Outlines a theory of metaphor that posits varying levels of semantic processing and formalizes the levels in terms of kinds of semantic mapping operators. Predicted complexity of semantic mapping operators was tested using metaphor interpretations of 204 children aged 6-12 years and 24 adults. Processing score increased predictably with age. (SAK)

Hypothesized that young children have knowledge about their memory that they cannot articulate, but can reflect upon and use in problem-solving. Half of 48 kindergartners made prospective predictions about the number of words they would recall from a list, and the other half made concurrent, nonverbal predictions. Concurrent predictions were more…

Tested high- and average-achieving German fifth- and seventh-grade students' metacognitive knowledge, attributional beliefs, and performance on a sort recall test. Found ability-related differences in all three areas. Gifted children tended to attribute academic success to high ability while average children attributed success to effort. (SAK)

Three studies investigated second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students' understanding of class inclusion hierarchies and the relationship of such understanding to the ability to construct external representations for hierarchically structured information. Children understood hierarchical relations and relations expressed in tree diagrams as early…

Three experiments investigated children's typical errors in judging the truth of universally quantified conditional sentences containing "P and not-Q." The error survived on sentences referring to particular things. For second- and fifth-graders, the error survived for nonuniversally quantified conditionals, and for second-graders, the error…

Examined expressions of spatial knowledge of first-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children who performed model construction, verbal description, and route reversal tasks after mastering a pedestrian maze. Age-related differences were found in rate of learning the maze, and equivalent abilities in sequencing intersections and route reversal. (SAK)

Found eight-year-old British children less accurate at rejecting psuedohomophones than at rejecting ordinary nonwords in a lexical decision task. New Zealand children did not show the effect. Argues that the difference stems from British children's dependency on sounding out words. (SAK)

Four experiments investigated children's confusion regarding memories of what they said and what they imagined saying. The ability to distinguish imagined from actually uttered words increased with age, while performance in sentence completion tasks decreased. Metamemory suggestions did not affect elaborations. (SAK)

Measured covert shifts of visual attention of observers aged 6, 8, and 20 years in a speeded classification task. There were differences between children's and adults' attention orientation, target processing, and use of predictability in cues. (SAK)

Examined 10- to 13-year-old boys' development of knowledge structure and sport performance in tennis by comparing skills and knowledge of experts and novices. Experts focused on higher concepts and exhibited greater decision-making ability because of their more highly developed knowledge structure. (SAK)

Investigated the relationship between P300 or P3 event-related brain potential and cognitive development by assessing contributions of short-term memory to changes in component amplitude and latency in 5- to 14-year-old children. Results suggested that cognitive development is indexed by decreases in P300 latency. (SAK)

Investigated the ability of children aged five, six, and seven years to categorize rhyming words. Children were better able to group words that shared rimes (speech units) than those with common syllable onsets. Results suggest that children who are not yet able to read are aware of single phonemes when they coincide with onset. (SAK)

Four experiments examined the prominence of place and action representation in the story representations of second-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children and college students. Results suggested that place inconsistency is more important than action inconsistency in children's judgments of story adequacy except when the action involves the story theme.…

Examined the processing of speech and nonspeech sounds by 23 reading-disabled children. Children were required to identify and report the order of pairs of stimuli. Children had difficulty with very brief tones and stop consonant syllables at short interstimulus intervals. (SAK)

Three studies looked at kindergarten, third and sixth grade students' and adults' comprehension of different types of adaptation or contrast effects for weight and temperature. Results showed improvement up to college age and revealed the importance of using older children in studies of developing theories of the mind. (SAK)