According to the stage-learning hypothesis, children's ability to learn is constrained by their pretraining stages of cognitive development. Some procedures for obtaining unconfounded tests of this hypothesis are developed in this paper, and some applications to factorial experiments are considered. (Author/BW)

In response to the previous article, Whitehurst defends his article on imitation; it is different from Beilin's structural terms, and significant because much is known about imitation. Zimmerman challenges Beilin's interpretation of Piaget's structural assumptions. Brody maintains that children's qualitative changes in moral reasoning are best…

Undergraduates discussed a moral issue with a confederate who had the same opinion (no controversy) or opposite opinion (controversy) within either a cooperative or a competitive context. Subjects in the controversy conditions indicated more conceptual conflict, engaged in more information seeking, and were more accurate in taking the cognitive…

Beilin examines the previous three papers. In explaining cognitive development, social learning theory fails to account for rule invariance in the face of capricious and informationally impoverished experience, does not explain the acquisition of abstract rule systems, and offers less flexibility than Piaget's explanations based on operations and…

As an example, two aspects of children's conservation are explained: decalages and the shift from perceptual to quantitative cues. This approach, relative to structuralist formulation, involves cognitive factors such as prior learning, as well as impinging social experience. It is compatible with Piaget's theory, yet simpler and more flexible. (CP)

The author clarifies common misunderstanding about the theory that social learning is concerned with shaping of children's moral behavior through differential reinforcement, which portrays children as mere mimics of socialization agents. Social learning is defined in relation to the cognitive developmental approach to moral development and its…

Observation of practices in V. V. Davydov's laboratory school suggests that students proceed from concrete example to abstract generalization--rather than from abstract to concrete, as Davydov has claimed. (GDC)

The foundations of the cognitive developmental curriculum movement, and its recommendations for curriculum sequencing, curriculum content and teaching strategies are critically reviewed. The grounds for all proposals are purely theoretical; actual data either contradict specific proposals or provide no direct evidence. (Author/CP)

Soviet teaching experiments, based on the research of P. Ia. Galperin and of V. V. Davydov, are described, in which children are taught abstract concepts before they are provided with concrete examples. (GDC)