This study was designed to simulate some aspects of classroom verbal interaction and to investigate their cognitive effects on students, using cognitive theory as the theoretical rationale. Subject-determined verbalization of correct cues was crossed with external sources of verbalized correct cues in a multivariable design in which sex was…

The research experiments on relational learning in young children contained in this report were guided by two major goals: (1) to examine the extent of conceptual transfer in preschool children, and (2) to explore the relation of both "acquisition" and "transfer" to chronological development. The performance of preschool…

Curriculum development, field service issues, and training are discussed in this first volume of the 3-volume progress report. The overview contains a statement of the scope of the program, its major concerns in regard to teachers, parents, and children, and presents lists of objectives for these three groups. The second section, on the…

This document reports on a 2-year study of the influence of males on the development of children and impact of male aides on child-care activities. The study originally developed from clinical observations and research results concerned with effects of fathers' absence on children and adolescents. The first year of the program was for…

This paper presents the theory that altruistic motives develop out of the synthesis of empathic distress and the child's increasingly sophisticated cognitive development, especially his level of self-other differentiation. An examination of empathy and the sense of other is included, followed by a discussion of empathic distress, various forms of…

Three experiments assessed the ability of children 2 to 5 years of age to infer, under very simple task conditions, what another person sees when viewing something from a position other than the children's own. Data indicates that some ability of this genre appears to exist by age 2. The data also suggests a distinction between an earlier and a…

In 1968 an upstate New York School district, acting on behalf of nine school districts, planned and established an Early Childhood Center. This evaluative report of a 2-year demonstration preschool, modeled on the British Infant School, describes the open classroom arrangement and its effect on the center's children, teachers, and student…

This report is a summary statement about a broad-based longitudinal study being conducted by Head Start. It concerns the effects of early school experiences on over 1800 disadvantaged children, ages 4 to 8, and their families who live in four poverty areas. The report (1) raises basic questions about the nature of education, learning, and…

Reported is a study of the relationships between scholastic grades of 419 junior and senior high school students and their ability to perform formal operational tasks. A Piagetian Task Instrument (PTI) was constructed to assess the formal thinking ability of the students. Face validity of the instrument was obtained after a literature review.…

This report capsulizes the problems of defining the meaning of social competency in young children in relation to a panel discussion held in January 1973. Four approaches are discussed: (1) the "bag of virtues" approach, (2) the "industrial psychology" approach, (3) the normative-expectation approach, and (4) the theory-guided approach. Seven…

This study attempted to determine whether children will relinquish their belief in Piagetian concepts upon presentation of disconfirming evidence. Two age groups were tested: third- and fourth-grade and sixth-grade. Conservation of weight and transitivity of weight were the concepts examined; the discrepant feedback consisted of three trials with…

The Southeastern Day Care Project is an ongoing preschool demonstration project in eight southeastern States. The SDCP has developed and is using a series of rating forms to assess the development of each child in the program in cognitive, social, motor, and self-help skills. Approximately 256 children in SDCP centers have been rated on the forms.…

This volume deals with various aspects of the relationship between linguistic ability and general cognitive development. It presents original, up-to-date research for child psychologists, linguists, psycholinguists, scholars, teachers, and students interested in this field and interprets the findings in the context of contemporary linguistic…

The purposes of this study were to compare the cognition of students exposed to two different learning treatments and to ascertain the effect of the two treatments and the relationship of the three levels of visual-haptic aptitude to the number of trials required to reach the criterion. One treatment emphasized cognition through prerequisite…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain the extent to which the conditions of auditory lead and auditory synchronization have an effect on student performance, and to investigate the extent to which the strength of grip of the learner has an effect on manipulative task performance. Fifty-two seventh grade boys without prior instruction in…