Rakison and Yermolayeva (this issue) argue that domain specificity is difficult to reconcile with U-, N-, or M-shaped developmental trends. They are justified because: (1) There is no compelling evidence that nonlinear trends require mechanisms beyond general, well-known cognitive processes; and (2) epigenetic neuroscience provides no clear…

There is a growing list of examples illustrating that infants are transitioning from having earlier abilities that appear more "universal," "broadly tuned," or "unconstrained" to having later abilities that appear more "specialized," "narrowly tuned," or "constrained." Perceptual narrowing, a well-known phenomenon related to face, speech, and…

Evidence from dual-process and cognitive behavioral theorists points to the conclusion that the products of associative learning are sometimes available in working memory. Adolescents, adults, and children (to a lesser extent) can engage in "metacognitive intercession," reflecting on the products of associative processing and deciding whether to…

Kuhn and Pease (p. 279, this issue) provide evidence for a change in learning as a result of increasing executive control during later childhood. Although the ability to inhibit information that biases answers in a reasoning task may account for their findings, the opportunity to gain specific experiences and engage different strategies in…

The Kuhn and Pease (p. 279, this issue) article advances the fields of cognitive development and learning by integrating work on executive functions, metacognition, and scientific reasoning. The article also expands developmental work to older children and adults, to personal beliefs, and to social information, and reinvigorates the construct of…

We are pleased with the commentators' thoughtful reactions to our study, as they make it clear that the study met its major goal--identifying age differences that suggest developmental changes in the learning process and the strengthening of executive processes in the second decade of life.

All of the target articles in this issue are concerned with trajectories of development, with all focusing in one way or another on U-shaped functions. For purposes of this commentary, the author is primarily concerned with the Cashon and Cohen article. The mechanisms whereby one processes faces represent one of several perceptual/cognitive…

It has been 20 years since Bever's (1982) and Strauss and Stavy's (1982) books on U-shaped functions in human development were published. The three target articles in this issue describe several old and new U-shaped functions and new theoretical explanations for their existence. In this article, the authors will comment on two aspects of U-shaped…

U-shaped developmental functions, and their N-shaped cousins, have intrigued developmental psychologists for decades because they provide a compelling demonstration that development does not always entail a monotonic increase across age in a single underlying ability. Instead, the causes of development are much more complex. Indeed,…

There is by this point no doubt that backward, regressive, negative or degenerative movements occur in cognitive development. The question is "why?" The challenges of the phenomenon have been and continue to be mainly two: identify the range and variety of systematic backward movements that appear in development; and, provide better and better…

The articles in this collection consider one very interesting puzzle of development: U-shaped developmental functions. At some point during development, an organism might exhibit what seems like a regression from its expected developmental trajectory and, according to continuity models of development, this is aberrant. In this special issue,…

Developmental psychologists have been preoccupied with the shape or form of development since the early days of developmental psychology. One of their main concerns has been to specify the developmental function of the characteristics (i.e., behaviors, traits, abilities, processes, etc.) that are of interest to them. This is equivalent to saying…