The fragmented state of social work practice today suggests that conceptual reorientation is necessary if the profession is to remain adaptive to changing demands. The author proposes the use of an ecosystems framework embracing multiple practice approaches and the use of an epidemiological orientation focusing on arenas in which practitioners…

Training over a 6-month period in which a moderately retarded 10-year-old was asked to direct his attention to simulus properties on a visual level resulted in significant improvement in concept development, social comprehension, and understanding of instructions. (CL)

Sixty children aged 2-3 to 5-6 were given four quantity tasks that tested their understanding of "more" and "same." Tasks involving a manipulative response were significantly easier than those involving a yes/no judgment. (Author/RH)

Three types of concepts were examined: concepts defined by sufficient features, concepts which possessed necessary and sufficient features, and concepts composed of exemplars with distinctive features. Second- and fifth-grade subjects learned the concepts in a procedure encouraging abstraction of common features or a procedure fostering exemplar…

In a replication study, children 3 and 4 years old were given verbal rule training in order to probe the importance of identity, reversibility, and compensation explanations in training number and length concepts. Among the results, as before, identity was found to be the most significant factor in conservation acquisition. (Author/RH)

This study investigated whether object-picture discrepancy occurs because preschool children regard pictures as significates rather than as signifiers. Results indicated the children did not consistently respond to objects and their pictorial representations equivalently. (Author/DB)

Maintains that dialectical concepts provide only one alternative to empiricist views of science. Three functions of scientists are identified: conceptual constructivist, change agent, and prognosticator. Suggests that methodology should be designed to facilitate these goals. (Author/DB)

An open-category task was administered to 180 elementary students. Three modes of response (related to the ways students acquire attributes for objects) were used to score the tasks. Qualitative changes in the three modes were analyzed, and the results supported a qualitative change in the modes of response. (Author/GDC)

The paper reviews research which presents evidence that learning disabled (LD) children, like other groups that show performance deficiencies, do not spontaneously employ appropriate goal directed task strategies in many situations. (Author/PHR)

Three experiments were conducted to study the inferencing processes involved in anaphoric reference. Results show that an anaphora activates both its referent and concepts when in the same proposition as the referent, and that all three, when in the same proposition, are connected in the long-term representation of a text. (PJM)

Previous research has reported instances in which some two-year-olds failed to overextend in comprehension what they overextended in use. Fremgen and Fay found no instance of overextension in comprehension in separate experiments. From this Fremgen and Fay conclude children never overextend in comprehension. This conclusion is re-evaluated here.…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate children's performance on different number versions of identity and equivalence conservation tasks. Subjects were 88 children ranging in age from four to six years. (MP)

In a study to determine procedural effects of volume conservation tasks performed by adolescent females, the results revealed that the LaVatelli water displacement test was significantly more difficult than the Elkind test or Piaget's test. (Author/RL)

Kindergarten and first-grade children conserved physical attributes of inanimate objects more easily than the physical attributes of animate objects. Significant conservation differences between various animate objects also were found. (Author/RL)

The article illustrates the use of commercial jingles as high interest, low-level reading and language arts materials for primary age mildly retarded students. It is pointed out that jingles can be used in teaching initial consonants, vocabulary words, and arithmetic concepts. (SBH)