Support for the operation of internal factors in cognitive development was provided by an obtained increase from first to second posttest scores. Two conservations were considered to be involved--conservation of the whole and of the part. (Author)

Two experiments examined 4- to 5-year-olds' acquisition of family-resemblance categories for fictitious animals. Results showed that children who performed theory-guided learning were more successful at making feature/category associations than children who performed similarity-guided learning and categorized attributes significantly better than…

The paper reviews research which presents evidence that learning disabled (LD) children, like other groups that show performance deficiencies, do not spontaneously employ appropriate goal directed task strategies in many situations. (Author/PHR)

A sequential training procedure combining operant and cumulative learning hierarchy principles was found effective in reducing the decrement in concept identification performance typically observed in older adults. (JMB)

Four studies examined the influence of essentialist information such as internal properties and perceptual similarity on 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds' interpretations of labels. Results suggested that children have essentialist beliefs about animals, but not about artifacts, and that these beliefs interact with children's assumptions about word meaning…

Three experiments examined the relative importance of original function and current function in artifact categorization for young children and adults. It was concluded that 6-year-olds have begun to organize their understanding of artifacts around the notion of original function, whereas 4-year-olds have not. Data were examined in terms of how…

There is a change in false belief task performance across the 3-5 year age range, as confirmed in a recent meta-analysis [Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory mind development: The truth about false-belief. "Child Development," 72, 655-684]. This meta-analysis identified several performance factors influencing…

Results of these experiments indicate that the ability to deal with positive and negative instances is not only contingent upon developmental level, but also upon the dimensional characteristics of the stimuli. (Author)

Trained 3-, 5-, and 8-year-olds in temporal bisection task, with nonstandard comparison stimuli spaced linearly between short or long standard visual stimuli. Statistical analyses and results from different theoretical models of the data all suggested that temporal sensitivity was higher in the 8-year-olds than in younger groups, even when the…

Four studies examined whether 16-month-olds' responses to true/false utterances interacted with their knowledge of human agents. Findings suggested that infants are developing a critical conception of human speakers as truthful communicators and that infants understand that human speakers may provide uniquely useful information when a word fails…

Attempts to determine the age at which the concept of middleness," or intermediately positioned object, emerges and is functional. (MB)

Clarifies features of Smith et al.'s attentional learning account of object naming, arguing that Booth and Waxman's findings address tenets not in the attentional learning account while not addressing one of the central tenets of the attentional learning account. Suggests that the debate about the nature of children's language and cognition would…

Responds to Smith et al.'s work on relations between perceptual, conceptual, and linguistic knowledge in early word learning and discusses treatment of evidence. Asserts that Smith et al.'s commentary fails to engage data presented and their implications. Asserts that learners seamlessly integrate perceptual, linguistic, and conceptual information…