Contained in this monograph is a review and synthesis of developmental psychology and learning theory, with major emphasis upon applications of the developmental perspective to environmental education curriculum and instruction. Based upon a summary of the work of Piaget and his followers, a learning readiness axis is proposed. Also examined are…

This study evaluating an innovative technique for the education of medical students emphasized the measurement of 30 senior medical students' cognitive and affective behaviors in response to their experiences over a period of six weeks with videotaped self-instructional programs. An investigation was made of: (1) the students' gain in knowledge,…

An investigation of the naturalistic acquisition of a second language phonology, based on the case of a native Icelandic speaker learning the fricatives and affricates of English, reveals that neither transfer hypothesis nor the developmental hypothesis alone provides an adequate explanation of second language phonological development. This…

A cognitive, theory-based assessment-intervention model of social-communicative development and research to validate the model are described in this document. The model is neo-Piagetian in that it assumes that social-communicative skills are structured by cognitive skills and that these skills follow a five level sequence of stages. The assessment…

The Teacher Questioning Measure (TQM) was developed to give the student teaching supervisor an objective means of evaluating the questions asked by the student teachers. This instrument was designed to measure six areas of cognitive skills: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Questions are measured on a…

The relation of visual process to Piaget's stages of cognitive development was examined. The study utilized four age groups to correspond roughly to acquisition and consolidation periods of concrete and formal operations: 6 years - acquisition of concrete operations; 9 years - consolidation of concrete operations; 11 years - acquisition of formal…

A study was conducted to determine which of three major cue systems (linguistic, cognitive, or extralinguistic) 146 subjects at the kindergarten, first grade and second grade levels used to reconstruct meaning when confronted with a reading task. Cue system utilization was related to four factors: modality (listening versus reading), reading…

This experiment examined two processes which might account for developmental increases in accuracy in visual recognition tasks: age-related increases in efficiency of scanning during inspection, and age-related increases in the ability to make decisions systematically during test. Critical details necessary for recognition were highlighted as…

This study focuses on children's reflectiveness about their drawings, and on the effect of other children's presence on the drawer's verbalizations about the drawing process and product. It was hypothesized that children would talk more about their representational efforts in the presence of other children, and that planning and evaluative or…

Thirty-two parent couples participated in this investigation to determine whether learning patterns established in the home environment significantly affect a child's later cognitive development in traditionally school-taught subjects. This research report outlines the methodology used in the study, explains the operational criteria for the four…

The purpose of this Child Development Associate (CDA) training module is to help trainees develop social studies experiences that will help children learn more about their family, school and community. Topics covered include lessons, activities and environmental conditions that can be used to provide social studies experiences for young children,…

This study investigated (1) the order of acquisition of related temporal and spatial terms, (2) the application of temporal and spatial terms and (3) the relationship between the application of temporal and spatial terms and performance on cognitive measures of temporal and spatial ordering. Children 3 to 5 years of age were tested on four…

This study is part of a longitudinal research project which investigated the cognitive and social development of rural children (ages 3-5, 6-8, and 9-11 years) in eight states of the U.S.A. This paper, however, reports only the cognitive development of 3- to 5-year-old subjects in rural Nebraska from 1976-1978. The longitudinal sample plus control…

Two experiments were conducted to examine children's understanding (metacognitive awareness) of the parts to a simple story. The following parts were considered essential for comprehending a story: what precipitates the character's action (initiating event), what the character did (action), and what followed the character's action (consequence).…

The argument that the personality structures obtained from retrospective ratings reflect semantic similarity structures has been as provocative as a red cape in the bull ring. High congruence between those two kinds of structures seems well established. What is less clear is how and why those structures differ from that for immediate judgments of…