Five papers are presented from a 1982 conference on "Developmental and Clinical Aspects of Young Children's Play." In the first paper ("Cognitive Characteristics of Young Children's Play,") S. Rogers summarizes J. Piaget's theories on developmental stages, discusses the relationship of practice play to learning, and then…

The generally bleak achievement scores of deaf children are contrasted with the near normal reports of both IQ and conceptual development. (Author)

Discusses the findings of a recent study concerning the ability of an infant to see an object as a symbol. Reports that infants between 36 and 39 months old significantly outperformed informed infants between 30 and 32 months old on a symbolic task. (TW)

Reports on a study in which the symbolic relation between a scale model and the larger space that it represents was displayed by two groups of young children. Three-year-old children outperformed 2.5-year-olds in finding an object in a room after seeing an analogous object hidden in a model. (TW)

The development status of the communicatory behavior of 11 autistic children (4 to 9 years old) was assessed during free play sessions under two conditions: when teachers were present to direct the children's behavior and when teachers were absent and the children played among themselves. (Author)

This theoretical paper deals with a comparison of the structure and content of primary and secondary thought processes. While secondary processes (cognitive thinking) are effectively dealt with and taught in schools, there is little or no relating to the primary processes (affective thinking). This is due in part to teachers' own difficulties in…

Reports research which reveals the difficulty children have in understanding (1) the real purpose of written language and (2) the abstract, technical vocabulary of language study and reading. (SW)

"A new sort of concept attainment or decoding-encoding experimental paradigm based on the model is developed and an experiment on 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds is reported. (Author)

Describes how infants and toddlers learn to use action, object, picture, and word symbols, and offers suggestions for educators and caregivers to facilitate symbol use. Discusses how adults can introduce books to young children and enhance the symbolic aspect of the care and education program. (KB)

Debates the merits of the claim that "symbolic technologies push cognitive growth earlier and longer." The results of an assessment are presented that involved three adult male peasants (two literate, one nonliterate) living in rural China and their ability to recall the text of "The Lonesome Opossum." (25 references) (GLR)

Children's developing competence with symbolic representations was assessed in 3 studies. Study 1 examined the hypothesis that the production of imaginary symbolic objects in pantomime requires the simultaneous coordination of the dual representations of a dynamic action and a symbolic object. We explored this coordination of symbolic…

Explores the relations among combinatorial capacities in language, symbolic play, blockbuilding, and nonsemantic action sequences within a sample of 18- to 24-month-old children, as well as assessing the developmental level of a selected subset of concepts. (HOD)

Describes two studies in which young children were shown pictures that represented sound with postures and contexts, with conventions, and with combinations of information. Shows that the different types of pictorial representation of sound were not equivalent in their ability to evoke a correct interpretation. (HOD)