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The authors investigated risk taking and underlying information use in 13- to 16- and 17- to 19-year-old adolescents and in adults in 4 experiments, using a novel dynamic risk-taking task, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). The authors investigated risk taking under differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes with 2 versions of the CCT, constituting the most direct test of a dual-system explanation of adolescent risk taking in the literature so far. The "hot" CCT was designed to trigger more affective decision making, whereas the "cold" CCT was designed to trigger more deliberative decision making. Differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes in the 2 CCT versions was established by self-reports and assessment of electrodermal activity. Increased adolescent risk taking, coupled with simplified information use, was found in the hot but not the cold condition. Need-for-arousal predicted risk taking only in the hot condition, whereas executive functions predicted information use in the cold condition. Results are consistent with recent dual-system explanations of risk taking as the result of competition between affective processes and deliberative cognitive-control processes, with adolescents' affective system tending to override the deliberative system in states of heightened emotional arousal. (Contains 8 figures, 4 tables and 18 footnotes.)

This study is concerned with the development of children's intuitive understanding of nonlinear processes. The ability to estimate linear and exponential growth was examined in 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old children and adults (N=160). Whereas linear growth was judged correctly at all ages, estimations of exponential growth were in line with mathematically correct values only in 13-year-olds and adults. However, 9-year-olds already judged the result of exponential growth as being significantly higher than that of linear growth, and even a remarkable proportion of 7-year-olds showed such discrimination between the two types of functions. Results point to the existence of an early intuitive knowledge about the characteristics of nonlinear growth, long before those functions are taught in school.

In a mental rotation task, children 5 and 6 years of age and adults had to decide as quickly as possible if a photograph of a hand showed a left or a right limb. The visually presented hands were left and right hands in palm or in back view, presented in four different angles of rotation. Participants had to give their responses with their own hands either in a regular, palms-down posture or in an inverted, palms-up posture. For both children and adults, variation of the posture of their own hand had a significant effect. Reaction times were longer the more awkward it was to bring their own hand into the position shown in the stimulus photograph. These results, together with other converging evidence, strongly suggest that young children's kinetic imagery is guided by motor processes, even more so than adults'.

Two experiments examined developmental changes in reasoning about intensive quantities--predicting mixture intensity of pairs of liquids with different intensities of red color. Results showed that cognitive averaging in this domain developed late and slowly. Predominating up to 12 years was an extensivity bias, a strong tendency to use rules that held for extensive but not intensive quantities. (Author/KB)

Six- to 14-year olds added "winning" beads to an urn of "losing" beads in order to generate equal probabilities of choosing a winning bead from each of two urns. Found that 13-year olds integrated the two dimensions (winning and losing beads), the youngest children relied on one dimension, and 9- to 10-year olds partly combined the two dimensions. (BC)

Three studies investigated the analogical reasoning of 127 children in a physics task using an analogy generated by the children. Found that 9- to 10-year olds showed spontaneous transfer in both negative and positive analogy training conditions, while 7-year olds showed no transfer in the positive analogy condition but transferred only selected aspects of the correct solution. (KB)

The authors investigated risk taking and underlying information use in 13- to 16- and 17- to 19-year-old adolescents and in adults in 4 experiments, using a novel dynamic risk-taking task, the Columbia Card Task (CCT). The authors investigated risk taking under differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes with 2 versions of the CCT, constituting the most direct test of a dual-system explanation of adolescent risk taking in the literature so far. The 'hot' CCT was designed to trigger more affective decision making, whereas the 'cold' CCT was designed to trigger more deliberative decision making. Differential involvement of affective versus deliberative processes in the 2 CCT versions was established by self-reports and assessment of electrodermal activity. Increased adolescent risk taking, coupled with simplified information use, was found in the hot but not the cold condition. Need-for-arousal predicted risk taking only in the hot condition, whereas executive functions predicted information use in the cold condition. Results are consistent with recent dual-system explanations of risk taking as the result of competition between affective processes and deliberative cognitive-control processes, with adolescents' affective system tending to override the deliberative system in states of heightened emotional arousal. Keywords: risk taking, adolescence, affective and deliberative decision making, dual system, cognitive control Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0014983.supp

