Developmental Psychology

Rovee-Collier, Carolyn

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.147pmid: N/A

The problem of integrating new information with old is fundamental to the development of cognition. The solution to this problem underlies establishment of the knowledge base, learning, category formation and expansion, the modification and selective strengthening of memories, language acquisition, access to information after very long intervals, and individual differences in a number of different domains. This article introduces a new construct, the time window,that characterizes when and how such integration occurs. It describes the characteristics of time windows, evidence for them, factors that affect them, research illustrating their generality, and their theoretical and applied implications.

Thomas, Hoben

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.170pmid: N/A

B. Hodkin (1987)proposed a model for estimating the proportions of 3 possible solution strategies used by children in their responses to class inclusion items: guessing, subclass comparison, and inclusion logic. The model considers guessing, which if not modeled would result in estimates of young children's class inclusion understanding that would be seriously inflated as she demonstrated. However, the model assumes children are consistent in their task strategy. Hodkin's data suggest this assumption is incorrect; moreover, changes in task strategies that occur with development are not revealed by her model. A more general model, of which Hodkin's model is a special case, reveals that the youngest children's responses display mixed response strategies. The results illustrate the need to consider richer models that allow for assessing changing strategies with development. Efficient model parameter estimates and their variances are provided for both models.

Morgan, James L.; Bonamo, Katherine M.; Travis, Lisa L.

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.180pmid: N/A

Previous work has shown that recasts may be contingent responses to children's early ungrammaticality. On this basis, it has been claimed that recasts provide negative evidence, thereby offsetting the need for linguistic constraints in theories of acquisition. This study explores whether children exploit negative evidence putatively provided by recasts by examining whether parental recasts are associated with children's recovery from particular overgeneralization errors. Data from longitudinal investigations of 2 common syntactic errors reveal that recasts are related to children's subsequent grammaticality. However, contrary to what would be expected if recasts serve as corrections, the data show that recasts are negative leading indicators of grammaticality. Finally, correctionand negative evidenceare examined and are shown to be nonequivalent. Therefore, corrections in whatever form they might exist can offset only a limited subset of proposed innate constraints on language acquisition.

Zahn-Waxler, Carolyn

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.197pmid: N/A

McCune, Lorraine

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.198pmid: N/A

A theoretical sequence of cognitive developments is proposed as influencing representational play and language in the second year of life. Scale analysis supported an ordinal sequence of play developments for 102 children (cross-sectional sample, 8 to 24 months of age) and a comparable longitudinal sample of 10 children, despite some inconsistency of temporal placement and overlap of onset time. Structural and temporal links between play and language indicate the influence of developing mental representation, but variation in timing of developments points to the influence of intervening variables. A dynamic systems perspective (E. Thelen, 1989)provides a useful descriptive framework for the transition to language.

Teasley, Stephanie D.

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.207pmid: N/A

The role of talk in children's peer collaborations using a computer-based scientific reasoning task was investigated in this study. Seventy 4th-grade students were assigned to work alone or with a same-sex partner for 1 20-min session. Half of the children in each condition (alone and dyads) were asked to talk as they worked, and half were not. Significant performance differences between groups were present, although there were no significant differences in experimental activity. Talk dyads generated better hypotheses than no-talk alones and no-talk dyads, and talk alones did not generate better hypotheses than no-talk alones. Analyses of children's talk showed that talk dyads produced more talk overall and more interpretive types of talk than talk alones. The importance of peer collaborations as a social context that supports interpretive cognitive processes was discussed.

Bisanz, Jeffrey; Morrison, Frederick J.; Dunn, Maria

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.221pmid: N/A

The influence of school- and age-related variables was examined separately on 2 tasks involving elementary quantitative skills: conservation of number and mental addition. Performance on these tasks was compared by using a cutoffdesign with 3 groups of kindergarten and Grade 1 children who differed in age but not amount of schooling (grade), in schooling but not age, or in both age and schooling. The effects of age and schooling were distinct. On conservation of number, performance improved as a function of age but not schooling. On mental arithmetic, accuracy improved with schooling rather than age, but children's use of various solution procedures (e.g., retrieval, counting) was not influenced by schooling. Thus, in the domain of elementary mathematical skills, the influence of schooling can be very specific, and age-related variables other than schooling play an important role in the development of elementary mathematical skills. Results illustrate the utility of the cutoff design for investigating instructional and developmental influences on cognitive development.

Deary, Ian J.

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.237pmid: N/A

Inspection time (IT) is an index of speed of perceptual processing that correlates at moderate levels with tests of mental ability. A key issue has been the question of the direction of causation: is IT causal to individual differences in intellectual ability, or is a fast IT a consequence of having a high IQ? The direction of causation was assessed by administering auditory inspection time (AIT) tests and tests of verbal and nonverbal ability to 104 school children at age 11, and 2 years later at 13 years. Three competing structural equation models were tested by using the cross-lagged panel data: that AIT at age 11 causes later IQ; that IQ at age 11 causes later AIT; and that there is equal reciprocal causation. Various goodness-of-fit indexes indicated that the first model was the most acceptable. AIT accounted for about 6% of the variance in cognitive ability 2 years later.

Brainerd, C. J.; Reyna, V. F.

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.251pmid: N/A

Reported developmental declines in forgetting rates may be artifacts of correlated individual differences in learning rates or in the number of learning opportunities that children receive. This possibility was investigated in 2 experiments by using causal models that implemented possible relationships among age, forgetting rates, learning rates, and learning opportunities. The artifact hypothesis was disconfirmed. Forgetting rates declined markedly between early and late childhood when individual differences in learning rates and learning opportunities were factored out. The results were interpreted in terms of fuzzy-trace theory's proposals about the development of verbatim and gist memory systems.

Sophian, Catherine; Wood, Amy M.; Vong, Keang I.

doi: 10.1037/0012-1649.31.2.263pmid: N/A

Two experiments examined preschool children's ability to draw inferences about numerosity from correspondences between sets. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-old children made numerical inferences about a hidden set from their own counts of a corresponding visible set and also from numerical information about that set stated by the experimenter. Experiment 2 contrasted a count condition with a move condition, in which children's attention was not explicitly drawn to the numerosity of the visible set. Again, children were able to make numerical inferences as early as 3 years of age. However, differences between the 2 conditions implicate production deficiencies in young children's use of counting as a problem-solving strategy when they are not explicitly told to count.