Computational models are powerful tools--too powerful, according to some. We argue that the idea that models can "do anything" is wrong, and we describe how their failures have been informative. We present new work showing surprising diversity in the effects of feedback on children's task-switching, such that some children perseverate despite this…

Children with autism exhibit a host of motor disorders including poor coordination, poor tool use and delayed learning of complex motor skills like riding a tricycle. Theory suggests that one of the crucial steps in motor learning is the ability to form internal models: to predict the sensory consequences of motor commands and learn from errors to…

Piagetian tasks have more to do with the child's ability to inhibit interference than they do with the ability to grasp their underlying logic. Here we used a chronometric paradigm with 11-year-olds, who succeed in Piaget's conservation-of-weight task, to test the role of cognitive inhibition in a priming version of this classical task. The…

Empirically describes the relative development of perceptual and conceptual understanding of left-right, back-front, up-down projective relationships between objects and provides a heuristic model of the cognitive processes involved in coordination of perspectives tasks. (Author/ED)

Examines the role of basic cognitive-processing efficiency as the source of developmental variance in cognitive performance. Two experimental tasks, memory and visual scanning, were used to investigate age effects on the search-processing parameter. Subjects were 9-, 11-, 13-, and 15-year-old children. (CM)

This theoretical paper reevaluates the Piagetian tradition in the study of propositional reasoning. Piaget's assertion that children's logic, prior to the stage of formal operations, is structurally adequate for dealing with objects and their properties, but is inadequate for fully competent propositional reasoning, is challenged on three grounds:…

Discusses hierarchical complexity of tasks as a way of conceptualizing information in terms of the power required to complete a task, and its implications for developmental psychology and information science. Provides an analytic solution to the definition of developmental stages and allows for the possibility within the science of scaling the…

The current status of conceptions of learning in children is reviewed and some areas of neglect are considered in this paper. The main premise is that although considerable strides have been made in the understanding of the learning process, essential developmental formulations of growth and change have been poorly articulated. It is suggested…