Growing up bilingual can have many positive effects. Research and anecdotal evidence suggests that experience with two language systems builds mental flexibility, superior concept formation, and a more diversified set of mental abilities. To encourage bilingualism, schools must teach foreign languages earlier and more efficiently, nurture…

Two studies demonstrated that infants use referential cues to guide new word-object mapping as early as 19 to 20 months of age and that they understood that actions accompanying such labeling were not necessarily referential. These findings indicate that language learning is grounded in a relatively rich understanding of cues to reference, at…

Examined the instrumental responses and facial expressions during learning and extinction in a group of 36 cocaine-exposed infants ages 4 to 8 months and an equal number of control subjects. Findings indicated that cocaine-exposed infants expressed less interest and joy during learning and less anger and sadness during extinction than infants who…

Examined effects of participation in an event on four and seven year olds' reports of the event. Results showed that participation lowered susceptibility to suggestion. Older children were less suggestible about actions that took place. Children showed high resistance to suggestions about actions that might be associated with abuse. (SH)

Understanding and appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) are essential for promoting sustainable agriculture development. IKS provides a cultural basis for nonformal agricultural programs that is absent in technology transfer approaches. (SK)

Described are how pictures can combine aspects of naturalistic representation with more formal shapes to enhance cognitive understanding. These "diagrammatic" shapes derive from geometrical elementary and thereby bestow visual concreteness to concepts conveyed by the pictures. Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings are used as examples…

When 54 second graders, 54 fifth graders, and 54 college students listened to stories that varied in extent of discontinuity, even the second graders showed an ability to detect discontinuity. Sensitivity varied with extent and location of discontinuity, and with variations in instructions and titles of stories. Verbal reports may underestimate…

Three theories of deafness and cognition are summarized, and the problem of deaf children's lagging cognitive development in concrete nonverbal logical problems is considered. It is suggested that this delay may be caused by the difficulty hearing people have communicating to the deaf, and educational implications of this speculation are noted.…

A longitudinal study of 31 babies in their twelfth through twenty-third weeks of age tested the Neo-Piagetian theory of a shift or spurt in infants' cognitive development at the age of 4 months. Results were consistent with this neo-Piagetian concept of stage change. (MDM)

Comments on the monograph reported in this issue. Stresses that the monograph illustrates the difficulty of measuring gender stereotypes; provides insight on activity preferences in middle childhood; considers the role of affect in sex typing by distinguishing affective from cognitive influences; encourages broad-based theories to account for sex…

Used event-related potentials to examine infants' ability to form representations of stimuli presented in a haptic modality and to then recognize these stimuli as familiar when the stimuli were subsequently presented in a visual modality. Found that in certain conditions infants encoded the haptically familiarized object, then transferred their…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) of five- to seven-year-old girls were measured while the girls performed a visual selective attention task and a Piagetian conservation task. Results suggested more anterior ERP sources for nonconservers than conservers during early stimulus analysis, and more lateralized ERP sources for conservers than…

Visual learning enhances cognitive understanding of abstract concepts. Perception of such ideas as causality is enriched by visual examples. Perceiving should not be separated from thinking. (SK)

Examined the relationship between cognitive development and the development of identity in college freshmen. During the beginning of the freshman year of college, students who scored higher in cognitive development tended to have a less developed sense of self than students who scored lower in cognitive development. (Author/LLL)

Examined involvement of working-class Irish fathers in infant caretaking to end of first year of life. Also examined relationship between parental behavior and infant cognitive development. Results showed that fathers were substantially involved in infant caretaking over first year and that parental involvement in caretaking had independent effect…