Describes a study designed to compare color-name with shape-name learning by three-year-old children in an experimentally controlled format. Results show that children learned color-label associates significantly more slowly than matched shape-label associates, and they committed more errors with colors than with shapes during learning. Provides a…

Reviews bases for contemporary discontinuity theories of mental development, presents findings that support alternative proposition of continuity and scrutinizes assessment methods from which these continuity results derive. Also offers several models that help explain the continuity findings, and argues that individual differences in mental…