A study was conducted to test the relationship between communication apprehension (CA) and learning. Subjects were 194 college students at a midwestern university enrolled in an introductory speech course who were divided by scores on the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA). The groups heard a class presentation and were then…

An assessment of recent trends in developmental research examined all articles published in the periodical "Child Development" from 1967-1983. Of the articles that were included in the "Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography" in the same period, 200 articles from each year of the period were randomly selected for…

There are a number of views of the relationship between language and thinking. Two prominent figures in developmental psychology, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, proposed theories of language and thinking which also involve the notion of "communication." For Piaget, thinking develops first, and language comes along as an expression of…

This study was designed to investigate preschoolers' comprehension of five types of "wh-questions": who, what, why, where, and when. Eighty urban, black, 3- to 5-year-old preschool children were divided into four age groups: early 3's, late 3's, early 4's, and late 4's, with 10 boys and 10 girls in each group. Subjects were presented…

A study of the development of representations of economic life in 110 young children of 3 to 5 years of age is reviewed to identify the sources of the children's representations. In addition to noting the importance of the public availability of adult representations, the results indicate the significance of developmental processes. In particular,…

The database management system or computerized database is an important tool for teaching thinking in the social studies. But what the teacher does to teach the student about databases, to use prepared databases, to organize their data, to direct their research, and to draw conclusions using this teaching device is just as important. The Direct…

Infants' exploration of their environment has been considered by Piaget and others to provide a vehicle for cognitive development. Little research, however, has examined in detail what infants actually do while exploring or how exploratory behavior is related to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The present investigation was designed to…

The developmental memory research with children indicates that highly variable rehearsal leads to better overall recall and that the strength of interitem associations may play some role in improving recall. This paper reports on two experiments to investigate the interplay between the number and strength of interitem associations, and how each is…

A description is given of an inservice course designed to acquaint teachers with current constructivist thinking and research in cognitive and developmental psychology. The focus was on sensitizing the teachers to the challenges of creating a "thinking environment" in their classrooms. The course was designed to engage students as…

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) developed from the study of second language teaching, and includes the study of the learning setting, learner variables, the nature of the target language and the learner native language, and the reasons for language learning. Much SLA research to date focuses on one or another of these dimensions…

The present study investigates the acquisition of basic language concepts with children 4 and 5 years of age, and the relationship of language to cognitive development as measured by performance on 10 Piagetian tasks. Factors of age, day care setting or kindergarten, and sex constituted the independent variables. Children 4 years of age proved to…

Determining the extent of consistency between distinct concepts has become increasingly important in current theorizing about the development and organization of cognitive structure. This paper discusses several conceptual and measurement issues that must be addressed in analyses of interconcept consistency: the distinction between connectivity…

The literature and theories of the role of self-assessment in the metacognitive development of children with learning handicaps is reviewed. Self-assessment is seen to be a prerequisite for metacognitive growth. The literature on purposes of self-assessment and ways to assess a student's actual use of self-assessment indicates that learning…

The presentation focuses on forms of therapeutic tutoring (particularly in reading) with children and adolescents. Developments in educational therapy at the Tavistock Clinic in London are cited along with efforts in the United States. Educational therapy approaches to deal with the school dropout program in Holland are also described. The…

A study investigating developmental differences in the ability to reason with conditional propositions used five variations of Wason's selection task to assess conditional reasoning in 132 eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade adolescents. In addition to examining developmental differences, the study had as an objective to examine the role of semantic…