Comments on Lane and Pearson's analysis, pointing out that the majority of developmental accounts of attention and other conceptual processes provide no theoretical basis for establishing criteria about information and its use in assessments of conceptual abilities. Consequences and implications are discussed. (Author/RH)

Comments on Van Kleeck's proposal that a link exists between cognitive development as viewed by Piaget and metalinguistic development (Merrill-Palmer Quarterly; v28 n2 p237-65 Apr 1982). Suggests that information-processing theories of cognitive development provide an attractive alternative to Piaget's theory, particularly in their account of task…

Research on Piaget's four stages of cognitive development has shown that although nearly everyone passes through sensorimotor, preoperational, and concrete operational stages, most do not reach the stage of formal operations. Those people who do attain formal operations seem to have a curiosity factor not operative in those who don't. (Author/BRR)

Replies to "Structures, Doctrines, and Polemical Ghosts," by Carl Bereiter. Holds that Bereiter's proposal, which claims that Piagetian stages are a prerequisite to more specific cognitive processes, violates a basic assumption of stage-developmental views. (Author/GC)

Discusses implications which incompatible world views present regarding change and development. One perspective represents reality as stable and change as a function of antecedent causes. Another perspective represents reality as active and rules out antecedent causes. Continuity-discontinuity is seen as a significant issue for investigating the…

Examines what it means for children to learn, follow, and obey rules. The author argues that children do not understand the impersonal justification for rules. The understanding of the justification for rules appears to develop from a growing trust and confidence in the prescribing adult. (AM)

Examines the relationship between cognitive development (Piaget) and creative thinking (Torrance) during adolescence. (Author/CM)

Four- and seven-year-old children observed a simple physical effect which could be attributed to either a consistent but noncontiguous covariate or a contiguous but inconsistent covariate. (Author/SB)

Discusses Gopnik and Meltzoff's ascription of theories behind children's cognitive processes, consideration of phenomena that must be explained by a cognitive development theory, and belief that cognitive advances are tied to advances in language learning. In contrast to Gopnik and Meltzoff, concludes that the basis for understanding how humans…

Ninety-eight concepts from the Bracken Basic Concept Scale were paired, polarity (positive or negative) was assigned, and concept pairs were contrasted with 1,109 children ages three through seven to determine rate and sequence of polar concept acquisition. For 70 percent of the pairs the positive-pole concept was acquired before the negative-pole…

This response to Brainerd and Reyna's paper (in this issue), questions whether output-interference and resource theories can readily be differentiated empirically. Argues that dual-task studies, while important, do not serve as the critical tests of the resources hypothesis. (RH)

Argues that the resources and response competition models discussed by Brainerd and Reyna (in this issue) may not be mutually exclusive, but instead may model different aspects of performance. The problem is not to decide between the two models in general, but rather to determine which aspects of performance are best explained by each. (RH)

In one of three studies, preschoolers judged that items that shared material properties, such as metal composition, would share dispositional properties, such as corrodibility in water, and that items of the same object type, such as baseball bats, would share functional properties, such as the ability to accelerate a baseball. (BC)

Reports four studies investigating very young children's understanding of two kinds of symbolic stimuli--scale models and pictures. The data indicate that 2.5-year-old children have difficulty understanding scale models as symbols but can understand pictures as symbols. Results suggest that experience with a symbolic medium they understand can…

Maintained that preschoolers' class inclusion task judgments and justification may be modeled as mixtures of different probability distributions, with different response strategies equivalent to different distributions. Found that justifications lagged behind judgments in development. Concluded that, if a single response variable is to be…