The present study investigates developmental patterns of fear in adolescence. It is based on longitudinal data collected as a part of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ELSPAC) project. A total of 186 Czech adolescents (43% girls) were assessed repeatedly at the age of 11, 13, and 15 years. The free-response method was…

This study investigated the noun definitions given by Cantonese speakers at different ages. Definitional responses on six concrete nouns from 1075 children aged 4;10 to 12;01 and 15 adults were analyzed with reference to the semantic content and the syntactic form. Results showed that conventional definitions produced by Cantonese adult speakers…

This study examined changes in the administrative prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in Utah children from 2002 to 2008 by record source (school and health), age (four, six, and eight), and special education classification. Prevalence increased 100% with 1 in 77 children aged eight identified with ASD by 2008. Across study years and age…

Computational models are tools for testing mechanistic theories of learning and development. Formal models allow us to instantiate theories of cognitive development in computer simulations. Model behavior can then be compared to real performance. Connectionist models, loosely based on neural information processing, have been successful in…

The study provides evidence concerning elementary school children's ability to conduct a scientific investigation. Two hundred and fifty sixth-grade students and 248 fourth-grade students were administered a test, and based on their performance, they were classified into high-ability and low-ability students. The sample of this study was…

Three alternative mechanisms for age-related decline in memory search have been proposed, which result from either reduced processing speed (global slowing hypothesis), overpersistence on categories (cluster-switching hypothesis), or the inability to maintain focus on local cues related to a decline in working memory (cue-maintenance hypothesis).…

The development of civically engaged citizens is vital for democratic societies. Although several studies have explored children and adolescents' conceptualizations of civic engagement, less is known about youths' understanding of the individual skills and attributes best suited for civic action. The current study utilized a Q-sort methodology to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine prevalence and predictors of persistent speech sound disorder (SSD) in children aged 8 years after disregarding children presenting solely with common clinical distortions (i.e., residual errors). Method: Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (Boyd et al., 2012) were used.…

Explicit instruction in strategies for interlanguage pragmatic learning is fundamental to the development of a comprehensive set of pragmatic abilities in the target language. In this article, we begin by providing an overview of previous work in the area of language learner strategies directed at the teaching and learning of pragmatics. We then…

From an integrative approach, this work focuses on the role of conceptual mechanisms, such as comparison and conceptual-based inference, and sociopragmatic support in young children's taxonomic categorization. "Experiment 1" assessed whether 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children succeed in detecting taxonomic relations on their own. A…

The Double Deficit Hypothesis of dyslexia is one approach to classifying students with reading disabilities. The theory offers four distinct groups of readers: (a) average readers, (b) students with phonological deficits, (c) students with naming speed deficits, and (d) students with double deficits: those having both (b) and (c). This study…

Purpose: Preschool children often have difficulties in word classification, despite good speech perception and production. Some researchers suggest that they represent words using phonetic features rather than phonemes. In this study, the authors examined whether there is a progression from feature-based to phoneme-based processing across age…

This paper investigates whether an abstract linguistic construction shows the kind of prototype effects characteristic of non-linguistic categories, in both adults and young children. Adapting the prototype-plus-distortion methodology of Franks and Bransford (1971), we found that whereas adults were lured toward false-positive recognition of…

Older adults perform much like younger adults on language. This similar level of performance, however, may come about through different underlying brain processes. In the present study, we evaluated age-related differences in the brain areas outside the typical language areas among adults using a category decision task. Our results showed that…

This study examined the ability of children to classify fruit and flower odors. We asked four groups of children (4-11 years of age) and a group of adults to identify, categorize, and evaluate the edibility, liking, and typicality of 12 fruit and flower odors. Results showed an increase in interindividual agreement with age for the taxonomic…