This study examined the social organization of Guatemalan Mayan fathers' engagement with school-age children in a group problem-solving task. Twenty-nine groups of Mayan fathers varying in extent of Western schooling and 3 related school-age children (ages 6-12 years) constructed a puzzle together. Groups with fathers with 0 to 3 grades more often…

Two experiments were conducted to examine developmental changes from middle childhood to adolescence in metaretrieval plans offered to solve different retrieval problems. (Author/JMB)

Resistance to endorsing peer-sponsored misbehavior, judgments of the wrongness of such behavior, and attitudes toward self, mother, father, peers, and adults were measured for 174 children in four grades. The results support Bronfenbrenner's findings that American children resist more under the parent and less under the peer than under the neutral…

Three experiments explored the development of formal logical reasoning between Grades 4 and 12 and the role of semantic content in the solution of Wason's (1966) selection task problems. Results suggest that formal logical reasoning is not generally present during the fourth or sixth grades and that formal logical competence becomes available in…

Investigated relation between development of understanding principles that govern a problem and of mathematical strategies used to solve it. Subjects were college students and 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 11th graders. The pattern of estimated answers provided a measure of intuitive understanding of task principles. Understanding an intuitive principle was…

Studied 237 fifth-, eighth- and eleventh-graders to determine their knowledge of effective strategies for dealing with everyday problems. Strategy effectiveness was dependent on the context of the problem. Age and gender differences were found when students' strategy knowledge was compared with that of teachers. (RJC)

Neglected, or physically or sexually abused, children performed poorer on standardized tests, received lower grades, were more likely to repeat a grade and had more discipline referrals than nonmaltreated children. Among maltreated children, neglected children showed the poorest academic performance, and physically abused children had the most…

Reports on a study in which children aged 7 to 9 years and 11 to 13 years were asked to judge which one out of three wooden blocks would float, given weight and volume information for each block relative to a block that was known to float. Indicates that judgments may have been based on the size-weight illusion. (HOD)

Families were interviewed and participated in a social interaction task. Results indicated that married mothers of adolescents generated more conflicts than did divorced mothers, and adolescents from married families exhibited more positive communication than did adolescents from divorced families. There was a greater trend toward harmonious…