Three experiments explored change toward more flexible reliance on combinations of spatial and nonspatial landmark information to reorient oneself. Identified 5-7 years as age for this developmental change. Results suggest that language production skills play a causal role in allowing humans to construct novel representations rapidly, which can…

A study of 300 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 6 found that background music improved visual discrimination task performance at the youngest and middle ages and had no effect on the oldest participants. On a square identification task, background music had no influence on easy and difficult tasks but lowered performance on…

Focuses on the familiar problem of students' understanding of elementary electrical circuits from a much neglected point of view. Suggests that the patterning commonly found in students' ideas might have its roots in the cognitive processing with which students operate their mental models of d.c. electrical circuits. Studies Japanese 10-11 year…

This study examined effects of individual differences in speak-span scores and variations in memory demands on class-inclusion performance of 10-, 13-, and 15-year-olds. Results from regression analyses and the mathematical model indicated that differences in age, speak span, and memory load affected performance. Effects of speak span and memory…

Suggests an account of transitivity and transitive inferential reasoning differing from classic Piagetian and current information processing accounts. Postulates a three-component psychological system, with components relying on perceptual, linguistic, and conceptual subprocesses and sensitivity to simple cues. Maintains that the framework is…

Background: Specific language impairment (SLI) is currently partly defined by the presence of non-verbal IQ scores in the normal range. However, not only is there a debate concerning where "normal thresholds" should be, but increasing information about the presence of processing deficits in SLI have led some researchers to question the use of IQ…

The Kuhn and Pease (p. 279, this issue) article advances the fields of cognitive development and learning by integrating work on executive functions, metacognition, and scientific reasoning. The article also expands developmental work to older children and adults, to personal beliefs, and to social information, and reinvigorates the construct of…

Crossing high bridges offers the opportunity to ponder views from a distance: to see connections between places at the ground level or ideas that are familiar, and to capture an overview of places or ideas that are yet to be explored. The purpose of this essay is to explore the figural bridges that connect the arts with cognitive development and…

A three-phase investigation of memory and metacognitive development was conducted to learn how teachers structure children's study activities to develop memory and metacognitive skills. In the first study, observations of 69 teachers of kindergarten through sixth grade classes showed a peak in strategy suggestions at the second and third grades.…

The hypothesis that variation in accessibility of categorical knowledge affects its use as an organizational device was tested in this experiment using 36 second graders and 36 fifth graders from a middle-class community within San Diego, California. The students memorized each of two lists of words that differed in category representativeness.…

Responding to recent advances in developmental and cognitive science research on knowledge acquisition, this report presents a theoretical framework for analyzing cognitive development as a process of learning. The first section summarizes three developmental characteristics recognized in both the Piagetian and the quantita experimental tradition:…

In order to study children's strategies for solving geometric matrices similar to those in the Raven's Progressive Matrices, ninety 7-, 10-, and 13-year-old boys and girls were administered tests of auditory and visual memory, the Raven's, and geometric matrices. The matrices varied in number of elements (1 to 3) and number of transformations (0…

Explanations for memory development have tended to focus on acquistion of general strategies and metaknowledge. Recently, emphasis has been given to the knowledge base as a whole, including general world-knowledge and domain-specific knowledge and procedures. Evidence is presented from the memory development literature showing why strategies and…

This study manipulated the relations between target and cue words in two cued-recall experiments with children based on the assumptions that: (1) the target cue relations that are most consistent with a child's semantic memory organization result in the highest levels of recall, and that (2) the optimal target-cue relationships may change with…

This paper describes two studies which investigated the development in elementary school children of the ability to derive inferences about the subjective states (physiological and psychological) of others. A cued recall procedure was utilized to assess the relative effectiveness of implicitly or explicitly stated emotional states as cues for…