Over a five-year period, we made a persistent observation: Course structures and routines, such as assignment parameters, student group process rules, and grading schemes were being consistently ignored. As a result, we got distracted by correcting these structural issues and were spending less time on student assignment performance. In this…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

This study provides the first direct evidence of cognitive continuity for multiple specific information processing abilities from infancy and toddlerhood to pre-adolescence, and provides support for the view that infant abilities form the basis of later childhood abilities. Data from a large sample of children (N = 131) were obtained at five…

Investigates performance of 8, 10, 12 year olds and adults on cognitive tasks in terms of several processing-speed measures, each of which may change independently with age. Results underscore the complexity of developmental change in processing efficiency. (Author/RH)

This study investigated the relationship of 3-year olds' reliance on desire when predicting behavior and their performance on false-belief tasks. Results suggested that young children may use the desires of the agent, rather than their own desires, to predict behavior in standard false-belief paradigms. Older preschoolers also have difficulty…

Two experiments were conducted to determine the effect of aging on encoding and response selection stages of a choice reaction time task. Results suggested reducing stimulus discriminability may affect information processing prior to the encoding stage, but the encoding stage is the primary locus of the slowing which accompanied aging. (Author)

Examined changes from age 7 to 82 years in processes responsible for preparation and interference control underlying alternation between two tasks. Found a U-shaped function for switch costs, with larger costs for young children and older adults. Age-related variance in task-switching performance was partially independent from age-related variance…

Results confirmed that children differentially use knowledge of results and suggested that any description of motor skill acquisition must account for the complex interaction between developmental level and the difficulty of the task at hand. (Author/DB)

A study of simple reaction time (SRT) and choice reaction time (CRT) in 71 Chicano adolescents suggests that Hick's model is appropriate for studying cognitive information processing in Chicanos. No age or sex differences were found for SRT or CRT, although there were some differences in SRT by family income level. (KS)

A total of 100 third and ninth grade students participated in a study to determine how children of different ages perceptually segment a continuing behavior sequence presented on a television program. The children were shown a short segment from a motion picture on a videotape viewer. Following the viewing, the children completed unitizing…

This paper presents a theory of human information processing. Information processing refers to the perception, encoding, recoding, storage, retrieval and manipulation of information by the brain. This theoretical model takes a developmental perspective in explaining human performance on tasks that require thinking, reasoning and remembering.…

First, third and fifth graders performed semantic acoustic and orthographic orienting activities to different words in a list. Their free recall of the words was tested after the orienting activity. The semantic task yielded better results than the other two which did not differ. (Author/MS)

This paper presents a developmental study of the problem solving strategies of reflective and impulsive children. Subjects for the study were 30 nine-year-olds, 39 eleven-year-olds, and 23 thirteen-year-olds who had been classified as reflective or impulsive at ages 7, 9, and 11 and who had been followed longitudinally over a three year period.…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of modeling or training with and without rule provision on the employment of strategies in solving four-dimensional, discrimination-learning problems. Subjects were 144 second and sixth-grade children from the New York City Public Schools. The blank-trial hypothesis testing paradigm was used. The…