The basic character of literacy is the creation of objects to regulate interactions with the physical and social worlds. "Remediation" means a shift in the way that mediating devices regulate coordination with the environment. If research on reading is to make a difference, it will have to start with an understanding of how contemporary…

Through longitudinal studies of 200 children being reared in alternative family styles or in traditional two-parent families, researchers investigated family values and the way they are transmitted through child-rearing practices. (CS)

Solidly based experimental and experiential evidence indicates that play can serve as a powerful support and energizer in the early childhood education curriculum. (CS)

An analysis is provided of the effects of poverty on child development and later intellectual competence, in terms of goal seeking and problem solving, use of language, and patterns of social reciprocity. Implications are charted for public policy and for the conduct of early childhood education. (EH)

Part I of a 3-part report. See also AA 501 769 through AA 501 772.

The paper examines the theoretical constructs that underlie currently used curricula for young handicapped children and suggests guidelines for selecting and evaluating curricula. Three developmental perspectives are reviewed: the age related developmental milestones identified by A. Gesell and adhered to by diagnostic prescriptive advocates, the…

In this study, six children were selected by age and were administered Piagetian tasks designed to measure their level of cognitive development against the hierarchical structuring of age/achievement posited by Jean Piaget. The task administrations are presented in detail with descriptions of the subject and the tasks, a verbatim report, and the…

A study was undertaken to investigate which of ten constructions are available to children of various ages for expressing conditionality. A modified sentence completion test based on use of the ten constructions was designed, field-tested, and administered individually to 20 students in each of five grades: kindergarten and grades two, four, six,…

Intended for graduate students in special education, the text presents seven author contributed papers dealing with theoretical issues in the field. M. Faust and W. Faust ("Cognitive Constructing: Levels of Processing and Developmental Change") consider cognitive processing from a developmental perspective. In "Memory Processes in Exceptional…

Researchers have studied both competence levels and competence motivation in children. Competence motivation is usually assessed in terms of children's spontaneous preferences for optimal cognitive challenge, but actual spontaneous preferences in free play have seldom been used to assess motivation. In fact, competence level and competence…

Piaget and Inhelder, in The Child's Conception of Space (1956), described the coordination of viewpoints (CV) spatial operation as one of the prerequisites to the development of the rotation and development (RD) spatial operation. This study investigated this developmental dependency notion and also evaluated the effects of age and sex on the…

This document contains the three papers that comprised the Head Start Research Seminar No. 5 on Intervention in Family Life. The main thrust of this seminar is the investigation of family and parent characteristics that influence the academic performance of young children. Robert Hess, in the opening paper, summarizes the information available on…

This ecological study is one part of a broad research effort to understand the backgrounds and characteristics of culturally disadvantaged children. The study attempted to provide empirical data which could be used to describe differences in home environments and behavior of three young children from deprived and non-deprived homes. Focus was on…

In this book Piaget considers the way children learn about the world. He addresses such questions as the following: How does a child learn to perceive the world around him? How, for example, does he learn that by grasping an object, he can pull it towards him, or that a ball of clay, flattened, is no smaller than it was before? How does he learn…

This paper focuses on the importance of play for a child's physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development. Three major purposes of the report are: (1) to persuade those concerned with the education of young children that play is an essential activity for children's well-being and should be facilitated at home and in the classroom, (2) to…