The conditional intervention principle is a formal principle that relates patterns of interventions and outcomes to causal structure. It is a central assumption of experimental design and the causal Bayes net formalism. Two studies suggest that preschoolers can use the conditional intervention principle to distinguish causal chains, common cause…

The persistence of the constructivist agenda within learning and developmental theory suggests that underneath the seemingly disparate views of Piagetian, socioculturalist, and ecological perspectives lie some unifying concepts that find their mutual expression in constructivism. The paper contends that semiotics provides the conceptual means to…

Examines Ausubel's theory of learning as a model of the role concerning the influence of prior knowledge on how learning occurs. Research evidence for Ausubel's theory is presented and discussed. Implications of Ausubel's theory for teaching are summarized. (PEB)

This study investigates the ability of 13-month-old infants to use objects of varying degrees of realism in symbolic play and the genera1ization of this ability across different scene content. The effects of order of presentation of the task and of the behavioral coding scheme on the assessment of those abilities were also examined. Thirty male…

The role of motor activity in children's formation of dynamic mental imagery was investigated in two experiments using a paired-associate recognition task. From the recognition data, it was inferred that (2) the child's ability to form dynamic images relating two objects undergoes its most rapid development between the ages of five and eight; and…

A multitrial free recall study assessed whether learning-to-learn and changes in strategy over sessions occurred with children in kindergarten and grade 3. Results showed that grade 3 subjects recalled more than did kindergarten subjects, but no learning-to-learn effect was obtained for either age group. (Author/JMB)

Learning disabled (LD) and non-LD boys (grades two and six) were given a false recognition task. Study and test items were manipulated to form visual, acoustic, and semantic distractors. Results suggest that LD students do not spontaneously use the effortful semantic processing strategy of elaborative rehearsal. (Author/CL)

Results indicated that Down syndrome young children were significantly less able to delay touching an attractive but prohibited stimulus than were nonretarded children of similar developmental or language level and that several kinds of within-task strategy behavior facilitated performance of the nonretarded children. (Author/CL)

Over recent years, various theories have arisen to explain and predict cognitive development in mathematics education. We focus on an underlying theme that recurs throughout such theories: a fundamental cycle of growth in the learning of specific concepts, which we frame within broader global theories of individual cognitive growth. Our purpose is…

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)

Results were interpreted supporting a social learning view of observational learning that emphasizes contral processing of response information in the acquisition phase and motor reproduction and incentive processes in the overt enactment of what has been learned. (Author)

Results indicated that the training method (discrimination) induced 8 of the 12 subjects to acquire conservation of a stable kind. (Author/DR)

Discusses the development of thinking from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on how Super and Harkness' (1986) concept of "developmental niche" may be used as a framework for organizing cognitive developmental research in relation to culture. Argues for the utility of this approach in furthering understanding of the precise linkages between…

Suggests that in learning and development, the process of comparison can act as a bridge between similarity-based and rule-based processing. A structure-sensitive comparison process, triggered by experiential or symbolic juxtapositions can: (1) facilitate understanding of structural commonalities and the abstraction of rules; and (2) facilitate…