Research has shown that a behavior may be acquired through observing and imitating a model. A behavior which has already been acquired may be inhibited, disinhibited, or elicited by observing and imitating. A definition of imitation is given, and the effects of imitation on learning and performance are summarized. Research on factors which affect…

The theory of a number of philosophers and psychologists, including Freud, is that humor is a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity and then the resolution of the incongruity. Without the mechanism of resolution, we cannot distinguish humor from nonsense. The punch line of a joke is seemingly incongruous with the preceding…

School size, age and sex of students as related to scores on the six Piagetian Developmental Thought Processes Tasks were investigated. Five hundred seventy-four students from seventh through twelfth grades were randomly selected from 25 different schools classified as small, medium, or large. Data were treated through factorial analysis of…

PIAGET'S THEORETICAL FORMULATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSERVATION OF CONTINUOUS QUANTITY WAS EXAMINED. CONTROL SUBJECTS IN EACH OF TWO AGE GROUPS (5 AND 6 YEARS) WERE GIVEN A COMPLEX TASK SITUATION THAT IS TYPICAL OF PIAGET'S WORK. THESE SUBJECTS WERE ALSO GIVEN ANOTHER TASK, A MEASURE OF CONSERVATION OF QUANTITY THAT IS INDEPENDENT OF PIAGET'S…

It was hypothesized that middle-grade elementary school students' cognitive development, as defined by Jean Piaget, is positively related to reading ability, when the effects of sex, age, grade level, and language ability are held constant. A stratified, random sample of 138 sixth and seventh graders was administered a test based on Piagetian…

This study attempted to determine: (1) whether lower-order units (agent or agent-action) within the agent-action-recipient relationship exist in any functional way in the 1-word infant's comprehension of speech; and (2) whether the use of repetition and/or reduced length (common modifications in adult-to-infant speech) used to focus on these…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between a student's stated preference for solving a problem and his/her actual problem solving methodology. Approximately 116 science students between the ages of 15 and 22 were given an 18 item abstract preference survey. Each student was interviewed and given the opportunity to solve…

A commentary on the sense of isolation and estrangement which commonly accompanies the relativism ushered in by formal operational thought, and a detailing of several regressive strategies frequently employed by adolescents in their efforts to accomodate to this plurality of solitudes. (JMB)

This study examined the development of three schemes for the attribution of psychological events to multiple causes in children of 5, 9, and 13 years of age. Stories were read to the children and each child was asked to infer possible causes of events. Multiple sufficient and multiple necessary and inhibitory causes were found only in the older…

Investigated the influence of schooling and environment on young children's memory and cognitive skills. Subjects were five- and six-year-old Mestizo and Quechua Indian children living in jungle villages or city slums in Peru. Samples of upper-middle-class children in Lima and poor children in Detroit were also tested. (JMB)

Examples from some area tasks indicate that misconceptions about linear measurement can be carried over to area measurement; children will occasionally count points rather than length units or area units. (MP)

A group of 60 children from grades K, 1, 3, 4, and 8 were assessed via a battery of Piagetian tasks to determine their stages of cognitive development. They were then asked to interpret a number of metaphors ranging in frequency of occurrence in adult speech from common to rare. (Author/JMB)

An example is used to illustrate the four levels: rote, observational, insightful, and formal. (MP)

This paper describes six experiments performed to investigate elementary school childrens' understanding of a proportionality concept, the concept of fullness. (CM)

The dangers of a sociobiological approach to the problem of mind are discussed. (Author/AM)