Summarizes some of the major areas of concern in the study of the child's relationship with, and awareness of, death. An explanation of the changes in the child's conception is presented, followed by sections on the fatally ill and bereaved child. (Author)

The ability of 18-, 24-, and 30-week-old infants to learn conceptual categories regarding adult female faces was examined using a habituation paradigm. (JMB)

Investigates a museum exhibition design assumption that visitors develop conceptual understanding of a science topic after utilizing a cluster of conceptually related exhibits which lack explicit concept labeling. Also investigated whether visitor concept development could be enhanced through the addition of explicit labeling of the intended…

The effect of humor on retention of information was examined at the planetarium at Ohio's Center of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, OH. Results showed that the visitors who saw a humorous show retained less of the instructional material and scored lower on the test than the visitors who saw a nonhumorous show. (Author/DKM)

Four studies explored preschoolers' understanding of thought bubbles depicted in cartoons. Few three- and four-year olds knew what a thought-bubble depiction was without instruction, but if simply told that the thought bubble "shows what someone is thinking," the majority easily understood the devices as depicting thoughts generally and…

Attempts to reconstruct the productive ideas that evolved from already existing sources for the teaching and understanding of negative numbers. Discusses examples from developmental research. (Author/MKR)

Describes a study that used a teaching strategy based on two teaching experiments which could facilitate students' conceptual understanding of electrochemistry. Involves two sections (n=29 and n=28) of 10th grade high school students in Venezuela. Concludes that the teaching experiments facilitated student understanding of electrochemistry.…

Reviews the article, "Can Mathematics Education and History of Mathematics Coexist?" (M.N. Fried) which appeared in "Science and Education". Challenges Fried's assertion that combining history of mathematics with mathematics education is inherently difficult. The assertion is considered flawed in terms of both its view of history and a limited…

Discusses the place of infinity in the history and epistemology of mathematics. (Author/MM)

Diagrams that illustrate characteristics that are always, sometimes, or never present in a concept can be categorized as examples or nonexamples to broaden students' understanding of basic geometric concepts. (MKR)

Presents an approach to teaching statistical ideas, including describing distributions of scores, location of the center, and the spread of a distribution (dispersion). (MKR)

Notes that many psychological theories assume things belong in the same category because of their similarity. Recounts several arguments claiming, however, that similarity is an empty notion or is an insufficient quality upon which to base categorization. Concludes that, though these arguments have merit, similarity can be sufficiently constrained…

The second of two articles on recursive programing techniques focuses on pseudocoding of recursive processes, evaluation and encoding of recursive procedures, and evaluation and encoding of recursive functions. The translation of recursive relations in mathematics to recursive functions is also examined, and an example is given. (12 references)…

Examines infants' ability to detect correlations among feature categories of the type that one might expect to be useful in forming natural object categories. (PCB)

Examines sociohistorically situated data to provide an understanding of conceptual metaphor using the phrase "trade is war." Describes the workings of image-schematically compatible or incompatible metaphors as they operate in the concrete discourse of trade. Finds that metaphors are fundamentally responsive and are therefore implicated in a…