We look at the effect of evidence and prior beliefs on exploration, explanation and learning.
In Experiment 1, we tested children both with and without differential prior beliefs about …

A central and recurrent theme in developmental psychology is the question whether
development proceeds continuously or discontinuously. This question is difficult to answer …

Tying together almost four decades of neo-Piagetian research, Cognitive Development
provides a unique critical analysis and a comparison of concepts across neo-Piagetian …

Cognitive development can be characterized by a sequence of increasingly complex rules
or strategies for solving problems. Our work focuses on the development of children's …

Three experiments investigated the effect of complexity on children's understanding of a
beam balance. In nonconflict problems, weights or distances varied, while the other was …

A problem of Siegler's (1981) rule assessment methodology is that the assignment of
subjects to rules takes place by an arbitrary criterion. This problem can be solved by latent …

The experiments described in the lead articles replicate findings from previous studies of
development of knowledge about balance scales, add several new findings, and raise four …

Periods of relatively stable, rule‐like behavior alternated with short transition periods
characterize cognitive development on reasoning tasks like the balance scale task. Each …

The article discusses the commentary regarding statistics and measurement. It is argued that
the classification procedure in the Rule Assessment Methodology (RAM) is suboptimal due …

Analysis of accuracy of responses to balance scale problems gives a global idea of the
cognitive processes that underlie problem-solving behavior on this task. We show that …