Examines the functioning of toddlers with physical anomalies (but without central nervous system damage) in comparison to premature toddlers (with similar deviant early experience but no deviant physical appearance) and to normal toddlers. Premature and disabled toddlers performed more poorly than normal toddlers in measures of social initiative,…

In two experiments 96 children and eight adults were tested for comprehension of the modifier-head relation in compounds such as apple-knife or were asked to label objects with compounds. Results show that by age three children reliably interpret novel compounds and made use of novel compounds to subcategorize. (RH)

English- and Japanese-speaking children aged four and five were asked to say the opposite of statements. Statements varied in truth value and unmarked/marked membership of antonym pairs. Findings did not support a universality hypothesis; differences were found between the two groups in the use of semantic and syntactic denial. (Author/CB)

Studied bilingual children and children learning a second language using a picture-word interference task. The printed distractors interfered with naming both on trials where the distractor and naming language were the same and on trials where they were different. These and other results question whether an "input switch" operates for bilingual…

Compared four-year-old left-handed children and children lacking definite hand preference with right-handers on motor skills. Found no differences between left-handers and right-handers of either sex, but the children lacking hand preference had lower scores. Possible sex differences and implications for the education of children lacking…

Discusses strategy-like behaviors in a memory-for-location task found in four studies of 18- to 24-month-old children. Interprets results as evidence of an early natural propensity to keep alive what must be remembered, a rudimentary version of what will later become more elaborate mnemonic strategies. (Author/CB)

Challenges the notion that long-term memory retrieval efficiency is a potential source of individual and developmental differences in cognitive functioning. Fourth-grade, eighth-grade, and college-aged subjects participated in a task using the Posner letter matching paradigm and were assessed with tests of verbal and spatial ability. (Author/CB)

Investigates strategies of 10-year-olds and 14-year-olds in tasks requiring prospective memory. Subjects were instructed to perform activities after waiting 30 minutes. As predicted, strategic time-monitoring occurred more frequently in the home than in the laboratory. Emphasizes the power of the laboratory as a contrasting context for…

Displays that by themselves always elicited chance judgment of number were shown to three- to four-year-olds and six- to seven-year-olds. The first display was transformed into the second, and so on. Results indicated that three- to four-year-olds do not understand conservation of number because judgements of successive displays were independent…

Used descriptive analysis and a forced choice task to investigate childrens' and adults' production, interpretation, and judgment of notation. Results showed that young children may not impose the same symbol-meaning structure at decoding that was proposed at encoding. Only after this ability develops does a preference for one form-one function…

Compared comprehension of kindergarten-age precocious readers (who read at the third-grade level) with second- and third-grade-age children. Results on measures of letter, scrambled word, and text reading times indicated that, for precocious readers, efficiency in lower-order tasks is not a prerequisite for rapid text reading and good…

Estimates confluence model of intellectual development for a within-family sample of 321 children from 101 transracial adoptive families. Mental ages of children and their parents and birth or adoption intervals were used in a nonlinear least-squares estimation procedure to obtain children's predicted mental ages. Results suggest efficiency of the…

Explains that from a prediction standpoint the confluence model is not very efficient. Very modest increments in accuracy are associated with family configuration variables once chronological age is covaried. Suggests that the major postulates of the theory be tested directly, within individuals and with longitudinal data. (Author/AS)

Reveals no gender segregation in peer groups until age six, through observations of 152 rural Kenyan children, 18 months to nine years of age. Developmental trends in gender segregation of children's peers are correlated with systematic changes in their environments. (Author/AS)

Uses a videotape of two preschool children to investigate the influence of gender labeling adults' perception of aggression in children. The degree of aggression displayed by the target child was judged by 175 college students (139 females, 36 males). Four conditions were created by varying the gender label of both the target and the nonrated…