Used four experiments to examine retrieval access and item-by-item search processes and strategies in the cued recall of children in grades 3 and 6, and of adults. Results suggested that retrieval access is a problem for young children and contributes strongly to developmental increases in recall. Adults used retrieval strategies, although search…

Four experiments examined the contribution of item-by-item retrieval search processes to developmental differences in cued recall. Results indicated that developmental cued recall differences remained even when access, constraint, search object, and knowledge base problems were controlled or minimized. (SKC)

Obtained thresholds for octave-band noises with center frequencies of 0.4, 1, 2, 4, and 10 kHz and 1/3-octave band noises centered at 10 and 20 kHz from children aged 6 to 16 years. Compared results with findings for infants, preschool children, and adults. Continuing sensitivity improvements were evident from infancy well into the school years.…

Investigated whether young children (ages 2-5) could use spatial categorization as a mnemonic strategy. Three experiments found the children capable of spatially organizing objects as a strategy in the service of future retrieval. There were clear developmental trends in the deployment of categorization. (SKC)

Investigated the influence of age and artistic inclination on the use of articulation and line quality in judging similarity and preference for simple human drawings. Children aged 4, 5, 10, and 13 years revealed articulation to be the primary criterion in similarity judgments. Preference patterns differed somewhat by age. (SKC)

Examines ways in which young children's decision making is affected by decision reversibility and decision importance. Results suggest that even young children are affected by manipulations of the decision situation, and that basic decision processes develop rapidly with age. (SKC)

Explores the development of children's ability to plan their drawings. Presents a conceptual framework and a process-structural model of the planning of drawings in childhood. Two experiments support the model's prediction of different patterns of results as a function of the working memory capacity of the subjects. (SKC)

Investigated whether children in kindergarten and grades 2 and 4 applied one- or two-dimensional rules in rating areas of rectangles, triangles, and ellipses. A majority of subjects produced judgments consistent with one of the rules. The findings contradict Piaget's claim that young children are limited to one-dimensional judgments. (SKC)

Used single-subject analyses to examine the developmental difficulty of the ulterior motive question (the backward inverse inference) in five- and seven-year-olds. Results suggest that children's difficulties with ulterior motive information result both from the abstract nature and the logical form of the task. (Author/SKC)

Six experiments examined the problems third graders, sixth graders, and college students had in gaining access to episodic information while retrieving information from memory. Results suggested that conceptual access problems vary with grade and that elaboration of the representation of an episode facilitates access. (Author/SKC)

Assessed J. F. Wohlwill's notion of way-stations in development by investigating developmental interdependencies among children's solutions to three proportionality tasks: a balance beam task, a probability judgment, and a juice-mixing task. (SKC)

Reports cross-linguistic differences in forward digit span among four-, five-, and six-year-old Chinese and American children. Examines several explanations for the superior performance of Chinese children, and finds that only a temporally limited store hypothesis was supported. (SKC)

In two experiments, 168 subjects aged 8-22 years performed visual search and memory search tasks (experiment 1) or memory search, mental rotation, analogical reasoning, and mental addition tasks (experiment 2). Increases with age in speeds of visual and memory search were described well by exponential functions. (SKC)

Examined changes in attitudes of 56 fifth grade students toward products, recall of product information, and the relationship between attitudes and recall. Found better recall for immediate rather than delayed testing. Attitudes remained relatively stable. (SKC)

Examined ways in which irrelevant variations within a stimulus set interfered with performances of second and fifth graders and adults in a selective attention task. Stimuli were constructed from spatially integrated dimensions in experiment 1 and spatially separated dimensions in experiment 2. Developmental differences in perceived structure were…