| Abstract: | A longitudinal experiment examined (1) the development of the relationship between physical maturation rate and cognitive performance as children reach adolescence and (2) the specific components of cognitive processing that are most closely linked to physical maturation rate. 78 3rd-grade girls and 67 5th-grade boys were examined prepubertally on a battery of cognitive ability and perceptual asymmetry measures (including the PPVT) and reexamined 2 yrs later when secondary sex characteristics could be evaluated as a measure of pubertal status. At that time, extreme groups of 10 early and 10 late maturers for each sex were selected for examination on a more detailed battery (including the WISC—R Coding and Block Design subtests and the Stroop Color-Word test) designed to assess specific components of cognitive processing. Although there were no maturation-related differences in performance on the cognitive-ability tasks, differences were detected on the cognitive-process tasks: Early and late maturers of both sexes exhibited differences in their use of visual information, phonemic perception, and presence of a recency effect in the serial-memory task. (53 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
