This bibliography lists all entries from the Jean Piaget Archives Catalogues dealing with mental retardation. The list, including almost 200 entries, encompasses four works by Piaget himself, one collaboration, and 189 works by other authors. Entries are arranged in order by their publication in one of the 12 catalogues of the archives, providing…

This paper examines the teaching of thinking skills for the future. An analysis of John Dewey's "How We Think" offers insights into cognition. Four types of thinking--reflective, conceptual, critical and creative--are explored. Aspects of brain research relevant to cognition are discussed. Specific ways to facilitate thinking and several…

A study investigated children's difficulty in learning color words and attempted to determine whether the difficulty was perceptual, conceptual, or linguistic. The subjects were 24 two-year-olds, half with knowledge of color words and half without, and a similar control group. The experimental subjects were given conceptual and comprehension tasks…

Abstracts of most of the papers, symposia, and poster sessions presented at the 59th conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) are provided. Subject areas addressed include: instructional practices in secondary school science; research on computers in science learning; teacher's professional knowledge and…

This study, which involved a Malaysian sample, investigated students' and teachers' conceptions of intelligence, and related age and geographic differences. In phase 1, a group of 25 teachers and 196 of their 12-, 14-, and 16-year-old students were asked to describe the characteristics and behaviors of an intelligent student. Responses were used…

This teacher resource material was written from the perspective that it is possible to improve number fact learning in the primary grades, and in remedial situations beyond those years, in ways that: (1) will help children learn all facts; (2) will emphasize the process as well as the answer; and (3) by capitalizing upon natural extensions of…

A study was conducted to determine if instruction in schematic aspects of narratives would enhance children's knowledge of story constituents and their interrelationships and to assess the effect of instruction in narrative schema on the reading comprehension of average and below average readers. Subjects were 20 fourth grade students who had been…

This study examines the relationship between student misconceptions and learning by focusing on six fifth-grade students as they attempt to make sense of classroom instruction on light and seeing. Pretests, posttests, and classroom observation narratives served as student data. Pretests indicate that students held the misconception that sight is…

The literature on children's acquisition of sex-typed knowledge, preference, and behavior is reviewed, and a matrix of sex-typing constructs and sex-typed content areas is offered. Two major themes are discussed. The first theme concerns the importance of activities, interests, and peer associations in the early acquisition of sex-typing…

This exploratory study was aimed at uncovering children's beliefs and ideas about the human circulatory system. Thirty-two subjects, aged 7 to 14 years, were interviewed using a modification of Piaget's clinical method. The data were analyzed by developing a conceptual inventory of beliefs for each of five research questions. It was found that the…

The acquisition of the metalinguistic abilities involved in ambiguity detection and resolution was studied with children. It is suggested that metalinguistic abilities may serve as potential test measures for facility in learning a second language. School children (ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13) were tested for their ability to detect ambiguous…

This publication contains studies which focus on students' science concepts and the alternative frameworks they use to interpret natural phenomena. Among the specific areas investigated are: conceptions held by Year 11 chemistry students about stoichiometry; how some 9-year-old students interpret the word "solid" to mean hard,…

Recent research shows that students' understanding of many scientific topics is influenced by misconceptions that conflict with accepted scientific theories and persist even after instruction. In this study, student misconceptions were identified and used as a basis for analyzing the classroom behavior of teachers and students and for developing…

Approximately 823 people were interviewed in a study that sought to determine (1) whether newspaper reliant and television reliant people think about political information in the same manner, and (2) what inferences can be drawn from the viewing of cognitive structures if one assumes a causal ordering from cognitive structure--level of…

Although the listening construct has been defined more widely in order to deal with the issue of lecture retention, these wider definitions suffer from serious conceptual and methodological problems, such as the assumption that receiving behavior is the same regardless of differing situations and messages. However, the literature would indicate…