We investigated children's (n = 120; 3- to 11-year-olds) and adults' (n = 18) reasoning about life-cycle changes in biological organisms by examining their endorsements of four different patterns of life- span changes. Participants were presented with two separate tasks: (a) judging possible adult versions of a juvenile animal and (b) judging…

Amphibians are one of the most threatened animal groups; however, attitudes and emotions toward them are mostly negative. One of the efforts, as a part of the cognitive dimension of nature protection, should be in the shifting of negative attitudes toward amphibians to positive ones. The purpose of this study was reevaluation of the Toad Attitude…

We assessed the eye-movements of 4-month-old infants (N = 38) as they visually inspected pairs of images of cats or dogs. In general, infants who had previous experience with pets exhibited more sophisticated inspection than did infants without pet experience, both directing more visual attention to the informative head regions of the animals,…

Autism is currently one of the most prominent and widely discussed human conditions. Its increased prevalence has intensified the demand for effective educational and therapeutic services, and intervention science is providing mounting evidence about practices that positively impact outcomes. The purpose of this report is to describe a set of…

We examined developmental changes in children's inductive inferences about biological concepts as a function of knowledge of properties and concepts. Specifically, 4- to 5-year-olds and 9- to 10-year-olds were taught either familiar or unfamiliar internal, external, or functional properties about known and unknown target animals. Children were…

Snakes are controversial animals emblazoned by legends, but also endangered as a result of human prejudice and fear. The author investigated gender and age-related differences in attitudes to and knowledge of snakes comparing samples of school children and pre-service teachers. It was found that although pre-service teachers had better knowledge…