Four experiments investigated six-year-olds' understanding of the say-mean distinction in referential speech. Concludes that young children are ineffective at using others' informational states in deciding whether a literal or nonliteral message interpretation is appropriate. (RH)

Examined the role of individual differences in working memory and lexical access in age- and reading skill-related differences in performance on phonological synthesis tasks. The performance of 28 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students with normal reading skills, and that of 28 reading-disabled second graders, was compared under four…

Investigates preschool children's ability (n = 30) to discriminate age, and subject's use of different facial areas in ranking facial photographs into age order. Results indicate subjects from 3 to 9 years can successfully rank the photos. Compared with other facial features, the eye region was most important for success in the age ranking task.…

Two experiments tested the assertion that development of quantitative knowledge follows a U-shaped course with an early stage of conservation based on functional significance. Tested three age groups of children from three to six years. Results suggest the assertion is unwarranted and reveal that performance in younger children is best interpreted…

Investigates the effect of television-mediated aggression and real-life aggression on the behavior of Lebanese children. Observations made of 48 boys and 48 girls six to eight years of age revealed that boys as a group were more aggressive than girls and exhibited more imitative aggression. Girls were more violent after viewing real-life violence.…

Compares monocular depth perception with binocular depth perception in five- to seven-month-old infants. Reaching preferences (dependent measure) observed in the monocular condition indicated sensitivity to monocular depth information. Binocular viewing resulted in a far more consistent tendency to reach for the nearer object. (Author)

Tests 107 kindergarten and first grade children to study the order-irrelevance principle. Willingness to arbitrarily assign tags is a developmentally less sophisticated ability than--and hence does not necessarily imply--an ability to predict that differently ordered counts produce the same cardinal designation. (Author)

Presents evidence relevant to three models of the way young children perform N-term series tasks: the labeling model, the sequential-contiguity model, and the ordered array or image model. Reexamines children's ability to learn sets of premises which can be assembled into an ordered array. Participating were children three to seven years of age.

Examines the effects of integration complexity on the ability of child and adult listeners to integrate information. Increases in complexity adversely affected children's more than adults' resolution integration. The children's integration performance was affected by theme discontinuity and conferential complexity. (Author/AS)

Discusses the distinction between species-typical (elicitation) and operant reinforcement interpretations of infant/adult social interaction; considers procedural and analytic components of Poulson's 1983 paper (v36 p471-89); and clarifies differences in Poulson's interpretation and the author's interpretation of the vocal conditioning studies of…

Aims to clarify the distinction between elicitation and reinforcement discussed in Bloom (1984); to make explicit theoretical and methodological assumptions about the experimental analysis of infant behavior as shown in components of Poulson (1983); and to clarify differences in interpretation of other infant vocal conditioning research.…

Examines the development of word recognition skills of 80 school children (grades two-four). Good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high frequency words from visual input alone and simultaneously expand and consolidate spelling sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding.…

Investigates distance distortion in children's cognitive maps by testing 129 school children (second, fourth, sixth graders). Results: (1) paths with a large number of segments are perceived as longer, (2) distances along paths with few segments are underestimated, (3) distances along paths with many segments may be overestimated, and (4) younger…

Examines reasons why second and fourth grade students use cues relatively ineffectively to retrieve episodic information. Four experiments tested the hypothesis that retrieval cue effectiveness varies with the extent to which cue information describes event information in memory. Results showed that problems of discriminability and…

Aims to assess relationships between phonological tasks, determine their degree of convergence, and investigate the predictive power of different tasks. Ten phonological awareness tasks were administered to 58 kindergarten children whose reading abilities were assessed one year later. Seven measures were moderately related to reading ability and…