Knowing the temporal direction of causal relations is critical for producing desired outcomes and explaining events. Existing evidence suggests that children start to grasp that causes must precede their effects (the temporal priority principle) by age 3; however, whether younger children also understand this has, to our knowledge, not previously…

Item recognition and temporal order memory follow different developmental trajectories during middle childhood, with item recognition performance stabilizing and temporal order memory performance continuing to improve. We investigated the potential unique role of individual executive functions on item recognition and temporal order memory during…

Normative adult age-related decrements are well documented for many diverse forms of effortful cognitive processing. However, it is currently unclear whether each of these decrements reflects a distinct and independent developmental phenomenon, or, in part, a more global phenomenon. A number of studies have recently been published that show…

As teachers of political theory, our goal is not merely to help students understand the abstract reasoning behind key ideas and texts of our discipline. We also wish to convey the historical contexts that informed these ideas and texts, including the political aims of their authors. But the traditional lecture-and-discussion approach tends to…

This article explores historical reasoning, an important activity in history learning. Based upon an extensive review of empirical literature on students' thinking and reasoning about history, a theoretical framework of historical reasoning is proposed. The framework consists of six components: asking historical questions, using sources,…

A sample of 144 children from nursery school, first, and third grades were given a series of problems in which they were required to judge which of 2 synchronous events was longer in duration and to rationalize their judgments. (Author/JMB)

Indicates that preschool-aged children can and do rely on temporal ordering as a cue in making a causal judgment about a simple, mechanical event. (Author/RH)

A study examining readers' ability to infer consequences backward and forward from events described in stories is described. Results show that backward consequence inferences are more reliably drawn during the course of reading than forward consequence inferences. (MSE)

According to construal level theory (N. Liberman, Y. Trope, & E. Stephan, in press; Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), people use a more abstract, high construal level when judging, perceiving, and predicting more psychologically distal targets, and they judge more abstract targets as being more psychologically distal. The present research…

The world is in a constant state of flux and as a consequence, definitions and perceptions of the word "intellectual" are subject to change. This paper undertakes a succinct historical review regarding this notion by considering two paradigms, which are called here the "Lake Paradigm" and the "Well Paradigm". It is argued that these two paradigms…

Sixty adolescents, stratified by sex and grade level (i.e., 9th, 12th, and college sophomore) participated in an examination of Piaget's suggestion that the formal operations are prerequisite to the development of political idealism, abstract thought and future time perspective in adolescence. Analysis of the cognition data revealed that the…

This paper reports two experimental studies of the development of time, speed and distance concepts in children. In Experiment I subjects (12 in each of four age groups: 5-, 8-, 11-year-olds, and adults) were asked to judge which of two electric trains on parallel tracks went faster, for the longer distance, or for more time. Subject's knowledge…

This study examines problems related to (1) the development of children's understanding of temporal cycles, and (2) the relationship between cyclic concepts and cognitive development. Piagetian tests of classification and seriation and a variety of specially designed cyclic tasks were administered to 62 children, ranging in age from 4 to 10 years.…