Investigates effects of perceptual salience and specific orientation values on 16 kindergarten and fourth-grade children executing a speeded sorting task. Kindergarten results supported the cognitive processing prediction that orientation sorting times would vary as a function of condition, but no differences were obtained for the fourth-grade…

This article focuses on curriculum analysis, an aspect of direct instruction that is frequently neglected or obscured by an emphasis on classroom management and teacher performance. Explicit strategies that are used to teach higher cognitive skills and the importance of teacher training in the appropriate use of direct instruction are discussed.…

Reviews early theoretical and research literature on handedness and places it within the larger context of the nature-nurture controversy. Discussion focuses on Baldwin's study of the development of hand preference in infants in relation to the recapitulation theory, mental development ("dynamogenesis"), and speech development.…

Examines the relationship between visual attentiveness, search behavior, and duration of independent mobility for 56 eight-to ten-month-old infants when presented with three versions of the Piagetian Stage IV object permanence task. (HOD)

Examines the connection between children's own storying in play and the narrative fictions offered them in children's literature. (HOD)

Describes the development of 126 preterm infants studied throughout their first 2 years of life and then retested at age 5. Examines social-environmental factors in the interaction between infant and mother that are associated with more-or-less successful mental development. (AS)

This article explores the purposes, methods, and future directions of social-skill training research from the perspective of a cognitive-social learning explanation of behavior change. Research findings are reviewed with respect to important or promising variables, their hypothesized function in behavior change, and their effects on children's…

Parent-adolescent conflicts are frequently sufficiently severe to require third-party intervention. Because the adolescent is more likely to be in a setting where counsel is more easily available, the helping person can make use of insight and emotional maturity that is concomitant with the adolescent's acquisition of formal thought. (Author)

The purpose of this paper is to familiarize readers with Vygotsky's theory on verbal regulation of thinking skills, to describe related research and applications of the theory, and to explore its relevance for researchers, parents, and educators. (MT)

Inhelder and Piaget found that somewhere between 12 and 15 years of age, children's thinking shifted from concrete to formal operations. To determine if this shift occurs at approximately the same age for learning disabled children (N=27) compared to normal learning children (N=27) was the task of the study reported. (JN)

Two studies assessed the ability of two groups of preschool children (ages two to four and three to five years, respectively) to label and categorize age groups on the basis of photographs and dolls representing the life span. Results indicated age and sex differences. (Author/CI)

The author states that none of the left-brain/right brain "mythology" is supported by the actual research on the differences between the left and right human cerebral hemispheres. In fact, he states, the research literature flatly contradicts most of the mythology. (CT)

In this developmental study of sustained cognitive monitoring, second graders, sixth graders, and college students followed a two-part sequence of spatial directions and then made judgments about reaching the destination intended by direction giver. Cognitive monitoring skills of the type examined appear to be useful in many real-world cognitive…

The relationship between chronological age, social age, motor, sensory and concept skills, and the orientation and mobility skills of 37 mentally retarded visually impaired children was examined. Results revealed a strong relationship between developmental level in the areas of motor, sensory, and concept skills, and mobility proficiency.…

Partially replicates Elkind and Bowen's (1979) investigation of adolescent egocentrism. Studies the relations between imaginary audience and operational thought by testing children and adolescents on a Piagetian-based written test of operational thought and the Imaginary Audience Scale. (Author/AS)