Old and young adults participated in two experiments involving a standardized, hierarchically organized event. In interviews that assessed memory of the event, older subjects reported fewer event actions than did the young. Memory of old and young was influenced similarly by the hierarchical structure of the event. (RH)

Examined whether age-related change in naming time reflects automatic access of familiar names because of greater familiarity with the named objects or global change in speed of processing. The path analyses and structural-equation modeling of 8- to 13-year olds were consistent with the second explanation. Time and age were linked to reading…

Explored developmental patterns of gender traditionality and flexibility in 479 children and adolescents. Found that age was positively associated with self-flexibility (a composite of gender-related preferences and self-ratings) and tolerance for others engaged in gender-atraditional behavior. Most variables assessed contributed significantly and…

Maternal treatment of sibling pairs with affectively ill and well mothers was examined in relation to child psychiatric status across childhood and early adolescence. Found that older siblings' symptoms were predicted by maternal bipolar or unipolar illness, whereas younger siblings' symptoms were predicted by lower maternal engagement and higher…

Two experiments examined the relationship between developmental improvement in performance on tasks requiring acquisition of spatial knowledge and age-sensitive cognitive abilities. Found that age differences in landmark knowledge were mediated primarily by recognition-in-context memory and that age differences in route knowledge were mediated…

Two experiments examined the effects of interference on young children's long-term memory using paired-association recall and free recall. The results indicated that children were susceptible to interference, the locus of interference effects was at storage, and that both younger (preschool) and older (kindergarten) children experienced similar…

Over one year, mothers observed the responses of their one-year-old children to distresses the children caused and witnessed in others. Children's prosocial behaviors, and reparative behaviors after they had caused distress, increased in frequency over the year. These behaviors were accompanied by changes in self-recognition. (BC)

In three amplitude discrimination experiments involving a backward masking task, children's rate of perceptual processing was compared to that of adults. Developmental differences in discrimination were compensated for by increases in the psychophysical difference between test tones. No developmental differences in rate of perceptual processing…

In two experiments, children and adults were exposed to four different information-processing tasks to measure speed and variability of performance across different age groups. It was found that 10- and 11-year-olds were about 1.7 and 1.6 times slower than 19-year-olds, differences that were not affected by allowing both groups practice on the…

This study tested the predictions of Fischer's skill theory for Kitchener and King's reflective judgment model. A total of 156 14- to 28-year-old students were tested, utilizing the Reflective Judgement Interview (RJI) and Prototypic Reflective Judgement Interview (PRJI). Subjects scored higher on the PRJI than they did on the RJI. There was a…

In individual interviews, 80 children ages 4-8 predicted which of 5 emotions they would feel, and how intensely, to 15 affect-laden situations. Results indicated that responses involve three dimensions of emotion cognition (intensity, multiplicity, and valence) that emerge in four developmental stages. By age eight, children can predict multiple…

Examined the effects of age and experience on visual-cognitive performance using a domain-relevant visual search task and a standard letter search task with skilled and control subjects at two age levels. Although young and middle-aged skilled subjects performed equally well on the domain-relevant task, skilled subjects showed an age deficit in…

Preschoolers' appraisals of others' emotions were compared with adults' appraisals. The accuracy of children's appraisals varied with age and with type and intensity of emotion. Children's appraisals were biased toward attribution of causes to external factors. Attributions to internal factors varied with age, emotion, and type of internal factor.…

Fifth through ninth graders reported their daily emotional states, and they and their parents reported on the students' life events. Older students experienced more negative events than younger students. The experience of multiple negative events had a stronger association with negative affect for older students than for younger students. (BC)

During a seven-year period, cognitive training by means of a pretest-posttest was used in a study of old adults' problem solving in regards to figural relations. Results showed significant training effects at each phase, with the largest gains occurring at the first phase. The performance of old adults after the last phase was significantly above…