Describes an ethnographic study of African American toddlers and families that focused on children's productive competence in naturally occurring narrativelike conversation. Examines emergence of narrative competence; posits definition incorporating minimal requirements for child participation within the fundamental essence of narrative structure.…

Two studies examined the acquisition of automatic processing in a total of 22 persons with and 34 persons without mental retardation. An effect of search set size was found for both groups which disappeared with practice. Evidence of automaticity occurred with less practice for subjects without mental retardation. (Author/DB)

Compares and contrasts working memory theory of Baddeley and theory of constructive operators of Pascual- Leone. Concludes that although the theory of constructive operators is complementary with working memory theory (explains developmental and individual differences that working memory theory cannot), the converse is not true; theory of…

Presents two reasons for abandoning the false belief task as a methodology for theory of mind: (1) passing the false belief task requires ability other than theory of mind; and (2) theory of mind need not entail the ability to reason about false beliefs. Concludes with an alternative conception of the role of the false belief task. (Author)

Three studies examined whether preschoolers' difficulties with deception and false belief arise from lack of inhibitory control rather than conceptual deficit. Found that 3-year olds deceived frequently under conditions requiring relatively low inhibitory control, but not high inhibitory control. Findings were not due to social intimidation, and…

It has become increasingly common for theories to rely on a constraint that 1 object cannot be in more than 1 place at the same time. Analysis suggests that a 1 object--1 place--1 time constraint as literally stated is false, that a modified constraint is biased toward the visual modality, that it may not be a correct description of the physical…

Infants first generalize across contexts and cues at 3 months of age in operant tasks but not until 12 months of age in imitation tasks. Three experiments using an imitation task examined whether infants younger than 12 months of age might generalize imitation if conditions were more like those in operant studies. Infants sat on a distinctive mat…

The present paper underscores the importance of the cognitive orientation of EFL students in their success in writing courses. A few suggestions are made as to how EFL teachers can put their students on the right cognitive path in their writings.

Bilinguals must have a mechanism for controlling attention to their two language systems in order to achieve fluent performance in each language without intrusions from the other. This paper examines the evidence that the experience of controlling attention to two languages boosts the development of executive control processes in childhood for…

A major problem for developmental science is understanding how the cognitive and emotional networks important in carrying out mental processes can be related to individual differences. The last five years have seen major advances in establishing links between alleles of specific genes and the neural networks underlying aspects of attention. These…

This paper aims to compare cognitive development in humans and chimpanzees to illuminate the evolutionary origins of human cognition. Comparison of morphological data and life history strongly highlights the common features of all primate species, including humans. The human mother-infant relationship is characterized by the physical separation of…

Weak Central Coherence (Frith, 1989) predicts that, in autism, perceptual processing is relatively unaffected by conceptual analysis. Enhanced Perceptual Functioning (Mottron & Burack, 2001) predicts that the perceptual processing of those with autism is less influenced by conceptual analysis only when higher-level processing is detrimental to…

This study tests the firm distinction children are said to make between living and nonliving kinds. Three, 4-, and 5-year-old children and adults reasoned about whether items that varied on 3 dimensions (alive, face, behavior) had a range of properties (biological, psychological, perceptual, artifact, novel, proper names). Findings demonstrate…

Although "hindsight bias" (the "I knew it all along" phenomenon) has been documented in adults, its development has not been investigated. This is despite the fact that hindsight bias errors closely resemble the errors children make on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Two main goals of the present work were to (a) create a battery of hindsight tasks…

This study suggests a fifth Piagetian stage and offers empirical evidence in its support. Piaget's traditional fourth stage (formal operations) is operationally defined as the problem-solving stage and the suggested fifth stage as the problem-finding stage. The commonly accepted criteria for a stage model are applied. (JMB)