Preschoolers made judgments about solutions in which substances were dissolved. Preschoolers (1) distinguished visual appearance from underlying reality; (2) recognized the conservation of taste, smell, and dangerous properties; and (3) by age five recognized that matter can be decomposed into pieces too tiny to be seen by the naked eye. (BC)

Describes 4 experiments examining 10-month-old infants' causal event perception. Results from all experiments indicated that infants perceived causality of simple events by associating a specific agent with a causal action. These results provide more support for an information-processing view of causal perception than for a view that explains…

Discusses how research in the developmental cognitive neurosciences can contribute to an understanding of the complex relations between various aspects of naming and reading processes. Reviews findings from both neuropsychological and reading research on letter-naming and general naming speed, and analyzes the methodological differences between…

Two studies showed that children of about four years of age had begun to understand that beliefs may be held with differing degrees of certainty. This understanding was tied to the children's understanding of the nature of beliefs and the distinction between appearance and reality. (PCB)

Reveals that during the elementary school years, children acquire a firm understanding of the brain as the primary locus of psychological attributes and identity. The early school years, when children are five to seven years old, appear to be a transitional phase, when performance is variable and subject to task conditions. (RH)

Tested adults and children (age 6 to 16 years) on 4 speeded tasks that included 19 experimental conditions. The 6- to 16-year olds' response times decreased with age as a function of adults' response times. (MM)

Suggests that in learning and development, the process of comparison can act as a bridge between similarity-based and rule-based processing. A structure-sensitive comparison process, triggered by experiential or symbolic juxtapositions can: (1) facilitate understanding of structural commonalities and the abstraction of rules; and (2) facilitate…

Investigated what makes young children acknowledge a false belief held by another person. Showed movies in which a stereotypical item in a familiar box was replaced by one character with an atypical item. Found highly significant improvement in preschoolers' acknowledgment of second character's false belief when preschoolers saw stereotypical…

Adults, 9-year olds, and 5-year olds were shown horizontal and vertical lines of various sizes, presented on same wall or different walls, and asked to estimate corresponding area. Responses indicated that when width and height were separated, children gave same weight to both dimensions while adults gave greater weight to larger dimensions; when…

The arbitrary nature of growth trends in cognitive variables is illustrated. Two metrics, grade equivalent and item-response theory representations, both of which preserve the order of performance levels in test data, produced different pictures of cognitive growth, and differences were seen to arise from differences in the scaling models. (SLD)

Looks at human information processing as a complex system, concentrating on certain insights about field interactions that will reposition the understanding of mental processes, moving it from an analysis of logical steps to the exploration of the influence that contexts have on human cognitive performance. (CR)

Examination of the child prodigy phenomenon suggests it is a result of extremely accelerated mental development during sensitive periods that leads to the rapid growth of a child's cognitive resources and their construction into specific exceptional achievements. (Author/DB)

Describes a study that was conducted to examine the instructional effectiveness with which different types of job aids facilitated learner achievement of different types of learning objectives, and to identify the degree to which learners possessing different levels of prior knowledge profited from different types of job aids. (Author/LRW)

Examined deception and false-belief understanding in preschoolers following noncompliance. Found that over half of 3- and 5-year olds touched a prohibited toy during experimenter's absence and most denied it. Almost all preschoolers looked into a forbidden box, most denied it, and a minority consistently feigned ignorance of contents. False-belief…

Discusses evidence for experience-dependent reorganization of adult and developing brains, examining changes in the mature brain as a result of experience, reorganization in the developing brain, and mechanisms of change. The paper notes that there is general agreement that experience can have a profound effect on the organization of the brain.…