A six-month-old infant who can remove a transparent cloth from his hand when it is covered after he grasps a toy may not be able to remove an opaque cover. Alternative interpretations of the phenomenon, that is, degree of bimanual coordination and focus of attention, are discussed. (Author/MB)

Findings demonstrated that the Guilford-Mednick conceptualization of original thinking is applicable to preschool as well as to older children. (Author/RH)

Two experiments replicate and extend Luria's (1959, 1961) findings on the development of verbal self-regulation during early childhood. Results support Luria's hypothesis that overt verbalizations facilitate control of motor behavior in young children and that language can play an active and integrative role in the development of behavioral and…

Aimed to provide an extensive and integrative review of empirical studies of pretend play in children. Attempts were made to sort out what is known from what is supposed but unconfirmed, and to identify the theoretical implications of the former and the relevance of the latter. (Author/RH)

Three- to eight-year-old children were asked to make causal attributions for performance on a motor task, reward allocations for the performance outcome, and state expectations for future success. (Author/DB)

Assesses the ability of four-year-old children to judge certain social situations from the facial expressions of peers. The children were presented with soundless videotapes of the face and upper torso of classmates and unknown peers interacting with peers and adults who were strange or familiar. (JMB)

Second- and third-grade children receiving no consequences or only social consequences for donating to needy peers attributed their behavior to a concern for the other child. Children receiving material consequences together with social consequences tended to attribute their help giving to external sources. (JMB)

The role of cognitive development in the formation of social judgments was investigated in 2 experiments examining children's use of task outcome information in attributional judgments of ability and task difficulty. (SB)

Presents meta-analysis evidence of the association between paternal sensitivity and infant-father attachment from eight studies with 546 families (combined effect size r = 0.13). A meta-analysis of 950 families from 14 studies found an overall correlation of 0.17 between infant-mother and infant-father attachment. Presents a data-based model of…

Examined 3- to 5-year-olds' attributions of the mental states of television characters depicting make-believe or realistic actions. Found that children who identified when television characters were engaging in pretend play did not necessarily infer the pretenders' thoughts and beliefs. Inferring pretenders' thoughts was related to performance on…

Tested predictions of dynamic field theory in study of 3-year-olds' location memory errors in task with homogeneous task space. Found that young children's spatial memory responses are affected by delay- and experience-dependent processes as well as the geometric structure of the task space. Both dynamic field theory and category adjustment models…

Examines young children's preferences and understanding regarding external and internal causes of behavior. Considers research in four areas: (1) knowledge of psychological states; (2) understanding that psychological states can cause behavior; (3) preference for internal versus external causes; and (4) discounting. (RJC)

Examined how 6- to 9-year-olds and adults judged expected value of complex gambles in which alternative outcomes had different prizes. Found that participants at all ages used multiplication rule for integrating probability and value of each individual outcome, and based judgment of overall expected value on alternative outcomes. Even youngest…

Argues that dynamic systems approaches may provide an explanatory framework based on general scientific principles for developmental psychology, using principles of self-organization to explain how novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development. Contends that self-organization provides a single…