Young children are often called as witnesses to crimes they were victims of or observed. Because of their immaturity, child witnesses are sometimes more heavily scrutinized than adult witnesses before being allowed to testify in court, for example, through competency screening. This review discusses the psychology and US law relevant to decisions…

Compared to skilled adult readers, children typically make more fixations that are longer in duration, shorter saccades, and more regressions, thus reading more slowly (Blythe & Joseph, 2011). Recent attempts to understand the reasons for these differences have discovered some similarities (e.g., children and adults target their saccades…

In this paper we review current definitions and measurement approaches used to assess individual differences in children's temperament. We review the neural bases of temperamental reactivity and self-regulation and propose that these constructs provide a framework for examining individual differences and developmental change in emotion-cognition…

Fuzzy trace theory explains why children do not have to use rules of logic or premise information to infer transitive relationships. Instead, memory of the premises and performance on transitivity tasks is explained by a verbatim ability and a gist ability. Until recently, the processes involved in transitive reasoning and memory of the premises…

Reviews literature for strongest position with respect to sex differences in parent-child relationships, namely that both parents' sex and child's sex contribute to four distinct dyad relationships. Found many claims and assumptions about the distinctness of relationships but little empirical evidence. When dyadic distinctness was found, it often…

Discusses metacognitive and associative models of children's strategy discovery and use. Contends that models based on only one type of mechanism cannot entirely account for observed variability and constraint revealed by microgenetic studies of children's strategy change. Proposes a new model of children's strategy development in which…

Outlines a sociocultural perspective on the study of moral development grounded in Vygotskian theory, highlighting semiotic mediation of moral functioning via inner speech as inner moral dialog, the social origins of moral functioning, and sociocultural "situatedness" of moral development. Suggests that this perspective addresses…

Data from over 3400 individuals ranging from 5 to 93 years of age were analyzed to investigate the structural organization of cognitive variables, and to use that structure to examine relations between cognitive abilities and neuropsychological variables. The results indicated that the variables could be organized into the same cognitive ability…

Reviews development of rehearsal and organizational strategies based on cross-sectional and longitudinal research, focusing on the Munich Longitudinal Study. Found that longitudinal data reveal greater individual variability in strategy acquisition, suggesting that canonical development patterns inferred from cross-sectional studies obfuscate…

Reviews explanatory dimensions of children's false memory relevant to forensic practice: measurement, development, social factors, individual differences, varieties of memories and memory judgments, and varieties of procedures inducing false memories. Asserts that recent studies fail to use techniques that separate acquiescence from memory…

Draws on attachment theory as a theoretical framework for examining the association between stress and memory in children. Provides an overview of research on children's coping with and memory for stressful events. Emphasizes tenets of attachment theory with implications for children's reactions to and memory for distressing experiences. Reviews…

A framework is presented for analyzing discourse during parent-child interaction about moral matters, using speech genres and registers. This analysis considers social, cultural, and historical influences on moral development and locates the origins of moral sensibilities and differences in moral functioning in the discourse parents and children…

Argues that individual and group differences in priming performance scores are heavily influenced by overall speed and accuracy, and thus are a flawed reflection of internal activation of semantic priming. Suggests that meaningful comparison of groups on the activation underlying priming difference scores requires removing the effects of overall…