When presented with a claim that contradicts their intuitions, do children seize opportunities to empirically verify such claims or do they simply acquiesce to what they have been told? To answer this question, we conducted a replication of Ronfard et al. (conducted in the People's Republic of China) in two countries with distinct religious and…

In a paradigm of simulated stranger distress designed to elicit empathic arousal, this study examined multiple elements of responding in 61 preschoolers. Disengagement from stranger distress was underscored in addition to prosocial responding. All children encountered a female adult stranger feigning stomach ache followed by an infant manikin…

Reports on five experiments regarding the ability of children ranging from four to seven years of age to decide when they did not have enough information to select an unfamiliar named picture. Concludes that avoidance of the undecidable was the result of the children's difficulty in understanding undecidability. (GH)

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 the consequences of peer conflict on performance of a preference task and on relationships of 36 children of 8-11 years. Children evaluated their preferences more negatively after disagreeing with a friend than after disagreeing with a nonfriend, and were more likely to change, often to a more mature way of thinking. (RJC)

Investigates the relationship between class inclusion and reasoning in 56 Dutch Children between 6 and 14 years of age. Concludes that when the children failed to respond correctly to questions about the validity of syllogisms, they did so because they lacked sufficient understanding of the premises. (HOD)

Three studies explored children's adoption of cultural forms of representation. Investigated were (1) children's judgments from students' drawings about the age of the artist; (2) children's preferences for drawings and the extent preferences match teachers'; and (3) differences between drawings children produce for themselves and those they…

Examined the relationship between 7-, 9-, and 11-year old children's performance on a battery of selected Piagetian measures and on a proportional reasoning task. Found a strong relationship between stage level and (1) the complexity of hypotheses used, (2) the use of the proportional hypothesis, and (3) the overall use of logical hypotheses. (HOD)

Four studies revealed that (1) children judged a wrongdoer in a story to feel happy; (2) the incidence of happy judgments did not decline with age; (3) the presence of their teacher had an effect on children's judgments; and (4) some children judged the wrongdoer to feel sad rather than scared. (BB)