Factors affecting performance on base-10 tasks were investigated in a series of four studies with a total of 453 children aged 5-7 years. Training in counting-on was found to enhance child performance on base-10 tasks (Studies 2, 3, and 4), while prior knowledge of counting-on (Study 1), trading (Studies 1 and 3), and partitioning (Studies 1 and…

Two experiments test hypothesis that development of children's comprehension monitoring skills in the referential communication paradigm is based in part on ability to differentiate the literal sentence meaning of speaker's direction from the meaning or intention that speaker wished to convey. (Author/RWB)

Reports a combined interview and observation study of parent-child relationships in families with an eldest child aged six to seven years. Interview data focused on time spent with children, performance of child-need tasks, and frequency of parent-child interactions. (PCB)

Describes two experiments that assessed young children's understanding of the characteristic uncertainty in the physical nature of random phenomena as well as the unpredictability of outcomes. (HOD)

Examines the relative efficacy of employing verbal rationales and modeling procedures as methods for parents to introduce a new parenting technique to their children. Two age groups, 3 to 4 1/2 years and 5 1/2 to 7 1/2 years, participated to enable assessment of potential developmental differences in children's responsiveness.(RH)

Two studies investigated two groups of young children at the ages of four and eight years, respectively. Subjects were required to solve a simple problem task by performing a response opposite to that demonstrated by an adult. Girls' performance was significantly worse than boys', regardless of the sex of the model. (Author/CI)

Results indicate that at least three factors contribute to the linguistic complexity of "wh-questions" and help to determine sequence of acquisitions: the syntactic function of the individual "wh-forms," the relative semantic complexity of different verbs, and contingency relations in discourse. (MP)

Examines the performance on verbal, nonverbal, and memory tasks of 11 girls (ages 8 to 11 years) identified as having an extra X chromosome at birth. Results showed that the triple-X girls were markedly inferior in their performance on the tasks, indicating a rehearsal deficit, an inability to use list structures, and weaker language skills.…

Examines the level and quality of object play and other cognitive and socioemotional aspects of the play situation, both as individual entities and as interrelated aspects of the way the child with Down syndrome approaches and deals with the animate and inanimate world. Relationships among these aspects and the child's level of functioning were…

Children approximately three to seven years old were presented with pairs of cartoons and asked to choose the funnier of each pair. Cartoons differed in terms of which of two persons was accidentally victimized by his or her own action or action of the other person (e.g., having paint spilled from a ladder onto one's head). (Author/MP)

While viewing a televised drama with second-grade children, adults stated implicit relationships between important explicitly portrayed events. Children who heard the facilitating commentary scored significantly better on understanding of implicit program content related to the adult's statements than did children who heard neutral comments.…

Piaget's conservation paradigm was used to assess five- to seven-year-old children's understanding of the permanence of various kinship roles. Children's conservation was studied by applying certain transformations on single- and multiple-kinship role combinations. Kinship conservation developed gradually in this age range. Females' performance…

Study of third- through sixth-grade children's prosocial behavior based on peer nominations found that children with prosocial reputations tended to be high in constructive social skills and attentional regulation, and low in negative emotionality. The relations of children's negative emotionality to prosocial reputation were moderated by level of…

Examined children's understanding of false belief, representational change, and appearance-reality distinction. Subjects were 34 Junin Quechuan children, 4 to 8 years old. Findings indicated an understanding of the appearance-reality distinction and suggested an improvement with age. Children demonstrated poor understanding of representational…

Compared face recognition ability in young children with autism to that of children with typical development and developmental delay. Took electroencephalographic recordings of brain activity while children viewed pictures of their mothers and unfamiliar females, and familiar and unfamiliar toys. Found that autistic children showed no differences…