Discusses five- and six-year-old children's conceptions of life and death. Children were questioned about animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The most errors occurred when children judged inanimate objects; the fewest when they judged animals. The order of questions about either life or death significantly influenced children's responses. (NH)

Reported are two studies which describe the early development in children of the ability to consider every one of an array of instances. Taken together with other recent studies, the data reveal early development in preschool children of a fundamental, general problem solving skill. (PCB)

Compared Erwin's Scale of Intellectual Development (SID) and Allen's Paragraph Completion Instrument to enhance understanding of intellectual development according to the Perry scheme. Indicated that the SID-Dualism subscale held the most promise for discriminating between students at various levels of intellectual development, as measured by the…

Children (N=32) between 6 and 12 years of age were given Derry Death Concept Scale, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and subtests from Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Correlations indicated that level of death concept development was related to age and verbal-conceptual mental development. Socioeconomic status and death-related…

The hypothesis testing abilities of 15 language impaired and 15 normally developing children matched for mental age were investigated using discrimination-learning tasks. Findings indicated the impaired children performed poorer than non-impaired children especially on the nonexplicit problems suggesting the deficits may be related to difficulties…

A developmental progression in 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children's use of strategies for gathering information was revealed in a study involving partial recall, total recall, and similarity/difference judgments. When subjects chose stimuli for exposure from an array, older children showed more ability to match strategy to task demands. Strategy…

Presents research showing that spelling is a complex developmental process and that once the stages of development are identified, teachers can help students to develop strategies for learning standard English spelling, and they can assess students' progress more accurately. (SRT)

This article reports on how elementary school teachers teach strategies to help pupils learn and remember. Tips for using the research findings in the classroom are offered. (MT)

Criticizes the distinction between lower and higher psychological processes in Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory. Shows that Vygotsky separated these processes too sharply and that his conception of lower processes as "natural" and "passive" is false. Suggests that these shortcomings can be overcome within the…

Briefly highlights the artificial dualism between the affective and cognitive areas of human functioning in terms of history, physiology, and psychology. Previews topics of current research and theory in the area of social/emotional development. (DST)

The essence of teacher maturity can be synthesized into personal, professional, and process domains. Although overlapping, these categories add a multidimensional approach to the search for what is good in teaching and provide a model for professional development. (MT)

Designed and pilot-tested the Counselor Perception Questionnaire (CPQ) to measure cognitive growth during counseling supervision. The CPQ yields two scores (Differentiation-D, Integration-I), based on responses to videotaped counseling interviews. The D score differentiated master's level and PhD counseling psychologists at a statistically…

Explores implications of two cognitive development perspectives for characterizing ontogeny of causal reasoning. Reviews literature on causal reasoning in the preschool years and concludes that the hypothesis of an invariant causal scheme is only partially correct. (Author/SO)

Forty-four language delayed preschoolers received either direct instruction or interactive instruction. After 8 months, children in both settings improved significantly and substantially on syntactic and semantic measures. There were no differences between the two groups at posttest nor any significant aptitude by treatment interactions for…

Twelve myths regarding aquatic programs for young children are addressed and clarified. Comprehensive research by aquatic experts, developmental specialists, and medical researchers is called for. (MT)