The introductory course has a variety of objectives for both students and the college, including recruitment and screening of majors, provision of prerequisite knowledge, explorations of learning, developing commitment to college, and cognitive development. Fostering these goals depends on the students, faculty, and classroom climate. (MSE)

Compared levels of formal operational thought of students tested before and after entering science programs. Results indicate considerable numbers of students at transitional levels on each occasion, low correlations between cognitive level and grades, and significant development in levels of cognitive thought during the National High School…

Reports on a study that investigated the nature of the relationship between reading ability and performance on intelligence tests. Reveals a number of findings. (FL)

Presents results of two case studies involving the acquisition of English in a natural environment, as well as the results of two judgment tests in which subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of sentences containing both correctly and incorrectly used dative verbs. (SL)

Discusses problems encountered in reading of English by foreign students who are unaccustomed to English script. Considering two levels of reading, students having difficulties at one level will regress by reason of vertical decalage to a lower level of learning strategy. This is manifested by a more intent focus on individual letters if the pupil…

In this study of 40 fourth graders and two teachers, the influence teacher ideological differences have on how children learn to write during classroom lessons was investigated. Analysis of narrative compositions based on a picture sequence revealed significant differences between student compositions for an academic teacher and a…

Presents examples of how an understanding of Perry's theory of intellectual development can increase the faculty member's or student personnel worker's understanding of students and improve communication. The theory is translated into developmental clues based on student comments, which can be used for practitioner training. (JAC)

Sex differences in cognitive skills, grouped into motor, spatial and linguistic areas, are assessed in relation to current theories of cerebral lateralization. Few convincing sex differences exist, either overall, or in interactions with functional localization. Qualifying criteria include age, birth order, culture, sex of experimenter and sex…

Excerpts from the keynote address of the 1976 Association for Childhood Education International study conference. Argues for a concern for the whole child--his body, his mind and his feelings and for helping children develop in all these areas. (MS)

Argues that since 17 percent of a child's growth occurs between four and six, kindergarten programs should stress all aspects of child development; cognitive, social, affective and psychomotor, rather than being school readiness programs. (MS)

Meaningfulness values, assessed via the production method, were obtained on 40 trigrams for 120 children, 40 each in second and sixth grade. These norms were subsequently used in a free-recall learning study. (MS)

Examination of the way in which children conceive the development of animals shows that there are parallels among concepts of development with those of the periods of concrete operations and formal operations. The conception of development seems to advance further in the subsequent period of dialectical thought. (MS)

Seven sequential ordinal scales of sensorimotor development are briefly described. These scales permit modification in the strategy for assessing infant development, investigating its structure and investigating infant-environment interaction. (GO)

Uncover critical information about children's emotional, social, physical, communicative, and cognitive development by observing their nonverbal expressions. "The Dancing Dialogue" shows how to assess the behavior and movement of children with a wide range of issues and to use what is learned interventions. Equally effective for those with…