Assessed semantic priming for category coordinates and function-related words in children with good or poor reading comprehension, matched for decoding skill. Found that both groups showed priming for function-related words, but poor comprehenders showed priming for category coordinates only if the pairs shared high-association strength. Good…

Observed 12-month olds, with their mothers and independently, acting on objects from home and objects brought by the experimenter as new exemplars of previous toys. Found that conventional actions were more frequent in joint than in independent activity. In independent activity, conventional actions were more frequent with customary than with…

Examined preschoolers' judgments regarding affect experienced by four participants in three social events. Found that preschoolers expected actors across all events to feel happy and recipient-observers in moral and conventional, not personal, events to feel unhappy; teachers witnessing the acts to feel happy in personal, not moral and…

Presented five- and eight-month olds with silent moving and static video images of self, peer, and doll, and sounds of self and nonsocial objects. Found that recognition of one's image develops through experience with dynamic facial stimulation during first eight months. By five months, infants treat their faces and voices as familiar and social…

Used a popular children's picture book to explore preschool children's understanding of false beliefs. Found that, irrespective of age, children had a greater probability of demonstrating their understanding of false belief during the narrative task than during a traditional false belief task. (Author/KB)

Tested whether 2- to 4-year olds could reason with incongruent syllogisms when encouraged to use their imagination. Randomly assigned 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds to one of four conditions (no cue, word cue, fantasy planet, or imagery) and presented syllogistic reasoning problems with incongruent information. Found that in imagination conditions, 2-…

Speeded performance on simple mental addition problems of 6- and 7-year-olds with and without mild mental retardation was modeled from a person perspective and an item perspective, both inferred from Siegler's work. Models from item response theory were used to test hypotheses. Found that all children follow same developmental path in acquiring…

Two experiments investigated whether preverbal infants distinguish between humans and mammals. Study 1 found that 7-, 9-, and 11-month-olds distinguished humans from mammals in an object-examination task. Study 2 found that 7-month-olds but not 5-month-olds showed evidence for category discrimination with the 2-dimensional color photos of toy…

Calm or crying 9- and 12-week-olds sat facing a researcher who gazed into their eyes or at their forehead and delivered either a sucrose solution or pacifier or delivered nothing. Found that combining sweet taste and eye contact was necessary and sufficient for calm 9- and 12-week-olds to form a preference for the researcher, but not for crying…

The use of assisted reproductive technology is increasing rapidly. Research, although sparse, has resulted in inconsistent findings as to the developmental prognosis for infants conceived by assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization and the use of fertility drugs. In the present study, the authors compared twins who were…

Most moral psychologists have come to accept two types of moral reasoning: Kohlberg's "justice" and Gilligan's "care", but there still seem to be some unresolved issues. By analysing and comparing Kohlberg's statement on some theoretical issues with some of Gilligan's statements in an interview in April 2003, I will look at some key issues in the…

We introduce the thematic collection by noting some striking similarities in the cognitive abilities of human infants and nonhuman primates. What are the implications of these similarities for our comprehension of human infant cognition? After providing a brief historical and conceptual background on comparative behavioral research, we discuss how…

Research on children's understanding of emotion has rarely focused on children from nonindustrialised countries, who may develop an understanding at different ages as compared to children reared in industrialised countries. Quechua children from an agro-pastoralist village were given an adapted version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to…

An exploratory study of structured and unstructured play was conducted with a small number of severely disturbed and normal children 9 to 13 years of age. Specifically, the investigators characterized psychopathology from a cognitive-developmental perspective by focusing on the Piagetian "scheme" and its manifestation in the play and…

The effects of two training sequences on the development of young children's logical operations and number concepts, including rational counting strategies, were investigated. Forty-five preschool children, aged 3.11 to 4.10, were randomly assigned to two treatment groups and one control group. Subjects in the treatment groups received training…