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.00998.x Byline: Mirjam Ebersbach (1), Friedrich Wilkening (1) Abstract: This study is concerned with the development of children's intuitive understanding of nonlinear processes. The ability to estimate linear and exponential growth was examined in 7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-old children and adults (N=160). Whereas linear growth was judged correctly at all ages, estimations of exponential growth were in line with mathematically correct values only in 13-year-olds and adults. However, 9-year-olds already judged the result of exponential growth as being significantly higher than that of linear growth, and even a remarkable proportion of 7-year-olds showed such discrimination between the two types of functions. Results point to the existence of an early intuitive knowledge about the characteristics of nonlinear growth, long before those functions are taught in school. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Zurich Article note: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mirjam Ebersbach, University of Leuven, Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology, Vesaliusstraat 2, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Electronic mail may be sent to mirjam.ebersbach@ped.kuleuven.be.

Investigated whether and how children age 5 to 7 employed counting to measure and integrate the duration of two events, which were accompanied by metronome beats for half the children. The rhythm enhanced use of counting in younger children. By age 7, most counted spontaneously, using sensible counting strategies. (SKC)

Two experiments were conducted to study developmental changes in the integration of stimulus dimensions in an area judgment task. Following functional measurement methodology, absolute judgments on a linear graphic rating scale were obtained. (Author/SS)

This study investigated the principles that children and adolescents rely on when allocating a resource fairly. In a series of three experiments, 51 Swiss children (aged 7 and 9 years) and 309 German children (aged 6, 9, and 15 years) participated. A different situational context was presented in each experiment, where luck, need and effort of two protagonists were systematically varied. Primary-school children relied mainly on need when making distributive justice judgements. Effort became more prominent as the allocation principle in adolescence. Equality occurred rarely in all age groups. Integrational capacity and the ability to differentiate between the three situational contexts increased from childhood to adolescence. The data suggest the conclusion that the development of distributive justice decisions has both generalized and context-specific components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children aged six, eight, and ten years were asked to decide which of two devices—one deterministically functioning and the other probabilistically functioning—they wanted to keep a record of in order to find out whether or not the device worked properly. The devices were a ball-dropping device (deterministic) and a spinner (probabilistic). To investigate the devices, the children were asked to observe—and potentially record—only as many events as necessary in order to determine the function of each device with sufficient certainty. Children investigated both devices first in a rigged and then in a natural state. In Experiment 1, only the ten year olds showed a good understanding of a record's relative usefulness for investigating the functioning of the probabilistic in preference to the deterministic device. Younger children did not adapt the record keeping to the different kinds of functioning. This might have been related to their difficulties in understanding the deterministic character of the ball-dropping device, therefore its deterministic character was made more salient in Experiment 2. However, this manipulation did not change the results. In both experiments, only the ten year olds appeared to have a good understanding of the fact that a decision about the probabilistic nature of an event sequence requires a relatively large number of observations and therefore, if faced with a choice, a record is more useful for the investigation of probabilistic than deterministic phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a mental rotation task, children 5 and 6 years of age and adults had to decide as quickly as possible if a photograph of a hand showed a left or a right limb. The visually presented hands were left and right hands in palm or in back view, presented in four different angles of rotation. Participants had to give their responses with their own hands either in a regular, palms-down posture or in an inverted, palms-up posture. For both children and adults, variation of the posture of their own hand had a significant effect. Reaction times were longer the more awkward it was to bring their own hand into the position shown in the stimulus photograph. These results, together with other converging evidence, strongly suggest that young children's kinetic imagery is guided by motor processes, even more so than adults’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to investigate children’s and adults’ knowledge of time and speed in action and judgment tasks. Participants had to set the speed of a moving car to a new speed so that it would reach a target line at the same time as a reference car moving at a higher speed and disappearing in a tunnel at the midway point. In Experiment 1 (24 10–year–olds, 24 adults), children’s and adults’ speed adjustments followed the normative pattern when responses had to be graded linearly as a function of the car’s initial speed. In a non–linear condition, only adults’ action responses corresponded with the normative function. Simplifying the task by shortening the tunnel systematically in Experiment 2 (24 10–year–olds, 24 adults) enabled children to grade the speeds adequately in the action conditions only. Adults now produced normative response patterns in both judgment and action. Whether people show linearization biases was thus shown to depend on the interaction of age, task demands and response mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates children's analogical reasoning in a physics task. Details on analogical reasoning; Reference to laboratory studies on the development of children's analogical reasoning skills; Details on the study.