From Educational Leadership Research Supplement, volume 2, number 4, March 1969. Investigation supported by U.S. Public Health Service Grants, 5-R11 MH 01096 and 7-R11 MH 02045.

Evaluative intervention studies which have examined the potential of imaginative play to foster young children's cognitive and social development provide the focus of this literature review. Four criteria were used to select the studies: (1) the study's focus was on the use of imaginative play to foster cognitive growth; (2) the studies were…

This study investigated the cognitive and behavioral functions associated with iron deficiency anemia in infants and toddlers and the short-term effects of therapy on such behaviors. Subjects were 24 iron deficient and anemic infants, 9 to 26 months old. The subjects were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. The Bayley Scales of…

Presented is a theory of learning handicaps based on psychoeducational and developmental considerations. Identified are five of the author's biases about remediation such as the tendency for teachers to continue remediation beyond the point of usefulness. Proposed is the existence of five task requirements such as attending to the task, attaching…

Previously published articles on child development and learning are collected in this textbook for college students. Topics include cognitive development, achievement behavior, and social development. (SBT)

Twenty-four papers prepared for a conference on Piagetian theory and its implications for the helping professions are included in this report. The conference included the following symposia: (a) Present Status of Formal Operations, (b) Implications of Piaget for the Development of Curriculum, (c) Arithmetic and the Development of Logical…

Research has indicated that across the second to fifth grade range, there was evidence to suggest a difference between the oldest and youngest groups in the memory representations which directed recall of logically related sentences. The developmental trend was from what seemed to be an unstable and fragmentary memory rperesentation, which…

The development of children's humor is described, focusing on the cognitive aspect of what is funny and how this relates to children's intellectual growth. Cognitive elements that facilitate children's humor are identified as: (1) the ability to grasp incongruities, (2) the presence of an intellectual challenge, (3) timing, (4) novelty, and (5) a…

A proposed study of the differences in the way children perceive, approach, and behave in problem-solving situations is described. The behavioral measure to be used is "glancing," which has been related to outerdirectedness. Children will be given two sets of two puzzles to put together. On the basis of the number of glances and the situation in…

The development of the concept of seriation was studied for 415 children, ranging in age from 3 to 9 years. The subjects were required to learn to identify the larger or smaller object in a two stimulus series, the smallest or middle-sized object in a three stimulus series, and the largest or next to the smallest in a four stimulus series. The end…

Learning of the concept of horizontality by fourth graders was investigated. Comparisons by age and sex were made. (BB)

To determine the impact of child abuse on the developmental functioning of infants, 30 cases of physically abused children (2 to 29.8 months old) were compared to a reference group of 30 nonabused children. (Author/SBH)

Honest discussion of the fact of death with children is essential in helping them to accept and face it. (JD)

Notes that the poor performance of malnourished children appears to be a part of a larger pattern in which vigorous efforts are made to keep children from crying by giving them heavily sugared food, carrying them most of the time, and providing very little verbal stimulation. (Author/AM)

Evaluates a system of toy classification developed to improve the assessment of gender differences in cognitive and social development. One hundred adults rated 50 children's toys on 122 "functional" dimensions. Results showed that these toys could be reliably described according to multidimensional similarities, and confirmed that toys considered…