

Assesses the information used by 5- to 13-year-olds to make dispositional attributions. Children were shown a boy interacting with others harmfully. Results of trait adjective ratings and predictions of causal responsibility for subsequent property damage revealed that the use of frequency and covariation information differed with age. (Author/CB)

Reported an experiment on the effects of taxonomic organization on 7- and 11-year-olds' free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists. Analysis used a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivered estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. (Author/CB)

Children ranging from fifth to twelfth grade, and their parents, were presented with items pertaining to family transgressions and asked to judge the legitimacy of parental jurisdiction, justify its wrongness or permissibility, and assess its contingency on parental authority. (PCB)

Studies the reliability of eyewitness testimony for shoplifting in terms of age, prior knowledge/expectations, and type of memory test. Fifth graders, college students, and older adults participated in two studies. All subjects had expectations concerning common and unusual aspects of shoplifting. Age differences were greatest for recall…

This paper provides a detailed empirical account of the performances of 8- to 9-year-olds and 11- to 12-year-olds on a chore-scheduling task developed to assess the dynamics of planning processes. In developing the planning task for revealing different levels of planning proficiency, five critical aspects of planning were taken into account: the…

Second-graders, fifth-graders, and adults participated in an experiment of cued recall for cue-target picture and word pairs. Results suggested that differences in the encoding of both specific and categorical attribute information contribute to developmental recall differences independently of encoding intent and stimulus modality. (Author/CB)

Investigates whether 7- and 10-year-old children and adults are sensitive to their own and another listener's failure to understand literal and nonliteral (sarcastic) uses of utterances. (HOD)

This study examined the relationship between age-interval between siblings and children's creative abilities, as well as parental views on the creative abilities of 116 children (ages 9-12 years). The study found that larger age intervals resulted in greater creativity and that age intervals also interacted with birth order, family size, and age.…

This study drew on four cycles of longitudinal data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine the academic and behavioural trajectories of youth between 10 and 15 years of age as a function of maternal age at childbearing. The analyses controlled for several family characteristics and examined the mediating…

Basic research and programs in substance abuse dealing directly with rural and small town populations lag far behind those aimed at urban groups, in both quality and quantity. A study was conducted to identify factors related to substance use by a preadolescent and early adolescent rural and small town population. Data were collected from 496…