World knowledge is defined as information that is acquired by adults from life experiences. To investigate question answering processes involving world knowledge systems, 120 young, middle-aged and older adults were given questions intended to induce either fact retrieval or inferential reasoning. Multiple-choice and true/false formats were used.…

The paper reports results of one project from the National Institute of Mental Health Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Program: the Duke ECA study (also known as the Piedmont Health Survey). To determine if depressive symptoms are different in the depressed elderly, 46 community subjects, over 60 years of age with a current diagnosis of…

Some research suggests that age differences in memory may result from older adults' difficulty in activating preexisting semantic structures. A study was conducted to examine whether older adults could use experimenter-provided elaborators which facilitate memory, or could generate their own elaborators, and to rate the quality of elaborators…

This study determines whether children who see an object hidden in a location in one space can retrieve an analogous object hidden in an analogous location in a different space. Participants were 16 31-months-old and 16 38-months-old children. After a familiarization experience, half the children observed a stuffed dog hidden in a room, tried to…

Issues related to children's ability to conceal their immediate emotional experiences by displaying alternate socially or personally motivated facial expressions are discussed. Four basic categories of dissimulation of emotional experience are specified, and motives for the use of cultural and personal display rules and direct deception are posed.…

This study is concerned with how much children remember about a salient event in their life, how much is forgotten over time, and whether age at the time of the event affects how much is remembered. Thirty-six children (ages 4, 8, and 12) and 26 college students, all of whom had a sibling born when they were age 4, were either interviewed or given…

This study was conducted in order to assess the link between exposure to television advertising for snack foods and children's actual snack choices. One hundred and forty 5-to 8-year-old low income children attending summer camp were randomly divided into two experimental groups each of which contained equal numbers of younger and older children.…

In a study of children's donating behavior, the effects of experimenter instructions, perceived maternal discipline, and self-instructive cognitions were investigated. Seventy-two second; third; and fourth-grade girls who viewed their mothers as inductive or power assertive earned tokens in a size-judgement task. They observed a model donate and…

This paper discusses the concept of equality and its role in the politics and economics of distributing social goods, costs, authority, and value. Specifically addressed is the question of who is to be made equal to whom. Various definitions to be considered in answering this question are examined: (1) simple subject-regarding equality; (2)…

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which children's moral judgment of aggressive acts varies by grade level, sex, race, and two dimentions of situational context -- namely, the type of aggression and the presence and type of mitigation. Subjects were 24 first grade and 24 sixth grade students. Within each grade level there were…

The effect of various kinds of commercials on children's actual food consumption are examined in this study. Forty-eight 4-year-old children (mean age, 4.65 years), and forty-eight 9-year-old children (mean age, 9.78 years) comprised the sample. In both age groups there was an equal number of boys and girls. The variable investigated was type of…

The knowledge system of the young child is considered script-based, where script is used (in the Schank and Abelson 1977 sense) as a frame defining an expected sequence of actions in a given context involving props, scenes, and actors. This study was concerned with how scripts may be influenced by the structure of different events and the child's…

This study attempts to evaluate procedures for studying hemispheric differences in newborn human infants and to determine what acoustic characteristics of speech sounds will trigger a left hemisphere (LH) repsonse. Within 48 hours of birth, 14 neonates were individually administered five aural stimuli which comprised two speech syllables, two…

A study of strategies used by translators examines the effects of age, context, and methods of learning the first and second languages on the type of strategy chosen. (MSE)

This study examined the extent to which actions of objects influence children's taxonomic categorization. Two types of action-based categories were examined: those in which the objects share similar actions; and those in which the objects have dissimilar actions. Perceptual features of the objects were dissimilar for all objects used in the study.…