Subjects of this study were 144 White, middle-class children in kindergarten, first, second, and fourth grades. Children were interviewed individually about their explanations for both academic and social outcomes and their evaluations of their own outcomes. Self-evaluations became less positive in both domains and less similar across domains with…

Assesses the degree of difficulty parents attribute to specific socialization tasks; explores the relation between parents' perceived difficulty and children's perceived and actual competence in these two domains; and determines whether the ease or difficulty of these child rearing tasks, as perceived by parents, varies as a function of the…

Tested 32 4-year-olds and 32 6-year-olds for free and cued recall following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions and assessed them for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. Younger children recalled more items under sort-and-remember, whereas no recall differences were found for the…

Investigated secondary-level students' (N=66) understanding of three-dimensional structures in biology. Results suggest that student performance is highly correlated with age, scientific ability, and sex. Suggestions for instructional improvement in spatial relationships are offered. (ML)

Critical thinking alone is reactive, in that it lacks the creative elements necessary for social progress. Accordingly, the author has developed the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) program to teach the two aspects of perception: breadth (developing a perceptual map) and change (using the map to discover solutions). (TE)

Defines and discusses instructional games in terms of their uses in education. Nine categories are suggested for assessing games: instructional development, skills development, perceptual development, development of social awareness, pupil's readiness, use, design quality, adaptability, and flexibility and validation. (MS)

Cultural, ecological, and educational variables in relation to magical thinking, perceptual flexibility, and logical reasoning seem to be crucial in development of children's judgments and explanations in conservation tasks. (Author)

Describes a series of exercises designed to develop student's perceptual skills and to improve the processes of comparing, describing, and developing subsets. Includes suggestions for adapting the exercises into science lessons, providing tips for developing each into complete units. Units include human-made objects, leaves, shells, rocks, and…

Experiments on the cognitive and perceptual development of three- to seven-year-old Soviet children are described, especially the work of L. A. Venger, N. N. Poddyakov, and D. B. El'Konin. Visual-action and visual-image thinking are illustrated. (GDC)

Assesses children's understanding of the impact of length, noise, age, and time on performance of three cognitive activities: memory, communication, and attention. Subjects were 18 preschool children and 18 first graders. (MP)

Used a Piagetian model to examine five 4-year-olds' perceptions of the reality of television characters. Found that children understand that television images are representations with varying degrees of relationship to reality and that children used a number of strategies for judging the extent to which characters were "real," such as…

Examines the development of young children's analysis of spatial patterns--specifically, hierarchical letter and geometric forms. Suggests that although children as young as four years of age demonstrated substantial analytic competence, their ability to integrate the parts of the spatial array to form a coherent whole was weaker and more easily…