A study was undertaken of the effects of formal education and conservation of numerousness on addition and subtraction problem types. Thirty-six kindergarten and 36 first-grade subjects randomly selected from one area of a school district were administered measures of conservation, problem-solving success, and modeling ability. Following factor…

The author considers memory as being composed of four categories. The fourth category--metamemory--refers to the individual's knowledge and awareness of memory or of anything pertinent to information storage and retrieval. It is that aspect of memory that deals with the how and what of memory itself. The paper first presents a model of what could…

This study explores the cognitive dimensions used by children in differentiating among television characters. Similarity judgments between all possible pairs of 14 television characters were analyzed using INDSCAL, a multidimensional scaling method which allows for individual or subgroup differences in scaling solutions. By linking the results of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether success in the Science - A Process Approach (SAPA) process of classification designed for primary grade children is contingent upon the children's developmental level as defined by Piaget's theory. The investigators sought to determine whether children who had reached the concrete operational…

A study was designed to investigate the relationship between cognitive style and hypothesis testing strategies used in solving concept attainment problems. A field-independent (FI) and field-dependent (FD) cognitive style group of third grade students were administered concept attainment problems using a blank-trial methodology. The results…

Three extrinsic factors were manipulated in a problem-solving task performed by 80 ten-year-old children of I Q 90-110. The factors were: the presence or absence of the name of the concept given in feedback, specific instructions, and whether the child was allowed to verbalize. The task was a modification of Vygotsky's experiment on concept…

Reported is a study based on the summary findings of a series of studies which indicated that many children who receive organized instruction designed around the few major concepts of science do, in fact, use scientific models to explain their observations of natural phenomena. The instruction that children in the study received was delivered by…

In this paper the author reviews and synthesizes the research literature concerning the developmental relationships between conservation of number and linguistic capability in handling of quantitative and relational terms. Several models for the development of these competencies are discussed. On the basis of this review the author concludes that…

This study investigated children's developmental differences in adopting a clustering strategy while studying items for later recall. The central focus was on developmental differences in the efficient use of study strategies, rather than clustering in recall per se. Twenty-four third- and fifth-graders and 12 college students were given a series…

The role of the family in the education of a young child, particularly during the first three years of life, is the subject of this symposium address. Four topic areas are identified as the foundation of educational capacity: language development, curiosity, social development, and cognitive intelligence. Professional educators, working directly…

This paper presents the position that concern for others is fundamentally a matter of cognitive definition of one's relationship to and responsibility for other human beings. Altruism changes as a function of an individual's overall level of cognitive-moral development. There are six forms of altruism, corresponding to Kohlberg's six sequential…

This guide examines the elements of the open space concept and offers insight and suggestions as to how to employ this process in the classroom. These elements are outlined as follows: (a) objectives--primarily to develop self-respecting, self-directing, autonomous individuals; (b) knowledge and method--with emphasis on cognitive or thinking…

This study extends some recently acquired knowledge about the development of visual imagery as an associative-learning strategy. Incorporating the present findings into the data already gathered, it appears that as a facilitator, sentence production precedes imagery generation since preoperational children benefit from instructions to engage in…

Language samples of 15 young normal children actively engaged in learning base syntax were compared with samples of 15 linguistically deviant children of a comparable linguistic level. Mean number of morphemes per utterance was used to determine linguistic level. The two groups were matched according to five linguistic levels previously…

This paper outlines an evaluation system for elementary education based on cognitive and social development research. Piaget has defined certain core mental structures that develop in all humans in the same order. Both Piaget and Kohlberg have done work on the process of developmental change and the conditions necessary for optimal growth of the…