Uses the balance scale task to assess the development of compensation across versions of the task. Shows that fully reversible thinking may not be typical even in college students; many subjects used the compensation operation inconsistently. Preschoolers tended to use the given information in a way that was opposite to that required for correct…

Hindsight bias is the phenomenon that after people are presented with the correct answer to a question, their judgment regarding their own past answer to this question is biased toward the correct answer. In three experiments, younger and older adults gave numerical responses to general-knowledge questions and later attempted to recall their…

Assessed use of certain rules for judging intentionality of action-outcomes by children of 3, 7, and 11 years. Intentionality judgments based on matching rather than objective rules were observed more frequently. It was concluded that matching rule emerges first in development and is more essential than various objective rules. (Author/DST)

Examines the ability of 140 children of 3-5 years to use functional standards to judge size. The ability to use nonegocentric functional standards was present by age 3. However, 3-year-olds performed above chance only when their attention was directed to the relevant function. (RJC)

Three experiments investigated children's understanding of inference as a knowledge source. Most 4- to 6-year-olds did not rate a puppet as more certain of a toy's color after the puppet looked at the toy or inferred its color than they did after the puppet guessed the color. Most 8- and 9-year-olds distinguished inference and looking from…

Tested the hypothesis that in predicting future behavior of an actor, older children rely on trait inferences, whereas younger children rely on global, evaluative inferences. Found that 9- and 10-year-olds' behavioral predictions were mediated solely by trait ratings, whereas 5- and 6-year-olds' predictions were mediated by evaluative ratings. The…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children,…

Intellectual heresy on the part of university students is a normal and desirable phenomenon, for it will mellow into a hopefully sensitive "hyprocricy" as the students age, and be replaced in its turn by a new, inquisitive, and innovative heresy of succeeding college generations. (MB)

Explores the development of drawing abilities in 185 children of 5-10 years and 27 adults. Even the youngest children were able to judge the correct age sequence of drawings at above chance levels. However, their rankings were more erroneous than those of older children and of adults. (RJC)

Examined preschool children's conceptions of moral and conventional rules. Children judged the seriousness, rule contingency, rule relativism, and amount of deserved punishment for 10 depicted moral and conventional preschool transgressions. Constant across ages and sexes, children evaluated moral transgressions as more serious offenses and more…

The relationship between higher order reasoning and sex bias was investigated among children 7, 9 and 11 years old. Children read arguments enhancing their own or other gender, then rated argument intelligence, judged other children based on observations, and justified their arguments. Findings showed that own-gender reasoning biases declined with…

Examined second-, third-, fifth-, and sixth-graders' evaluations of parent-child inductive discipline situations. Found that for physical transgressions, victim-oriented induction was evaluated as more appropriate and fair than parent-oriented induction. Younger children evaluated parent-oriented induction as more appropriate than older children.…

Investigated 4-, 8-, and 11-year-olds' ability to categorize intentionally false and true statements as lies and truths. Found that older children were more likely to categorize false statements as lies and true statements as truths than were 4-year-olds. Antisocial lies were rated as most serious, and "white lies" as least serious.…

Two experiments examined the determinants of children's belief or disbelief of statements made to them by other children. In both, the personal characteristics of the child transmitting the message were varied against message type and age of child receiving the message; transmitter characteristics were relative age and social dominance. (RH)