Examines the interrelationships of task performances and developmental changes of 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds. Significant developmental changes were observed on transposition, cue interference, and spatial memory. The pattern of intercorrelations between tasks suggested a high degree of correspondence across tasks. (ST)

Sessions of verbal interaction (N=22) significantly facilitated syntax acquisition by 32- to 40-month-olds. In response to children's sentences, experimenters replied with recast sentences that maintained the same meaning but provided new syntactic information. A selective bias in these replies was matched by selectively stronger facilitation in…

Investigates why young children become redundant and informative speakers after listening to nonredundant and informative speakers. The authors conclude that children confuse the length of a message with information. (Author/DB)

Presents a cognitive-developmental analysis of the effects of televised, sex-stereotypic information on children's behavior and attitudes towards toy play. Subjects were 100 children, ages four to six divided into groups exhibiting high and low gender-constancy. (Author/CM)

Fifty-seven first and second graders were shown pictures of people in various traditional, nontraditional, and neutral occupations and activities and were tested for recognition memory in order to examine the relationship between children's gender attitudes and memories. (CM)

Examines the relative utility of exemplar and linguistic information for acquiring basic and superordinate categories. Developmental differences were predicted in the ability to benefit from the linguistically specified information. Preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children were tested. (Author/SS)

Social information-processing patterns in 9- through 12-year olds at least partially supported 3 hypotheses: only reactive-aggressive children would demonstrate hostile biases in their attributions of intentions in provocation situations; only proactive-aggressive children would evaluate aggression in positive ways; and proactive-aggressive…

Examined the socialization functions of personal storytelling in Taiwanese and European American families. Multilevel analysis of naturally occurring stories regarding 2- to 5-year olds revealed that Chinese families' stories were more likely to convey moral and social standards than were European American families' stories. European Americans…

Examined performance on ventromedial prefrontal tasks of preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), preschoolers with developmental delays, and typically- developing 12- to 46-month-olds, matched on mental age. Found that children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks. Ventromedial, but not…

Examined the association of neighborhood characteristics on competencies of Canadian preschoolers. Found that verbal ability positively related to residing in neighborhoods with affluent residents and negatively to residing in neighborhoods with poor residents and in neighborhoods with low cohesion, even after controlling for family SES. Behavior…

Examines personal relevance in relation to the ability of 48 5- to 10-year-old children to describe others in terms of psychological characteristics. Results suggest that verbal inferencing skills of young children have been underestimated and that they may be more oriented toward affective goals than older children when anticipating interaction…

Examined whether children's schemata for occupations they observe in real life differ from schemata for occupations portrayed on television. Found that children do form separate schemata for television and real life. Compared to subjects' schemata of real life occupations, those for television versions entailed more glamour, higher income, more…

Examined whether children differentiate or confuse the domains of folk biology and folk psychology. Children and adult subjects were asked whether the animals depicted in pictures possessed certain biological and psychological properties. Results indicated that by kindergarten, notions of folk psychology and folk biology are sufficiently…

Six experiments assessed young children's spatial orientation relative to their imagined surroundings. The experiments found that children as young as 3.5 years were able, like adults, to accurately walk along a path that replicated the route between their seat and the teacher's desk in their preschool classroom. (MDM)

Children of the Baka, a preliterate society of Pygmies in southeast Cameroon, were tested for their conception of mind. Several studies conducted in other countries were reviewed. Results provide support for the claim that belief-desire reasoning is universally acquired in childhood. (GLR)