A sharp improvement in children's understanding of the role of visual perception and linguistic communication in knowledge functions was found between the ages of three and five years. (PCB)

In three experiments, children five- to 10-years-old were assessed on their comprehension of simple and compound comparatives using a picture-question answering task. Ability to use appropriate reference points increased with age on both the simple and compound comparative relations. (PCB)

Tested the hypothesis that preschool children between 2 1/2 and 6 1/2 years of age would progress though a stepwise sequence of developing ever-clearer boundaries between fantasy and reality. Findings supported the validity of the hypothesized sequence. (RH)

The goal of this study was to determine some of the factors that contribute to developmental differences children and adults display when they use cues to retrieve specific memories. (PCB)

Results suggest that when memory strategies are used by young children, the mental effort expended on implementing the mnemonic reduces the amount of mental capacity available for other activities, resulting in only modest gains in memory performance. (PCB)

Learning-disabled and average learners (N=52) in grades 2, 4, and 6 were asked to tell the meanings of 12 proverbs. Only at the sixth grade level was a moderately significant difference in metaphoric comprehension found. (Author/DB)

Assessed the ability of young (N=30) and middle-aged adults (N=34) to solve series problems with problems connected by either marked or unmarked adjectives. Results showed no difference between age groups on the memory measure, but scores on both integration and inference measures were significantly lower for the middle-aged group. (Author/ABL)

Results indicated that the more frequently the children studied expressed emotion, the older the age of language achievements; and the more time spent in neutral affect, the younger the age of language achievements. (PCB)

Employing the multidimensional scaling of similarities data, studied person perception in five adult-aged groups of both male and female respondents. Identified three basic attributes: perceived age, perceived gender, and perceived autonomy. Discerned several generalizable trends for the attributes of perceived age and perceived autonomy.…

Strategies for gathering narratives from children are described. Two analysis approaches (narrative level and story grammar) are recommended for discriminating between the narratives of normal and handicapped students at various ages. (Author/DB)

Examined effects of enforced organizational strategies on the memory of older adults for textual material. Young and old adults sorted scrambled sentences of a prose passage into the correct order. When older adults were required to make an in-depth analysis to sort material, their incidental memory for textual information was approximately equal…

Production and judgment tasks were used to investigate five- through eight-year-old children's metalinguistic awareness of pragmatic rules concerning direct and indirect requests for action and information. Results showed several effects for age of child and for type of request. (Author/RH)

Examined five possible rules that children might use to interpret the terms "big" and "little." Increasing consistency in rule usage appeared to be the most significant developmental progression for children between the ages of three and five with respect to these terms. (Author/RH)

Examined the nature of the questions elementary aged children (N=81) asked about a classmate with disabilities. Results indicated that older children asked more questions, however, all children asked disability related questions. Younger children were more concrete, whereas older children were more abstract. Prompts yielded greater numbers of…

Examined the internal consistency and construct validity of an expanded version of the Inventory of Psychosocial Development (E-IPD), which included the generativity and ego integrity scales creatd by Boylin et al. Total E-IPD scores from 79 adults were found to have high internal consistency, but many individual stage scales did not. (Author)