The foundations of brain architecture are established early in life through a continuous series of dynamic interactions in which environmental conditions and personal experiences have a significant impact on how genetic predispositions are expressed. Because specific experiences affect specific brain circuits during specific developmental…

"Science Briefs" summarize the findings and implications of a recent study in basic science or clinical research. This Brief reports on the study "Perinatal Exposure to a Noncoplanar Bichlorinated Biphenol Alters Tonotopy, Receptive Fields and Plasticity in the Auditory Cortex" (T. Kenet; R. C. Froemke; C. E. Schreiner; I. N. Pessah; and M. M.…

The research on early childhood education is clear: Programs must be of high quality to produce positive outcomes for children. This policy brief is the second in our series aimed at identifying the core components of successful early childhood programs and the costs associated with each component. In this case, we examine the costs of full-day,…

This study assessed the development of spontaneous analogical transfer from story problems to physical tasks by examining the effects of practice alone, without intervention or explicit prompting. Participants were 216 children aged 5-8 years. The microgenetic technique was incorporated with each age group by following them for six consecutive…

Current individual-based, process-oriented approaches (dynamic systems theory and the microgenetic perspective) have led to an increase of variability-centred studies in the literature. The aim of this article is to propose a technique that incorporates variability in the analysis of the "shape" of developmental change. This approach is…

Conflicting results on children's understanding of advertising may stem from differences in research methods. Most studies are conducted using interviewing techniques, employing only verbal questioning. In the present study, 136 children of two age groups (7 and 10 years) were first asked what advertising was for and, after responding, shown…

This study investigated the verbal and visuospatial processing and storage skills of children with SLI and typically developing children. Fourteen school-age children with SLI, and two groups of typically developing children matched either for age or language abilities, completed measures of processing speed and storage capacity, and a set of…

Event-related brain potentials were measured in 7- and 12-month-old infants to examine the development of processing happy and angry facial expressions. In 7-month-olds a larger negativity to happy faces was observed at frontal, central, temporal and parietal sites (Experiment 1), whereas 12-month-olds showed a larger negativity to angry faces at…

This study examined changes in rhythmic arm shaking and laterality biases in infants observed longitudinally at three points: just prior to, at, and just following reduplicated babble onset. Infants (ranging in age from 4 to 9 months at babble onset) were videotaped at home as they played with two visually identical audible and silent rattles…

The ability to understand that goals and other intentional relations are attributes of individual people is of fundamental importance to social life. It enables us to predict and interpret actions on-line by relating a person's prior and current behaviors, and distinguishing them from the behaviors of other persons. In this paper, we consider the…

What is the nature of the association between age (7-11 years) and performance on mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 7 + 4 + 5 + 7 + _)? Many prevailing theories suggest that there should be a positive association. However, change-resistance accounts (e.g., N. M. McNeil & M. W. Alibali, 2005b) predict a U-shaped association. The purpose of…

This article elaborates the impact that crises of authority provoked by animal magnetism, mesmerism, and hypnosis in the 19th century had for field formation in American education. Four layers of analysis elucidate how curriculum history's repetitive focus on public school policy and classroom practice became possible. First, the article surveys…

Imitation studies and object search studies show that infants have difficulties using action information presented on video to guide their own behaviour. The present study investigated whether infants also have problems interpreting information shown on video relative to real live information. It was examined whether 6-month-olds interpret an…

In this article the author discusses what he considers to be an ultrastructure of Michel Foucault's "pedagogisation" of sex, which is the expanding normative imagination of bodies and sexualities as and in curricula. Here the author proposes an inclusive reading of "curriculum" that departs from the specific scholastic…

The flood of early child development research in the past decade has blossomed into enormous public interest in the importance of the first years of children's lives. It is critical for policymakers and professionals to acknowledge and honor the crucial role that early care and education (ECE) providers have in the developmental health and…