Interviews with 4- to 8-year olds indicated that children's understanding of how it is that they can see object develops gradually. This article presents a map of this development in terms of two distinct modes of cognitive functioning, the ikonic mode and concrete symbolic mode, drawn from the interviews and the SOLO (Structure of Learning…

Contains the following commentaries: "Further Distinctions between Magic, Reality, Religion, and Fiction"; "The Role of Creative Control and Culture in Children's Fantasy/Reality Judgments"; "The Last of the Magicians? Children, Scientists, and the Invocation of Hidden Causal Powers"; "Rescuing Magical Thinking…

Examined 3- to 5-year-olds' attributions of the mental states of television characters depicting make-believe or realistic actions. Found that children who identified when television characters were engaging in pretend play did not necessarily infer the pretenders' thoughts and beliefs. Inferring pretenders' thoughts was related to performance on…

Three studies investigated the analogical reasoning of 127 children in a physics task using an analogy generated by the children. Found that 9- to 10-year olds showed spontaneous transfer in both negative and positive analogy training conditions, while 7-year olds showed no transfer in the positive analogy condition but transferred only selected…

Examined 80 children in second and fourth grades on melodic and rhythmic discrimination and classification tasks. Found evidence to support the existence of internal representations of tonality and meter in both groups, as well as evidence of a developmental effect for the classification task. (EAJ)

Three experiments examined the early development of three- to five-year-old children's analysis of spatial patterns. Found that the youngest children segmented out simple, well-formed, spatially independent parts and used simple relational structures to bind these parts together, whereas older children constructed forms that included increasingly…

Examined children's understanding of false belief, representational change, and appearance-reality distinction. Subjects were 34 Junin Quechuan children, 4 to 8 years old. Findings indicated an understanding of the appearance-reality distinction and suggested an improvement with age. Children demonstrated poor understanding of representational…

Two studies examined how task content that activates predator-avoidance affects preschool children's performance on a false-belief task. Findings indicated that the proportion of correct answers on the playmate-avoidance task was greater than that for the predator-avoidance task, suggesting that activation of the predator-avoidance system…

Five- and 6-year-olds heard stories in which a character sorted items into two locations. Found that children could reject a report of the character's belief when the character had a false belief more easily than a belief in which an object known to the character was described using an unknown term. Children found it easier to predict incorrect…

Compared face recognition ability in young children with autism to that of children with typical development and developmental delay. Took electroencephalographic recordings of brain activity while children viewed pictures of their mothers and unfamiliar females, and familiar and unfamiliar toys. Found that autistic children showed no differences…

There is an interplay between emotions and learning, but this interaction is far more complex than previous learning theories have articulated. This article proffers a novel model by which to regard the interplay of emotions upon learning and discusses the larger practical aim of crafting computer-based models that will recognize a learner's…

Two studies examined whether object names and functions act as cues to categories for infants. Findings indicated that both 14- and 18-month-olds were more likely to select the category match after being shown a novel category exemplar with its function than when given no additional cues. Only at 18 months did naming the objects enhance…

Investigates the effects of learning material construction on concept learning while aiming for students to acquire the basic concepts of electricity and magnetism. Reports that concept learning of electricity and magnetism is influenced by the hierarchical structure of learning materials, not by sequence. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/YDS)

Investigated whether 4- to 6-year-olds' ability to reason about truths and lies influenced their truth-telling behavior. Found that children's performance on truth/lie questions did not predict their truth-telling. Regardless of performance on truth/lie questions, children receiving developmentally appropriate truth/lie discussions gave more…