Study of Israeli adolescents participating in summer camps revealed that active exposure to and assumption of variegated roles in different settings on volunteer basis, while performing meaningful and quasi-responsible actions by means of trial-and-error behavior, enhanced role and interpersonal differentiation, and hence personal differentiation,…

Two experiments involving students from grades 1-2 and 5-6 found strong connections between development and forgetting rates when the influences of learning ability were eliminated. Findings eliminated a hypothesis based on age variability in overlearning. (RH)

Cognitive triage is the nonmonotonic relationship between the order in which children read words out of long-term memory and the strength of the memory of the words read. Two experiments with 7 and 12 year olds compared the fuzzy-trace theory with an effortful processing explanation. Findings consistently favored the fuzzy-trace theory's…

Reviews evidence on development of competence in decision making during adolescence focusing on cognitive aspects. Discusses indicators of competence: choice, comprehension, creativity, compromise, consequentiality, correctness, credibility, consistency, and commitment. Evidence suggests that many adolescents show reliable level of competence in…

Performance on oddity transfer tasks was used to classify 40 mildly retarded, 6- through 9-year-old and 40 normally achieving children of the same age into their 2 respective groups. High levels of classification accuracy were observed with all 8 oddity types being sensitive to differences between the normally achieving and mildly retarded…

Studies the relationship between timing of puberty and spatial ability in 53 undergraduate women. Results do not show evidence for greater spatial ability on the part of those who have late maturation. (RJC)

The study of 813 learning disabled children (ages 6-11) with test-retest data (after three years) on 224 children found the children to suffer a progressive deterioration in verbal ability whereas their nonverbal ability showed an increase in the earlier years, leveling off thereafter. (Author/DB)

Investigated effects of age, task difficulty, and parent presence on private speech in 72 children of 2-5 years. The proportion of speech coded as private increased with age. Private speech was positively related to task performance. (RJC)

Considered are two commonly used techniques, the interview and word association techniques. Highlighted is a third technique called the repertory grid. This third technique can be used to interpret students' knowledge based on an explicit, psychological theory of human behavior. (Author/CW)

Compared 40 3-year-olds' superordinate level classification under 2 experimental conditions. Although there was no mean difference between the 2 conditions, there were striking differences in the distribution of scores. (RJC)

Notes that few investigations have addressed adolescents' conception of knowledge. Provides a rationale as to why it may be useful to more adequately explore how adolescents view knowledge. Reviews existing investigations and discusses three general approaches to the study of the subject. (Author/NB)

Five experiments investigated children's intuitions about genetic transmission of features. Results suggest young children have principled, specifically biological notions of inheritance. (PCB)

Results of two experiments with five-year-olds indicated that: (1) conservation can be quickly taught with lasting results; (2) training on a limited range of exemplars will produce generalized correct responses to other, untrained classes of conservation problems; and (3) children's explanations of their judgments change as a result of exposure…

Ways are described for teachers to ask questions which require students to think and not just recall. The questions should involve variety, inference, support, and conclusion. (CB)

Examines whether cognitive complexity and behavioral complexity exert significant effects on impression differentiation. Finds that, while individuals exposed to behaviorally complex messages tended to form more differentiated impressions of the message source, the effect of complex messages on source differentiation was strongest for persons with…