The consistently inferior performance of economically disadvantaged children led to this study designed to investigate how cognitive development changes with age and how it is affected by previous life experience. Classification behavior and inferential thinking were the main concerns of the study. The measurement instrument was the Matrix Test, a…

This study of the cognitive-developmental approach to primary grade value education emphasizes the involvement of the reasoning process in solving moral dilemmas. This approach is in contrast to those which focus on clarifying values and developing an awareness of other cultures' values. Educational intervention in the cognitive-developmental…

This study reports various aspects of the analyses carried out on the longitudinal data reported in a previous study (PS 007 345) for determining the general growth patterns and growth velocity of mental and motor development. Preliminary analyses focused on the selection of the growth curve, its evaluation in the 208 individual cases, and the…

Two studies attempted to clarify the Intellectual Tasks test assessment of number conservation by testing for two possible artifacts due to procedure: (1) Effects of preceding questions on the following test questions, and (2) operations or manipulations of the test materials by the examiner. Forty Mexican-American first and second graders were…

The purposes of this study were to investigate (1) the consistency among fifth-grade children in conceptual style across different conceptual style instruments and (2) the generalizability of conceptual style behavior to school related tasks when stability and instability of children's conceptual style were taken into consideration. Children…

Providing relevant data, analyses, and observations, with particular reference to the cognitive and affective development of bilingual children, the 1973-74 Grants Bilingual-Bicultural Program evaluation determined the personnel's attitudes and perceptions about program components and operations and the children's responses to bilingual-bicultural…

This study was designed to simulate some aspects of classroom verbal interaction and to investigate their cognitive effects on students, using cognitive theory as the theoretical rationale. Subject-determined verbalization of correct cues was crossed with external sources of verbalized correct cues in a multivariable design in which sex was…

The research experiments on relational learning in young children contained in this report were guided by two major goals: (1) to examine the extent of conceptual transfer in preschool children, and (2) to explore the relation of both "acquisition" and "transfer" to chronological development. The performance of preschool…

Curriculum development, field service issues, and training are discussed in this first volume of the 3-volume progress report. The overview contains a statement of the scope of the program, its major concerns in regard to teachers, parents, and children, and presents lists of objectives for these three groups. The second section, on the…

This document reports on a 2-year study of the influence of males on the development of children and impact of male aides on child-care activities. The study originally developed from clinical observations and research results concerned with effects of fathers' absence on children and adolescents. The first year of the program was for…

This paper presents the theory that altruistic motives develop out of the synthesis of empathic distress and the child's increasingly sophisticated cognitive development, especially his level of self-other differentiation. An examination of empathy and the sense of other is included, followed by a discussion of empathic distress, various forms of…

Three experiments assessed the ability of children 2 to 5 years of age to infer, under very simple task conditions, what another person sees when viewing something from a position other than the children's own. Data indicates that some ability of this genre appears to exist by age 2. The data also suggests a distinction between an earlier and a…

In 1968 an upstate New York School district, acting on behalf of nine school districts, planned and established an Early Childhood Center. This evaluative report of a 2-year demonstration preschool, modeled on the British Infant School, describes the open classroom arrangement and its effect on the center's children, teachers, and student…

This report is a summary statement about a broad-based longitudinal study being conducted by Head Start. It concerns the effects of early school experiences on over 1800 disadvantaged children, ages 4 to 8, and their families who live in four poverty areas. The report (1) raises basic questions about the nature of education, learning, and…

Reported is a study of the relationships between scholastic grades of 419 junior and senior high school students and their ability to perform formal operational tasks. A Piagetian Task Instrument (PTI) was constructed to assess the formal thinking ability of the students. Face validity of the instrument was obtained after a literature review.…