Four experiments with children aged 5 through 12 tested the relationship between short-term memory (STM) and processing capacity. The results suggest that effects obtained with STM span do not provide clear indications of overall working memory development, because STM span and the processing space component of working memory entail distinct…

Examined age-related changes in visual selective attention--ability to resist interference--in children 5 to 12 years old and adults. The interference effect on stimulus evaluation did not discriminate between age groups; however, the interference effect on correct response activation showed a pronounced age-related reduction, suggesting a…

The Urban Learner Framework stresses four themes: the importance of students' cultural strengths and learning experiences, culture's influence on cognitive development, the importance of motivation and effort, and resilience as a characteristic of urban learners. Barriers to change include belief systems, district size, regulations, multiple…

Explores the dissociation between the performance by children with autism on false belief tasks, on which they do poorly, and false photograph, false map, and false drawing tasks, on which they do well. Suggesting domain specificity in the development of representational system, the results supported the modularity of theory of mind and the…

Demonstrates that Vygotskian theory can support two opposing interpretations: supporting reform and undermining reform. Discussion is organized by: sociocultural perspectives, Marxist influences on historical analysis and the role of labor, semiotics and psychological tools, dialectic of thought and language, conceptual development, and learning…

Recent experimental research is synthesized to identify distinctive biobehavioral characteristics of Down's Syndrome persons across their lifespan. It is argued that educational and other intervention programs have not demonstrated strong gains having significant durability or generalization. Recommended is an interactionist function-structure…

Judgments of similarity among mammals, including humans, were elicited from 7 and 10 year olds and adults. Results partially supported a consensus model of shared cultural knowledge. Patterns of deviation from the model appeared between children and adults because of the emergence of a primate category after age 10. (BC)

This document describes the construction/simulation software called Stella which can be used in the investigation of dynamic causal models. Topics considered are its built-in perspective of system dynamics and capabilities, its potential drawbacks, and its cognitive implications for educational applications. (JJK)

Tested a knowledge-based view of early memory development. Assessed preschool children's knowledge about two different scenes and their recall and location memory for objects in those scenes. Found that age, knowledge about categories, and memory for unrelated objects were significant predictors of memory of objects in the scenes. (MM)

Linguistic imitation by 48 children with Down's syndrome was compared to that of 57 children without mental retardation. The children with Down's syndrome imitated slightly less. This difference was related to language level and the source of the imitation, suggesting that children with Down's syndrome develop differently with respect to…

Premature infants with subependymal or intraventricular hemorrhage took longer to habituate on a habituation task, and scored lower on a measure of mental development, than did other premature infants or full-term infants. Both groups of premature infants were less successful than full-term infants on an object permanence task. (BC)

Reviews Gibson's contributions to the domain of perceptual learning, including her classic experiment concerning the perception of scribbles. Discusses Gibson's research on differentiation and the links between perception and learning, the status of her research and ideas, and her experimental approach. (BG)

The analysis or modeling of Piagetian and psychometric measures of mental ability is discussed. An application of structural modeling procedures allowing the testing of hypotheses in this domain is presented. Such a model is illustrated through a study of numerical functional relations tasks with 77 elementary school students. (SLD)

List repetitions in lists with phonologically similar and dissimilar items were used to examine improvement in preschool children's recall. Cumulative repetition caused a moderate increase in memory span and the phonological similarity effect. Repeated serial order information was helpful for children's recall, but articulatory coding was not. (BC)

This study examined the acquisition of verb particles and prepositions in language-impaired, language-matched, and age-matched preschool children (total n=42). Results indicated that the use of verb particles constituted a particularly challenging task for the language-impaired subjects relative to both the age-matched and language-matched peers.…