Young children increasingly interact with technological devices, either as a form of entertainment or for educational purposes. This research sought to investigate the early symbolic understanding of an interactive, three-dimensional digital image presented on a tablet. Two studies were designed in which the children had to use the image as a…

Purpose: Accurate measurement of speech intelligibility is essential for children with speech production deficits, but wide variability exists in the measures and protocols used. The current study sought to examine relationships among measures of speech intelligibility and the capacity of different measures to capture change over time. Method:…

Executive control development typically has been conceptualized to result from quantitative changes in the efficiency of the underlying processes. In contrast, the present study addressed the possibility of qualitative change with age by examining how children and adults detect task switches. Participants in three age groups (5- and 10-year-old…

Crowding refers to impaired target recognition caused by surrounding contours. We investigated the development of crowding in central vision by comparing single-letter and crowding thresholds in groups of 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and adults. The task was to discriminate the orientation of a Sloan letter E. Single-letter thresholds,…

Looking away from an interlocutor's face during demanding cognitive activity can help adults and children answer challenging mental-arithmetic and verbal-reasoning questions (Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson, 1998; Phelps, Doherty-Sneddon, & Warnock, 2006). Whilst such "gaze aversion" (GA) is used far less by 5-year-old schoolchildren, its use…

Concerns the development of children's understanding of representational change and its relation to other cognitive developments. Two experiments involve day care children, aged three, four, and five years. Results suggest that children begin to consider alternative representations of the same object at about age four. (Author/RWB)

Explores the impact of cultural change on home patterns of communicative interaction between Inuit caregivers and their young children in two communities of northern Quebec, Canada. A longitudinal, ethnographic study of two children with young mothers and two adopted children with older mothers illustrates many changes in the Inuit culture and…