Describing the processes that characterize children's thinking at successive stages of development, Jean Piaget's theories provide guidelines for the study of the intellectual development of children. These conference proceedings relate Piagetian theory to the helping professions. Through the use of panel discussion, symposia, test demonstrations,…

Disadvantaged preschool children directed in the role-enactment of imaginary stories were found to be superior to control children (who did not engage in role playing) on several measures of social and cognitive development. Fantasy play training resulted in a higher incidence of spontaneous sociodramatic play, higher scores on an interpersonal…

Reported is an investigation of formal operational thinking, measured by using four Piaget-related tasks, in adolescents. One hundred eight randomly selected eighth-grade students, enrolled in three Intermediate Science Curriculum Study (ISCS) test center classrooms, participated. The students were interviewed using the tasks. A description of the…

Studied were 48 retarded children, 9- to 18-years-old, (mental age 4 to 8 years) to determine effects of task screening and objectivity of protocol scoring on achievement of the concept of conservation. Results indicated no significant differences in achievement of conservation as a function of either experimental variable. Also data indicated…

Two teaching experiments were conducted relating to the relative effectiveness of anthropological films versus reading of literature as means of conveying anthropological information to college students and of influencing their attitudes toward other societies. In one, a student group viewed films about the Netsilik Indians, one read literature,…

The capacity to appreciate and produce metaphoric language is thought to develop at adolescence. Yet metaphors are frequently noted in the speech of preschool children. To resolve this apparent contradiction, a test probing metaphoric capacity was devised. Matched groups of subjects ranging in age from 3 1/2 to 19 were required to indicate…

According to the cognitive-congruency principle, humor appreciation peaks when the cognitive demands of the stimulus are congruent with the cognitive level of the child. This study tested the principle with jokes based on concepts associated with concrete operational thinking, conservation of mass and weight. This method provides a satisfactory…

Reported is a study to determine whether 249 ninth-grade students completing the third year of the Intermediate Science Curriculum Study (ISCS) instructional sequence performed differently on 19 conservation tasks than did 239 non-ISCS ninth-grade students. The tasks were presented via 35-mm color slides and a tape-recorded protocol. Students in…

Reported is a method of investigating thought processes of an 11-year-old girl concerning physical phenomena such as those underlying the operations of scientific apparatus--platform balance, the spring balance, the magnet, and the pendulum. It was discovered during a period of interviews that the subject's thought processes developed in such a…

The symposium on research into preschool education was the second in a series designed to facilitate exchange of views, experiences and other information among educational researchers. This volume contains a selection of the papers presented. The following are noted in the conclusions of the symposium: (1) preschool education should work in close…

The purpose of the study was to inquire into student learning of geometrical concepts, and the order and organization of those concepts relative to visual experience, while paying attention to their logical organization within the structure of mathematics. A test battery comprised of visual illusions, problems requiring interpretation of pictorial…

The purpose of the study was to examine the informal and more formal mathematical notions of children of ages four to six, and to evaluate the interaction between these two sets of notions. Two groups of problems were given to 60 children. The first included 14 Quantity Tasks in the form of stories which were illustrated by manipulable items. The…

This study was conducted to find out whether extending the kindergarten day with individualized curricula would produce differences in achievement great enough to warrant the increased cost. Two pilot studies were conducted in this large suburban school district, using kindergartens from four of 17 elementary schools. Two of the schools served…

This volume is the last of three which report the results of the five-year Education Improvement Program in Durham, North Carolina. Volume III consists of abstracts of special studies conducted by the investigators in the program. Some of the studies have been published in professional journals. The three volumes, together, constitute the final…

Lexical development in mentally retarded and normal children was indexed using the Free Word Association Task. Approximately 170 institutionalized and noninstitutionalized retarded children and 59 normal children were administered the 40-word stimulus list consisting mainly of adjectives and nouns. Responses were categorized according to apparent…