Assessment of conceptual level of 130 secondary students identified as gifted and 131 students from schools without gifted programs revealed significantly higher scores for gifted students. Findings suggested that such a measure of cognitive complexity may enhance identification of gifted students. (CL)

Many educators may or may not be familiar with the term constructivism, but probably recognize it as something to do with learning. The main tenet of constructivist learning is that people construct their own understanding of the world and in turn, their own knowledge. This ERIC Digest examines the constructivist view of learning and how it…

Non conserving first- and second-grade children were tested on conservation tasks. Eye movements were recorded during the response period for each task. Trained conservers showed more visual exploratory behavior and less perceptual centration than control subjects. (ST)

Investigated whether children will relinquish belief in Piagetian concepts upon presentation of disconfirming evidence. The conservation of weight concept extinguished more readily than transitivity of weight, and only for the latter was a developmental trend evident. (DP)

Preschool children were trained on a color relevant oddity problem by one of 3 methods: (1) increased salience of the oddity relationship, (2) instruction on solution rule, or (3) a combination of both. Generality of results were probed with a form-relevant transfer problem. (DP)

Paper present the findings from a study focusing on the relationship between levels of object concept construction and achievements in several other branches of functioning. (Author/CB)

What is questioned here is not the teaching of words but their premature imposition upon the child before he has acquired the concepts that underlie them. (Author)

Results indicate that (1) babies have better concept of person than object as permanent, but there are important individual differences, (2) rate of person permanence development is related to infant-mother attachment, and (3) rate of person permanence development affects object permanence development. (MH)

"A partial replication and extension of Bruner and Kenney's (1966) study of the concept of proportionality was run with 5- and 7-year-old children... Results demonstrated importance of avoiding verbal ambiguity in the investigation of nonverbal cognitive competence. (Author)

The study explored ways in which congenitally blind children group objects and words, revealing their level of cognitive development. Differences in patterns of response as a function of age and type of tasks are presented, and the implications of these findings for the education of this population are discussed. (Author/CL)

The study assessed object permanence construct performance in 20 severely handicapped students (4 to 14 years old) who were differentiated by treatment (prompt) condition and motor ability level. Results revealed a trait (motor ability) x treatment interaction. (Author/SB)

Studied the development of the concepts of energy conservation and entropy in 5- to 15-year-old children. Energy conservation was not well understood until about age 15. Entropy was understood by 9- to 15-year-olds when the concept was illustrated by the gradual mixing of differently colored, rolling marbles. (Author/DB)