Children’s Development of Mental Imagery

Photo by Lina Kivaka on Pexels.com Mental imagery or mental representation is defined as our ability to see, hear, feel, smell or taste something in our “mind’s eye”. It resembles a perceptual experience that occurs without the external stimulus actually being present (Boerma, Mol, & Jolles, 2016). We use mental imagery all the time, like …

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Piecing Together the Puzzle: What Jigsaws Reveal About Child Development

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya on Pexels.com Playing with jigsaw puzzles is believed to have a number of benefits on children’s cognitive development – especially in areas such as hand – eye coordination, spatial awareness, problem – solving, and in more specific abilities such as maths. But how do children actually learn to complete a jigsaw, …

Theory of Mind: I Know That You Don’t Know

The children in the video are doing a task called: false belief task. During the task a participant is told a story with the following outline:   A child has an item they want (for example chocolate) that is placed in a specific location (for example a red cupboard) they can see. The child then leaves the …

Children’s Memory Development

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com Memory functioning gradually develops with increasing age. This is because as we age, we are learning more strategies, such as rehearsing or organisation of facts, to store and remember things and events. Furthermore, the older we get, the more general processing abilities (like the processing power of a computer) …

Children’s Development of Executive Function

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com Executive function describes a set of abilities humans need in their everyday life. It involves processes in our brains that make us focus our attention to certain things, help us plan, manage and do various activities at one time without being distracted by the things around us or other thoughts …

Duck or Rabbit? What Ambiguous Figures Reveal About Children’s Perception

Ambiguous figures – pictures that have two different interpretations, such as the duck - rabbit pictured above, and the popular image of blue – white dress that circulated the internet a few years ago have interested researchers for decades. The physical properties of these figures remain constant and unchanged, but two distinct interpretations are possible. …