In the course of language development children must solve arbitrary form-to-meaning mappings, in which semantic components are encoded onto linguistic labels. Because sign languages describe motion and location of entities through iconic movements and placement of the hands in space, child signers may find spatial semantics-to-language mapping…

The number line estimation task captures central aspects of children's developing number sense, that is, their intuitions for numbers and their interrelations. Previous research used children's answer patterns and verbal reports as evidence of how they solve this task. In the present study we investigated to what extent eye movements recorded…

Adults assess precisely the center of mass (CM) of single-bodied objects and choose grasping points that span an axis through or close to the center of mass when lifting them. The present study examined how children and adults assess the CM when lifting two-bodied objects (barbells) and how this ability develops. Four- to five-year olds, 6- to…

In our comments on Pacton and Deacon's discussion of children's spelling of morphemes we raise four issues: (1) whether the "timing" question should be about children's ages or about their psychological processes; (2) the crucial importance of individual differences in the study of the connections that people make between morphemes and spelling;…

The aim of the research was to explore the function of pauses in children's oral verbatim and gist-based free recall, assuming that pauses indicate cognitive processing. The main question guiding this research was whether verbatim and gist recall constituted two different ways of cognitive processing associated with different time patterns of…

The present study here investigated the role of the causal status of features and feature type in biological categorizations by young children. Study 1 showed that 5-year-olds are more strongly influenced by causal features than effect features. 4-year-olds exhibit no such tendency. There, therefore, appears to be a conceptual change between the…

Previous research suggests that experimenter-induced labeling of test cards improves preschoolers' performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task (DCCS), a measure of flexible rule use. Three experiments attempted to further clarify how labeling aids performance on the DCCS. Experiment 1 examined the nature of the labeling effect but failed…

We present a review of the research on English and French children's learning of the place of morphemes in spelling. Traditional models suggest that children use morphology relatively late in their spelling careers and that the end-point of development lies in rule-based performance. In contrast, we show that (a) children are sensitive to the role…

Metacognitive knowledge of the dual-processing basis of judgment is critical to resolving conflict between analytic and experiential processing responses [Klaczynski, P. A. (2004). A dual-process model of adolescent development: Implications for decision making, reasoning, and identity. In R. V. Kail (Ed.), "Advances in child development and…

We identify three aspects of scientific thinking beyond the control-of-variables strategy that we claim are essential for students to master as a foundation for skilled scientific thinking. The first is strategic and involves the ability to coordinate effects of multiple causal influences on an outcome. The second is a mature understanding of the…

Recognizing information as evidence is central to the development of scientific reasoning. When does information about an event come to be treated as evidence relevant to explaining the event? We asked whether this was increasingly likely to happen when an explanation becomes available that can incorporate both the event and the information into a…

A sixth-grade class investigated the ecologies of two local retention ponds over the course of one school year. In this context, instruction assisted development as students designed models of the pond in one-gallon jars and attempted to stabilize these jars in sustainable ecosystems that could be used to study questions about the ponds.…

Previous studies have suggested that children as young as 9 years old have developed an understanding of non-linear growth processes prior to formal education. The present experiment aimed at investigating this competency in even younger samples (i.e., in kindergartners, first, and third graders, ages 6, 7 and 9, respectively). Children (N=90)…

Some accounts imply that basic-level emotion categories are acquired early and quickly, whereas others imply that they are acquired later and more gradually. Our study examined this question for fear, happiness, sadness, and anger in the context of children's categorization of emotional facial expressions. Children (N=168, 2-5 years) first labeled…

Three studies examined whether 3- and 4-year olds would trust a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker when learning a new word and whether that trust would be reversed, and the word mapping revised, when a trusted speaker later proved unreliable. Study 1 indicated that 3- and 4-year olds trusted a reliable speaker over an unreliable speaker.…