The paper examines the theoretical constructs that underlie currently used curricula for young handicapped children and suggests guidelines for selecting and evaluating curricula. Three developmental perspectives are reviewed: the age related developmental milestones identified by A. Gesell and adhered to by diagnostic prescriptive advocates, the…

This study explored the relationship between children's sense of justice for a criminal offender and their cognitive level. Subjects were 60 children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of the following developmental or cognitive levels: preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each child was individually pretested for cognitive…

Presented are abstracts for most of the papers presented at the 54th annual conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), held at Grossinger's in the Catskills, April 5-8, 1981. Papers relate to learning in museums, classroom behavior, cognitive development, male-female differences, diagnostic testing, research…

A Sample of 576 children participated in a study to determine the manner in which children retain narrative material, what information they retain, and the effects of sex and age upon these aspects of memory. The children, ranging in age from six to eight years, listened to a tape recorded story in individual sessions. Half of them were asked to…

Research on how communicating human beings produce and understand language has focused mostly on what language is, less on how language is processed, and little on who produces and understands language. However, the interaction between what, who, and how is very significant. The importance of who does languaging is related both to the cognitive…

This issue provides abstracts and analyses, prepared by science educators, of research reports in three areas of investigation. The first area is cognitive development. Three of the five studies presented in this area are Piagetian in nature. The second group contains four studies dealing with attitudes and values. And the third area,…

Contemporary research findings in the fields of perceptual psychology and neurology of the human brain that are directly related to the study of visual communication are reviewed and briefly discussed in this paper. Specifically, the paper identifies those major research findings in visual perception that are relevant to the study of visual…

This paper discusses the process of culture acquisition and recommends a new methodology for investigating this process. An examination of the relationship between culture acquisition and cognitive development is followed by a discussion of the way previous research has dealt with this relationship. It is argued that recent developments in…

This paper reports on research carried out in Sweden on concept formation as related to science education. Particular emphasis is given to the aquisition of the concepts of proportionality and density by tenth-grade students. Comparisons were made of the student's everyday thoughts about density and their ability to understand the Cartesian Diver…

This investigation looks at the difficulties tenth-grade students have with the concept of proportionality and the problems this causes in tenth-grade physics. Students were asked to solve various problems in the areas of volume measurement and weight, all relating to proportionality, and their approaches to the tasks were recorded. As a result,…

The knowledge and mental processes called on in mathematics can be used to improve composition. Three desirable requirements of an analogy to be used in teaching writing are that it should bridge the art of writing and science, should be readily accessible to the mind of the average student, and should allow the student to employ an architectural…

This study examined how well adults can make inferences about children's cognitive abilities. Subjects (n=60) were four groups of adults: female parents, female nonparents, male parents, and male nonparents. They were shown the typical method of administering 13 Piagetian tasks, ranging from object permanence to the formal-operational pendulum…

The objectives of this study were (1) to observe and describe the social quality and the cognitive type of spontaneous play exhibited in a group of 20 children in a child care setting during two age periods, toddler (14-30 months) and preschool (30-48 months), and (2) to chart the developmental trends using a model of play complexity derived from…

The booklet summarizes finding involving over 6,300 youth in the New York State Program for Institutionalized Neglected and Delinquent Children. Four state agencies (the Education Department, the Division for Youth, the Department of Correctional Services, and the Office of Drug Abuse Services) are explained to have contributed data on…

Simultaneous maximum likelihood procedures were used to investigate the generality of ability factor structure in adulthood and old age. Data were analyzed for 198 subjects aged 15-32; 173 subjects aged 51-67; and 153 subjects aged 68-83. Variables were 14 ability tests marking five cognitive factors: verbal comprehension, number facility,…