Details a study of the ways that limited language proficiency affected learners' readiness for mathematics instruction among disadvantaged preschoolers within a Griqua community in South Africa. Notes a link between limited language proficiency and nonreadiness for foundation level mathematics due to limited thinking skills, which constitute…

Compared effectiveness of modeling from a clinician to that of written instructions to train parents to use a motor stimulation program with their infants with Down syndrome. Obtained motor development quotients prior to the program and at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. Found that infants of parents trained by modeling obtained higher motor…

A model of family, child, and parental childrearing characteristics was developed and tested for predicting the cognitive competence in a sample of 10,774 six-year-olds from The Netherlands. Results of LISREL analyses showed that parent education level played a central role in explaining differences in children's cognitive competence. Family…

Interviewed parents of children with dyslexia to determine principal reasons for attending support groups. Identified: (1) information seekers attending support groups for education and research on their child's learning difficulties who integrated advice/information to offer educational/emotional support to their children; (2) parents attending…

Examined attitudes toward smoking, current smoking behavior, mental health difficulties, and nicotine addiction among 38 pregnant women, mothers of young children, and their partners in East Surrey, England. Found that 11 female respondents presented symptoms of depression, anxiety, or social dysfunction. Smokers did not differ from ex-smokers or…

Discusses responsibility of developmental scientists to convey the complexity of development lest oversimplified popular accounts gain credibility. Presents a model of development elaborating on the role of experience in relation to constitutional, cultural, economic, and social factors contributing to children's development. Discusses importance…

Describes how applied developmental science (ADS) integrates developmental research with policies and programs promoting positive development or enhancing life chances of vulnerable children and families. Maintains that ADS contributes to social justice, promotes outreach, and serves as a model of how higher education may engage policymakers,…

Suggests that the study of memory needs to be situated within broader conceptual and research contexts. Examines how four contexts accommodate memory phenomena: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension; (3) context/function; and (4) strategy. Suggests that memories are best examined as knowledge structures resulting from efforts to understand, and that…

Maintains that recent theoretical and methodological advances have sparked renewed interest in studying children's learning. Describes consistent and interesting findings regarding how children learn and intriguing proposals regarding mechanisms underlying learning. Argues that increasing the focus on children's learning promises practical…

Argues that dynamic systems approaches may provide an explanatory framework based on general scientific principles for developmental psychology, using principles of self-organization to explain how novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development. Contends that self-organization provides a single…

Argues that motor and cognitive development may be fundamentally interrelated. Summarizes evidence of close co-activation of the neocerebellum and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in functional neuroimaging, similarities in the cognitive sequelae of damage to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the neocerebellum, motor deficits in "cognitive"…

Describes evolutionary developmental psychology as the study of the genetic and ecological mechanisms that govern the development of social and cognitive competencies common to all human beings and the epigenetic (gene-environment interactions) processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions. Outlines basic assumptions and domains of…

Argues that extant research assessing relations between contextual factors and psychological disturbance has confused two different roles of context. Suggests that environmental factors are nonspecific stressors and elicit psychopathology, with specificity of expressed psychopathology governed by individual differences, and that context is…

Maintains that one future direction for cognitive development research involves a closer integration with knowledge about the developing brain. Presents a framework for analyzing and interpreting postnatal functional brain development. Discusses three contributing hypotheses, within which a variety of phenomena associated with the neural basis of…

Examines research in folkbiology (commonsense understandings of plants and animals) to argue that several lines of comparative research are needed to understand the acquisition of folkbiology in particular and conceptual development in general. Asserts that comparisons are needed between children and adults within a given society, between adult…