Summarizes recent research which attempted to discover what children of different ages know about the appearance-reality distinction and related phenomena. Findings show that what helps children grasp the distinction is an increased cognizance of the fact that people are sentient subjects who have mental representations of objects and events. (PS)

Administered Children's Depression Index to 304 elementary and secondary school students. Found that 21 percent of students reported mild to moderate levels and seven percent reported severe levels of depression. Females reported more overall depression than did males. Results suggest that females tend to internalize difficulties while males…

Argues that Susan Sugarman's article in this issue contains some valid criticism of assumptions in developmental psychology, but that some of her conclusions regarding other assumptions need to be questioned. Suggests that many problems raised by Sugarman would disappear if developmental psychologists concentrated on children's early achievements…

This article presents a broad ranging philosophical and theoretical argument for improving the education of young children through a greater understanding of developmental child psychology. Notes that play is essential for individual mental development, and must be used in educational settings. Maintains that pure scientific research is simply a…

Evaluates some possible reasons for the occurrence and eventual correction of children's naming errors in an experiment in which two-, four-, and six-year-olds learned two artificial object names in succession. (HOD)

Compares two types of semantic development (the acquisition of disappearance words and success-failure words) to performance on two types of cognitive tasks (object-permanence and means-ends tasks) among infants. (HOD)

Involving second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth graders and undergraduates, three experiments evaluated the prediction that representations of knowledge of the weeks and months of the year develop from a verbal-list stage to a stage at which image representations are present. Results are interpreted as supporting the two-stage model and appear…

Noting that while formal operational thinking is essential to sociological learning, a majority of college freshmen are not yet fully formal thinkers. Maintains that introductory sociology courses must foster formal thinking in addition to teaching sociological content. Draws implications of revising goals and objectives to meet students' needs.…

This article reviews the major components of Viktor Lowenfeld's approach to art education, devoting specific attention to the misconceptions often attributed to his use of developmental stages. Notes that Lowenfeld was not the first individual to describe developmental stages in art learning and promotes a more accurate interpretation of how…

Tested two hypotheses: (1) formal reasoning is required to balance simple one-step equations; and (2) formal reasoning plus sufficient mental capacity are required to balance many-step equations. Independent variables included intellectual development, mental capacity, and degree of field dependence/independence. With 25 subjects, significance was…

Research results reported in this special issue show that egocentricity and staging, both central ideas in the Piaget-Kohlberg account of human development, are myths. The appearance of egocentricity and staging can be accounted for by a subtle combination of ethnocentricity and the effects of inappropriate methodologies. (RM)

The transition from preverbal to verbal communication of 13 retarded and nonretarded children was explored in a prospective, longitudinal study. Mental development was tested at ages 13 months and at 2 and 3 years. Results seem to support the postulate of a skill-specific homology in the transition from preverbal to verbal communication.…

Tells how undergraduate student volunteers tested children, ages 3 to 10 years old, to reveal their development in language, conservation of volume and weight, and moral judgment. These videotaped sessions were then used in class to illustrate important concepts. (JDH)

Reports on a study that used two approaches to examine how words are used to create meaning in written discourse in order to illuminate the differences among a group of essays written by 12 developing writers. (HTH)

Elementary students in grades K-1 and 4-5 (N=98) responded to descriptions of a hyperactive boy under one of two solution conditions (medication vs. effort) and one of two outcome conditions (success or failure). Among reported findings was that older children particularly valued the child whose own efforts succeeded. (Author/JW)