Children (N=32) between 6 and 12 years of age were given Derry Death Concept Scale, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and subtests from Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Correlations indicated that level of death concept development was related to age and verbal-conceptual mental development. Socioeconomic status and death-related…

Investigated a persistent error among introductory college biology and genetics students, namely, that amino acids are produced by genetic translation (protein synthesis). Contributors to this misconception were revealed through multiple-choice items and interviews. Implications for education are discussed with specific steps suggested to correct…

Israeli participants (N=338) rated five time-related concepts (time, past, present, future, own life stage) on Semantic Differential Scales. Participants constituted six age-based groups, representing childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood, late adulthood, and old age. Results indicate that people of different ages differ significantly…

Four experiments investigated three- and four-year-old children's knowledge of projective size-distance and projective shape-orientation relationships. Results indicated that preschool children's understanding of these relationships seems at least partly cognitive rather than wholly perceptive, providing further evidence for the acquisition of…

The purpose of present experiments with subjects approximately three, five, and seven years of age was to provide additional evidence for the obviousness of the generative transmission principle and to provide initial evidence for the secondary principles of absence and facility. Empirical support was found for each of these selection principles,…

A theory of the assignment of moral responsibility and punishment for harm was tested with 5- to 11-year-old children. Results indicated sophisticated use of moral concepts from 5 years. Developmental trends suggested increasing sensitivity to these concepts, greater tolerance for harm doing, and more emphasis on restitution than punishment.…

Value transformation in home economics may be approached in three ways: How are values changing? How should values be transformed? How can values be transformed? While home economics may be involved in all three approaches, it is the latter two that are the most critical. (Author/CT)

A theoretical framework describing second-order philosophical processes that can be productive for human movement studies is presented. The processes of edification and theory building can clarify issues, expand viewpoints, and establish systematic ways of dealing with a phenomenon, leading to the more mature forms of dialogues and theories. (MT)

Discusses misconceptions (in several thermodynamics statements) that seem to be particularly common among students who have finished a one-semester, junior-level course in chemical thermodynamics. When presented as true/false questions, these statements are usually judged true, although each requires at least one more condition to be satisfied.…

Two studies are reported which investigate the concept learning of 116 sixth graders (study 1) and 107 second graders (study 2) depending on the model of concept presentation. Results showed no difference between the structured Merrill and Tennyson model and adaptations of the model which were responsive to student's questions or recycled missed…

Determined: (1) whether students thought of magnetic poles as exerting forces directly on electric charges and (2) the specific strategies students used to make predictions about the forces acting on electric charges in two problem situations. Implications for instruction are considered. (JN)

Discusses problems of defining suicide and differentiating suicide from accidental death, examining presuicidal conditions and behavior in young children, and describing young children's concepts of death. Offers suggestions for prevention. (RH)

This study of one part of the cognitive system of an illiterate Indian (his method of enumeration, computation, and evaluation) demonstrates the sophisticated conceptualization of which he is capable, independent of a writing system. (Author/CMG)

Examination of hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities of 10 language impaired and 10 language normal children revealed that language impaired Ss performed significantly more poorly than controls on haptic recognition tasks and on a portion of the discrimination learning task. No differences were found between the groups' concept…

Argues that though there is a clear distinction between the aims of teaching and training, there need be no such distinction between the methods and mental processes involved, and that customary definitions have distorted the concept of training, which should be seen as a particular and worthwhile aspect of education. (WL)