A pilot project designed to improve the cognitive education program for 24 hearing impaired undergraduate preprofessionals incorporated aspects of instrumental enrichment (IE), an approach to enhance cognitive skills at the representational level. Ss participated in paper-and-pencil cognitive activities aimed at improving five skills: projection…

Topics briefly discussed include awareness or consciousness, recollection, reconstitution, and conceptualization; the nature of causal exploration and contradiction; and conservation. Examples are provided in relation to children's perception. For related articles, see TM 501 289 and 290. (RC)

A precise formulation of both cognitive structure and its related theory is provided through use of the mathematical theory of categories. Weaknesses and imprecision in cognitive theory are identified. Using category theory, cognitive structure and related Piagetian theoretic terms are precisely defined and some interrelationships are discussed.…

This brief overview of child language acquisition begins with a discussion of the affective and cognitive dimensions of the transition period from babbling to speech. Three theories of language acquisition--reinforcement theory, social learning theory, and "innate mechanism" theory--are reviewed. Several theories of the function of language,…

THE EFFECT OF SECURITY ON PERSONAL ADJUSTMENT, PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE STYLE, AND PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS WAS EVALUATED. THE SAMPLE WAS 249 STUDENTS ENROLLED IN A TEACHER EDUCATION, CHILD STUDY PROGRAM. PERFORMANCE ON MASLOW'S SECURITY INDEX INVENTORY DETERMINED AN INDIVIDUAL'S PLACEMENT IN ONE OF THREE GROUPS. ROKEACH'S DOGMATISM SCALE (FORM E)…

THE PROBLEM OF THE RESEARCH WAS TO STUDY THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERCEPTION AND COGNITION FACTORS IN THE GROWING CHILD. A CENTRAL TASK WAS TO DEVELOP AN INSTRUMENT FOR ASSESSING THE DEVELOPMENT OF SIZE CONSTANCY IN A PROCEDURE IN WHICH THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE ACTIVITY COULD BE EITHER CONTROLLED OR EVALUATED. USING A NUMBER OF CONSIDERATIONS, THE…

A group of 45 undergraduates discussed a moral issue with a confederate who had the same opinion (no-controversy) or opposite opinion (controversy). Subjects in the controversy conditions were induced to have a high level of defensiveness by a disconfirmation of personal competence or a low level of defensiveness by a confirmation. Subjects in…

The Soviet position on vocabulary and the relationships among intelligence, language, and culture holds that thoughts and words have different developmental roots and that there are more differences than likenesses between them. In this United States study, 105 students grouped by their having parents in three different employment categories were…

This study was designed to determine whether children's judgments of another's emotional state are based on egocentric or perspectivistic reasoning processes. A total of 91 children, between the ages of 3 and 10, at three grade levels, were shown a series of photographs containing conflicting situational and expressive cues to the pictured child's…

Value judgments play a role in evaluation by determining the anticipated behavioral outcomes, what is measured, techniques for measurement, and decision making. Value judgments are usually faced only at the decision-making stage. Methods to analyze values will hopefully be given more emphasis in future evaluation enterprises. Studies using…

This document describes the Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model of concept formation. According to the CLD analysis, a single concept is learned in the following successive levels of attainment: concrete, identity, classification, and formal. The four levels are considered applicable to concepts that are defined (or could be defined)…

A group of children were presented with several tasks, including the invention of a sleep machine and a machine to weigh elephants. The tasks were chosen to involve the children in coping with problems of a distinct character. A study of the children's drawings and interpretations shows that children's thinking ability is not very different from…

A series of studies on young children's use of the terms "same" and "different" are reported. The work began from the observation that young children could respond correctly to instructions involving "same" but were often incorrect in response to "different". This finding was replicated under a variety of experimental conditions and found to be…

The purpose of this sequence of a working paper intended for inclusion in a curriculum manual to be published in the future, is to provide the child with concrete experience, opportunities to represent things symbolically, and to learn the nature of symbols and how to read them. Examining objects, acting them out, and experimenting with them, the…

The primary objective of this study was to compare problem solving performance among formal operational, transitional, and concrete operational individuals with the effect of relative field independence taken into account within each of these three cognitive developmental levels. Secondarily, the study explored whether a developmental relationship…