CONCEPTS OF MENTAL ACTIVITIES AND VERBS IN CHILDREN OF HIGH AND AVERAGE VERBAL INTELLIGENCE

In order to understand the contribution of increased cognitive abiliti es to children's naive theories of mind, children of high and average verbal intelligence rated their understanding of the interrelationship s between and among mental activities and verbs. In Study 1, participa nts rated the similarity of pairs of prototypical mental activity scen arios according to the ''way you use your mind'' in each one. The scen arios represented the categories of list memory, prospective memory, c omprehension, selective attention, inference, planning, comparison, an d recognition. In Study 2, participants cited the similarity of cognit ive and affective verbs (e.g. decide, memorize, love, worry). Multidim ensional scaling and clustering analyses indicated very similar organi zation and structure of concepts in children of high and average verba l intelligence in both studies. These results add to the growing body of literature suggesting that metacognitive development and its associ ation with intelligence differ depending on the type of metacognition being examined (Alexander, Carr & Schwanenflugel, 1995).