Presents research on the effects of concurrent verbal cognition on locomotor skills. Results revealed no interference with coordination variables across age, but some interference with control variables, particularly in younger subjects. Coordination of gait required less attention than setting of control parameters. This coordination was in place…

Reviews studies on the effects of infant food supplementation on the children's later cognitive development. Suggests that the study by Pollitt et al. reported in this monograph presents evidence that correcting early malnutrition provides large benefits to children when they become adolescents and young adults. (BC)

Focuses on the question of whether developmental improvement in performance on cognitive tasks is abrupt or continuous. Explains three model-based approaches to this question, and stresses that research conducted in these approaches has indicated that developmental improvements consist of jumps through discrete states. Concludes that these results…

Three experiments involving children and adults investigated age differences in repetition priming effects as contrasted with explicit recall and recognition. Findings showed that recall increased with age, but priming effects did not differ with age. Results suggest that implicit memory is insensitive to age differences and to encoding and delay…

The article discusses aspects of the definition of "learning disabilities". The process of learning is discussed including such themes as social interaction, personal reflection and response, integration, transformation/growth, and ecological wholeness, balance, and fit. Encouraged is a nonproblematic definition of learning disabilities. (DB)

In their answers to questions about a novel event, children were as accurate as adults when responding to open-ended questions, and four year olds were more likely than six and eight year olds and adults to change responses to yes-no questions. Adults speculated more frequently than did children when they answered specific questions. (BC)

Profiles and interviews Howard Gardner, a cognitive psychologist, researcher, and educator, who addresses the cognitive processes and development of children and education in his writings. Discusses different kinds of intelligences and how to promote them in children. (PRA)

Nine- to 16-month-old infants explored pairs of novel toys in 2 conditions: violated expectation, in which the first toy produced an interesting nonobvious property and the second toy did not; and interest control, in which neither toy produced the interesting property. Infants persistently attempted to reproduce the interesting property in the…

Developmental contextualism focuses on changes in fused relations between developing people and their changing contexts. Research on cognitive training in the aged years provides evidence about plasticity throughout life because it alters developmental trajectories through revised person-context relations. The studies in the current issue support…

Studied time estimation for a button-pressing response in 3- and 5.5-year-olds under "minimal,""temporal," and "force" instructions. Found that force--but not temporal--instructions improved 3-year-olds' timing accuracy. When instructed to press harder, they pressed longer. Older children were more accurate with…

Discusses why elephant riddles are viable catalysts for word play and language development in the primary grades. Explores some relationships between children's thinking and elephant riddles. Offers some suggestions for incorporating them as a regular part of the classroom flow. (SR)

Two studies examined executive functions in children with autism. Results indicated that subjects performed like normally developing children when either no arbitrary and novel rules were involved or the output was verbal. Results support the hypothesis that these children are challenged by executive tasks because they are unlikely to encode rules…

Rejoins that core elements of the mind emerge out of interactions between individual and environment. States that different approaches can be used to model different levels or phases in the organization and development of the mind. Focuses on issues of interactivism, connectionism, computationalism, and experientialism as complementary tools for…

Investigated the role of physiological self-regulation (cardiac vagal tone) in information processing (habituation) in infants. Found that decreases in vagal tone consistently related to habituation efficiency at 2 and 5 months. Within- and between- age suppression of vagal tone predicted accumulated looking time (ALT), but ALT did not predict…

Four experiments examined children's understanding of the inverse relationship between the number of parts into which a quantity is divided and the size of each part. Found that children tended to judge that bigger shares resulted from sharing with more recipients. Seven-year olds performed correctly on a simplified equal-sharing task. Five-year…