Background: Trials in developing countries suggest that improving young children's diet may benefit cognitive development. Whether dietary composition influences young children's cognition in developed countries is unclear. Although many studies have examined the relation between type of milk received in infancy and subsequent cognition, there has…

This article also serves as a rejoinder to TM 502 436, focusing mainly on Kagan's second and third themes: continuity between stages of development and resilience of human cognitive growth. (DEP)

Consistent age changes suggest 2 overlapping developmental dimensions: (1) The ability to deal with visible versus invisible displacements, and (2) with nonsequential versus sequential displacements. Other findings are included. (MH)

Suggests that, with the waning influence of Piaget and shortcomings of information-processing perspectives of cognitive growth, cognitive developmentalists lack a metatheory to guide their research. Posits developmental biology as metatheory for cognitive development. Introduces basic principles of evolutionary psychology, and examples of…

Deals with the changes in imagination that take place from childhood to adulthood. (CB)

Historically, developmental psychology has been split into the areas of social development and cognitive development, with the cognitive area most recently dominating the field. Nevertheless, basic questions about development often require more integrative approaches, cutting across social and cognitive areas, while taking advantage of recent…

This article introduces the special section on child and adolescent mental health research in the context of Hurricane Katrina. We outline the purpose and intent of the special section and present an integrative perspective based on broad contextual theories of human development with which to think about the impact of disasters like Katrina. The…

Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, 183 five- to eight-year-old children were surveyed about their own intrusive thoughts and tested on their level of cognitive functioning (knowledge about the mind and the mind's operations). Basic developmental research suggests that children who lack sufficient knowledge about the mind should have…

Imitation of people on educational television is a potential way for very young children to learn new skills. Although toddlers in previous studies exhibited a "video deficit" in learning, 24-month-olds in Study 1 successfully reproduced behaviors modeled by a person who was on video as well as they did those modeled by a person who was present in…

The authors show how teachers can use nature explorations as a personal guide in implementing early learning standards. They describe five outdoor experiences of children in age groups ranging from 20 months to 5 years. A chart specifies which of the Nebraska state learning guidelines and Creative Curriculum goals the experiences meet, across the…

Parents and policymakers are turning to preschools to better advance the school readiness and broader development of young children. Much remains unknown, including how preschool programs of varying quality affect diverse groups of children. This is particularly important as several California counties embark on ambitious and costly efforts to…

Across two studies, a wide age range of participants was interviewed about the nature of death. All participants were living in rural Madagascar in a community where ancestral beliefs and practices are widespread. In Study 1, children (8-17 years) and adults (19-71 years) were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. The…

Behavioral, neuropsychological, and brain imaging research points to a dedicated system for processing number that is shared across development and across species. This foundational Approximate Number System (ANS) operates over multiple modalities, forming representations of the number of objects, sounds, or events in a scene. This system is…

Children's acquisition of developmental milestones is examined within the framework of a developmental-interactive system. Piaget's stages of cognitive development are reviewed and developmental aspects of language acquisition including inner language and expressive language are discussed. (JMB)

A former child "prodigy" recounts her experiences at school to suggest that intellectual achievement is not always due to extraordinary analytic reasoning ability and that precocity may be nonrationl. J. Stanley responds by citing others' work on the topic and suggesting the construct may not survive strong scrutiny. (CL)