Intellective functioning and strategy use in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

The cognitive development of children with either early or late onset insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) was investigated with tasks measuring intellectual ability, memory, and academic progress. In addition, children's perceptions of their competence and parents' perspectives on family functioning and their children's behavior were compared. It was found that children with IDDM scored within the normal range on standardized measures of intelligence and academic performance but evidenced some school difficulties, as reflected in subscale performance as well as in their need of remedial education services. Further, evidence was found to suggest deficiencies in children's use of strategies to organize and recall information, particularly for those with early onset of disease. Children's perceived self-competencies and parents' reports of family functioning were strikingly similar across groups. However, parents of those children whose illness began prior to age 5 reported their children to have poor attention spans and difficulty completing tasks.

Developing theories of the mind: children's and adults' concepts of mental activities.

8-year-olds', 10-year-olds', and adults' concepts of mental activities involved in acts of knowing were examined in an attempt to gain insight into developmental changes in underlying theories of mind. Subjects rated the similarity of how the mind is used in a variety of common activities, each of which primarily involved either memory, comprehension, attention, or inference. Analyses of conceptual structure revealed 2 developmental changes. Between 8 and 10 years of age, children came to see the most important relation among mental activities to be the degree to which they involved memory. Between 10 years of age and adulthood, Comprehension and Attention first appeared as distinct, coherent concepts. At all ages, Memory and Inference were seen as distinct types of mental activities. These findings suggested that a sophisticated understanding of the representational nature of the mind might not be acquired before the latter part of middle childhood and might be mediated by an understanding of the central role played by memory.

The effects of training specific mnemonics on the metamnemonic efficiency of retarded children.

The effects of training specific mnemonic skills on recall readiness were evaluated in 2 groups (MA 6, MA 8) of educable retarded children. Equal numbers of S at each age were instructed in an anticipation, rehearsal, or label strategy. On the first posttest (prompted), label training did not affect performance, but anticipation and rehearsal training facilitated recall readiness estimation for both younger and older children. However, on 2 subsequent posttests (unprompted, 2 days and 2 weeks after training), the younger S returned to their pretraining competency, while the older group maintained high performance. Consideration of observational data suggested that overt activity related to the trained mnemonic correlated with recall readiness efficiency for the older but not the younger group. Even though younger children produced the strategy, the failed to monitor its effectiveness. The implications of training specific mnemonic skills are discussed in relation to developing metamnemonic efficiency.