Forty-six Spanish-speaking children ages four, six, or eight years viewed a short silent film and told what happened in the film. The stories of older children included more narrative actions, more mental state/goal causes, more three-clause causal sequences, and a lower proportion of unrelated statements than those of younger children.…

Discusses a longitudinal study of children's evolving concept of "word." Concludes that tacit awareness of word in spoken and written language precedes explicit awareness. Finds that children in different developmental stages perform differently on reading tasks. Suggests that development of the concept of word relates to experience with writing…

A theory of normal and delayed development of language is presented, arguing that linguistic capacity develops in gradual, sequential, critically timed phases; children with slowly developing brains have delays in storing utterances; a critical period for activation of experience-dependent grammatical mechanisms declines without optimal result;…

Responds in a question-and-answer format to parents' concerns about their child's transition into kindergarten. Responses include how the program will meet the needs of children who already have preschool experience and how the program will handle the "academic domains" of reading and math. (HTH)

This case report provides a phonological investigation of the speech of an eight-year-old autistic boy. Speech was elicited using delayed imitation, object naming, and a connected speech sample. The subject's use of phonological processes resulted in extensive homonymy which contributed to severely reduced intelligibility. Both typical and unusual…

Children (ages 6-7 and ages 8-9) and adults participated in real-word and nonword lexical decision tasks and an auditory-vocal reaction time task. Response times on all tasks decreased with age. However, age-related differences on the real-word lexical decision task disappeared when differences in auditory-vocal reaction times were taken into…

Describes a teacher's experience with infants at a Montessori program. Discusses observations made in the areas of rapid change in development, crying as communication, the thumb-sucking versus pacifier dilemma, and intellectual growth. Discusses factors critical to quality infant care and how infants can teach us. (HTH)

To resolve tension between general stages and conceptual specificity in neo-Piagetian theory, R. Case introduced the idea of central conceptual structures. To resolve difficulties of separating developmental level and conceptual diversity, this article reconceptualizes central conceptual structures as self-organizing systems that stabilize in…

Comments on Lewis's ideas about reconciling stage and specificity in neo-Piagetian theory in this issue. Summarizes R. Case's central conceptual structure and its relation to other neo-Piagetian theories. Notes similarities between Lewis and Piaget, suggesting that differences adhere to a limited number of general laws instead of being…

The views of Piaget, Ausubel, and Bruner have been used to present an integrated view of biology lesson construction and to assist teachers in the design and development of tools and strategies to improve their teaching. The structure of an integrated model for biology lesson construction and an example of a biolesson using the metaparadigmatic…

Waskom's paradigm of human development is based on natural design and mathematical proportion. Its properties encompass purposes of life and learning, natural sense urges and personality traits, characteristics of natural stages of human life, and parenting, teaching, and community support. (SK)

In three experiments, four and six year olds and adults were examined to determine whether children were more likely than adults to confuse memories from different sources when the sources were highly similar. Findings indicated that children may be especially vulnerable to the effects of source similarity. (SH)

Formal operational ability and interpersonal understanding, possible predictors of adolescent egocentrism, were studied in 87 adolescents from 4 age groups--preadolescents, ages 11-12; young adolescents, ages 13-14; adolescents, ages 16-17; young adults, ages 18-21. Interpersonal understanding level did predict egocentrism as measured by a…

Discusses the four "planes of development" posited by Maria Montessori: (1) from birth to age 6; (2) from age 6 to 12; (3) from age 12 to 18; and (4) full maturity. Although Montessori schools have been successful in dealing with children during the first two planes, efforts need to be focused on adolescents at the third stage. (MDM)

Differences between developmentally appropriate and traditional classroom practice include the following: integrated vs. separate curriculum, meaning-driven vs. skill-driven, incidental vs. explicit learning, heterogeneous vs. homogeneous grouping, ready now vs. getting ready, child-centered vs. teacher-directed, autonomy vs. heteronomy, previous…