Investigated relation between development of understanding principles that govern a problem and of mathematical strategies used to solve it. Subjects were college students and 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 11th graders. The pattern of estimated answers provided a measure of intuitive understanding of task principles. Understanding an intuitive principle was…

Younger and older American and Chinese adults were given arithmetic, perceptual speed, and spatial orientation tests. Younger adults showed substantial performance advantages over older adults. Performance of older American and Chinese adults was comparable on all ability measures. Overall pattern suggests that the advantage of Chinese adults over…

Focused on cardinality acquisition (thought to be crucial to correct counting) and on the relation between cardinality and counting. Gathered data with three groups of children three to five years old on four kinds of tasks. Found no empirical evidence for considering counting as a single prerequisite to cardinality. Suggests new approach to…

Two studies used a visual expectation paradigm to determine whether five-month-old infants spontaneously use the number of pictures appearing in one location (left) to predict when a stimulus will appear in a second location (right). Neither stimulus timing nor stimulus identity predicted future stimulus location. (Author/DR)

Longitudinal data for 63 inner-city African American and Puerto Rican adolescent mothers and their firstborn children were used to examine relations among level of maternal depressive symptoms, mother-toddler conflict and contingent responses observed in play interactions, and maternal reports of child problem behaviors of toddlers of different…

To determine whether 1 or 2 dimensions of infant emotionality best characterized infant functioning, parental reports (10 months) and elicited emotion (12-13 months) were examined. Found that early positivity (12-13 months) predicted later positivity (18-20 months) better than later negativity, with the reverse being true of early negativity.…

A short-term longitudinal study of 314 U.S. military-dependent children (grades 2-6) in Berlin, Germany, examined whether children's coping strategies mediate relations between their action-control beliefs and anxiety. Consistent with previous literature, boys reported using antisocial coping more than did girls, and younger children reported…

Tested 18-month olds for mirror self-recognition using classic rouge test or an alternative procedure, for social contingency awareness by being closely imitated for a long time, and for capacity for communication by synchronic imitation. Results support hypothesis that self-recognition and spontaneous perspective-taking develop in close synchrony…

Examined the claim that young children (three to five years old) regard all false statements as lies. Found that most young children at all ages could distinguish between lies and mistaken statements, if care was taken to clarify the form of question. (Author/DR)

Three studies addressed preschool-age children's ability to identify and remember the epistemic and imaginal origins of their mental representations. Results revealed that three-, four-, and five-year olds differed significantly in their ability to identify and remember the sources of their mental representations. Identifying and remembering…

Four-, six, and eight-month-old infants' perception of the multimodal features of the human face was investigated. Results show that speech-related exaggerated prosody cues facilitate detection of the audible features of multimodally represented faces, but not until six months of age. (Author/DR)

Facial responsiveness to pleasant and unpleasant odors was examined in 5- to 12-year-old children. Children failed to display reflex-like patterns, but exhibited facial configurations that varied according to odor and social condition. Results suggest that facial responsiveness to odors is flexible and able to reorganize and supports emotional and…

A theoretical interpretation of the stimulus familiarization effect was explored in three experiments with 6- through 7-year-old children. (Author/SB)

Semantic and phonological encoding in 48 young (18-24 years) and 48 elderly (60-77 years) adults was investigated using a short-term memory release from proactive interference paradigm. (Author/SB)

A total of 68 children between 10 and 12 years of age were given two role-taking tasks, a self-image questionnaire, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in order to determine the relation between role taking, referential communication, and self-image. (Author/SB)