To investigate how a child organizes new objects and how categories function for a chid, twelve 6- and twelve 8-year-olds were individually given several sorting tasks involving 21 three-dimensional nonsense objects. The child was exposed to all the objects; three objects were pointed out and withdrawn; and then the child was asked to describe…

Value judgments play a role in evaluation by determining the anticipated behavioral outcomes, what is measured, techniques for measurement, and decision making. Value judgments are usually faced only at the decision-making stage. Methods to analyze values will hopefully be given more emphasis in future evaluation enterprises. Studies using…

Two experiments investigate the effects of mode of presentation and number of categories on 4-year-olds' proportion estimates. Experiment I compares simultaneous and successive presentations of proportion problems using two categories of elements. The subjects were 40 children chosen randomly and tested individually. Four problems were presented…

The results of an investigation of the reactions of young children (ranging from four to nine years of age) in France, Germany, England, America, and Czechoslovkia to two Prix Jeunesse winning television films are examined in this document. Summarized reports from each of the participating countries for the film "Patrik and Putrik" and,…

This study examined perceptual and articulatory confusions among the fricatives /f, v, s, z/ and voiced and unvoiced "th" in preschool children. (These phonemes are among the most difficult for children to articulate.) Seventeen children from 3.3-5.1 years of age were tested on syllables formed by taking all combinations of the six…

This document describes the Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model of concept formation. According to the CLD analysis, a single concept is learned in the following successive levels of attainment: concrete, identity, classification, and formal. The four levels are considered applicable to concepts that are defined (or could be defined)…

A group of children were presented with several tasks, including the invention of a sleep machine and a machine to weigh elephants. The tasks were chosen to involve the children in coping with problems of a distinct character. A study of the children's drawings and interpretations shows that children's thinking ability is not very different from…

This paper examines the major theoretical approaches to the study of socialization, with an emphasis on media effects. The three major bodies of literature studied are the major theoretic approaches utilized in the general area of developmental psychology, the theoretical paradigms evident in studies dealing more specifically with child…

This document describes experimental attempts to teach young children the concepts of conservation of number. Subjects were 48 nursery school children who were divided into experimental and control groups. All children were individually pretested for conservation, after which the experimental group alone received two training sessions. The…

Presented are five papers on the application of the cognitive theories of Jean Piaget to learning problems in young children. The first paper, by Remy Droz, looks at current interactions between psychology and teaching, and relates Piaget's theories to the general scientific trend of the century. Discussed are the four developmental stages…

Twenty-six children ranging in age from 6 to 12 years whose tested IQ's were over 160 were tested on three Piagetian tasks of advanced concrete operations and two tests of formal operations. All children passed all concrete operations problems, but only four of the oldest boys passed the formal operations tasks. Findings are discussed in terms of…

Activities that allow infants to investigate their own environments are suggested in this disucssion of science and its relationship to cognitive development. Emphasis is placed on the infant's own manipulation of wet and dry materials such as: bathwater, food, boxes, pockets, magazines and balls, all of which are readily available in most homes.…

The ability of nursery school children to associate pairs of toys was assessed under four experimental conditions: (1) control, (2) subjects manipulating the toys, (3) subjects generating a sentence, and (4) subjects generating a sentence while manipulating the toys. All three subject-involvement conditions produced significantly better…

A series of studies on young children's use of the terms "same" and "different" are reported. The work began from the observation that young children could respond correctly to instructions involving "same" but were often incorrect in response to "different". This finding was replicated under a variety of experimental conditions and found to be…

The general objective of this study was to study Piaget's notion of the sequential development of number conservation in 85 children averaging 5.9 years of age. The question addressed was to determine if a set of ten equal addition conservation of number tasks were scalable. A large coefficient of reproducibility, .912, was computed. Other indices…