Three experiments examined whether preschoolers viewed outcomes of familiar causes of illness as definite or probabilistic. Findings indicated that children judged that a common cause would affect all group members the same, and believed they could definitely predict illness outcomes in a single case, contrasting with adults' variable and…

Notes that Nelson, Plesa, and Henseler's (1998) article addresses the issues of where social cognitive knowledge comes from, what form it takes, and whether "theory of mind" is an appropriate description of the social cognitive enterprise. Argues that researchers ought to get beyond the "theory" issue, and focus on the sources…

Maintains that Muller and Overton (1998) challenge the current Zeitgeist regarding infant cognitive development. Suggests that researchers reconsider infants as developing actors in a meaningful environment, not as born philosophers. Notes the need to explore processes underlying key transitions in infancy and the relation between action and…

Notes that moral decisions include both moral concepts and factual beliefs. Considers possible sources of variation in factual beliefs and presents research into children's and adults' thinking about practices based on factual beliefs different from their own. Discusses how individuals take these differences into account when judging the seemingly…

Notes that the Piagetian perspective admits the existence of interindividual differences but interprets them as noise masking the universal logical succession of structures, whereas the differential perspective views development as consisting of "vicarious processes." Asserts that the main aim of the "procedural studies"…

Examination of data from the Infant Health and Development Program, a comprehensive program to avert health and intellectual impairments associated with premature low birthweight, does not show any enduring and meaningful effects on cognitive development resulting from the program. Discusses findings in terms of intelligence and its mutability.…

Examined the degree of specificity encoded in early lexical representations by presenting 18- to 23-month-olds with object labels either correctly or incorrectly pronounced and analyzing children's eye movement. Found that children recognized the spoken words in both conditions but recognition was poorer when words were mispronounced, with effects…

Three experiments investigated use of vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena by 5- and 10-year-olds and by adults. Results replicated the original Japanese finding of vitalistic thinking among English-speaking 5-year-olds, identified the more active component of vitalism as a belief in the transfer of energy during biological processes,…

Neuropsychology professor Steven Petersen describes what scientists are finding out about brain development, synaptic growth and wiring, intentional and incidental learning, the role of emotion in learning, and declarative and implicit memory systems. Neuroscience has only the broadest outline of principles to offer today's educators. (MLH)

This article discusses representation of information in neural networks and the apparent hyperspecificity that is often seen in the application of previously acquired information by children with autism. Hyperspecificity is seen as reflecting a possible feature of the neural codes used to represent concepts in the autistic brain. (Contains 12…

Proposes renewal of Dewey to address the gap between the pedagogical commitment to contingency and plurality and the fact that the pedagogical tradition has neutralized contingency and denied its systemic meaning for education. Recognizes that questions regarding education can never be stabilized, but rather should always refer to experience and…

Examined 3- to 5-year olds' justifications for conformity to physical laws and social rules. Found that children's justifications for social rule conformity involved consequences and permission/obligation, and for physical laws involved physical limitations or impossibility. Older preschoolers, but not 3-year olds, appreciated that social…

Tested the hypothesis that in predicting future behavior of an actor, older children rely on trait inferences, whereas younger children rely on global, evaluative inferences. Found that 9- and 10-year-olds' behavioral predictions were mediated solely by trait ratings, whereas 5- and 6-year-olds' predictions were mediated by evaluative ratings. The…

Two studies addressed whether preschoolers consider speakers' knowledge states when establishing initial word-referent links. Children showed better learning from a speaker knowledgeable of novel words' referents than from an ignorant speaker. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, learned words better when speaker said the object was made by…

Examined the nature of numerical knowledge in 5-month-olds to inform the debate whether numerical abilities result from capacities dedicated to numerical cognition or to more general perceptual capacities. Found that 5-month-olds could determine the number of collective entities, moving groups of items, when non-numerical perceptual factors such…