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An investigation into effects of training in symbolic logic on the grouping strategies of 8-yr-old children is reported. Bruner's tests of equivalence is being used as a criteria. Generally the training was found to be beneficial for boys, but not for girls, the training x sex interaction being significant for performance in the verbal test. For both tests, more of the experimental group displayed above-average groupings in the functional and nominal categories, the difference from controls being statistically significant.

Current programs of compensatory education in the U.S. are attempting to resolve the continuing problems of low attainment among socially handicapped children. Concern over low attainment in this basic educational skill is also reflected in controversies over the relative efficacy of different teaching methods. Though reading is widely accepted as a cognitive process research on children's reading in the past has concentrated largely on perceptual processes, which are of obvious importance, particularly in the early stages of reading.

The article discusses the logical operations of Jean Piaget in science instruction that may enhance the learning and comprehension of science concept among children. The study reveals that achievement on cognitive tasks using these logical operations can be helped by the use of programmed instruction techniques. It also presents various levels of intellectual development in understanding the sets of logical operations including the sensory-motor stage, the pre-operational stage and the concrete operations stage. It suggests that knowing the concept starts when information processed using logical operations. The study shows that additional exercise of the abilities in understanding the content is beneficial and the child's interests in the content achievement needs stimulation and focus.

This article presents the author's comments on cognition in children with disabilities and development of basic academic skills like mathematics and language in them. The author has dealt the issue in three different parts, treating the problems of language development, concept formation and elementary mathematical skills. In each of these three parts he has studied the literature available on blind, mentally retarded and deaf children.

The article presents studies which aim to determine the relationship between cognitive style and achievement in a modern elementary science program. Respondents in one of the studies were the 184 students coming from four schools in Penticton, British Columbia district. The students were currently involved in one of the new open-ended elementary science programs. Another study used the Children's Embedded Figure Test to determine the cognitive style of the students. Another study administered an attitude inventory and Test of Science Processes to measure the outcomes of the instruction in science.

Boys have difficulties in learning far more often than girls. While girls' relatively more advanced cognitive development may account for some of this difference, the present questionnaire study of 222 grade school children shows that sex differences In emotional response to failure could amplify the effect. Failing girls have the alternative of pleasing the teacher by good behavior, a so-called feminine attribute, whereas most failing boys have to resort to excellence in sports or leadership, qualities which are less valued and not readily accessible in the classroom. Failing girls' acceptable social behavior receives the teacher's approval, whereas failing boys behave antisocially, which further discredits them with the teacher, setting up a vicious cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

64 kindergarten and 64 first-grade subjects were administered Piaget's class-inclusion task and revised class-inclusion tasks involving several procedural variations. Each of these revisions, relating to referencing, equivalence of subclass elements, and auditory cue sequence, enhanced performance, as compared with Piaget's standard procedures. These results are considered in terms of 2 possible interpretations, the reduction of inferred learning sets and the interrelation of Piagetian operational development and task conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early perceptual-cognitive development was studied in 48 infants, 5 and 8 months old. Attentional behaviors were observed to systematic presentations of face-voice matching and mismatching of mother and a female stranger. Differences in the direction and duration of first fixation to congruous and incongruous conditions suggest that some of the 8-month-old infants may have developed specific auditory-visual expectations. Fixations at both ages were significantly longer to novel than to familiar figures; however, auditory novelty did not differ from auditory familiarity in determining visual fixation. Boys, at both ages, deployed their attention more widely than girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While waiting in a delay-of-gratification paradigm, preschool children were shown objects that were either the rewards in the delay-of-reward situation or irrelevant to the delay contingency. All children were encouraged to ideate about the objects while waiting. They either were led to believe that ideating about the objects would help terminate the delay period (instrumental ideation) or were not led to think that their ideation would affect the delay time (noninstrumental ideation). As expected, children were able to wait longer in the instrumental ideation condition than in the noninstrumental ideation condition. Most important, this increased waiting occurred only when the reward objects in the delay contingency were the focus of ideation and not when the ideated objects were irrelevant to the delay contingency. Finally, a significant effect was found for sex (girls waited longer) but not for age. The findings were discussed in light of prior experimental and theoretical work on the specific relationship between cognitive activity and delay at gratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sorting-recall procedure was used to explore age-related characteristics of children's personal categorizing schemes and relationships between free recall clustering, measured in reference to these schemes, and the number of items recalled. 60 Ss, 12 from each of 5 grade levels (1, 4, 7, 10, and college), attained stable free sorting categories prior to free recall. A modification of Robinson's Item Clustering Index (1966) was employed to measure recall clustering. The recall data showed that children at all grade levels made substantial reference to their sorting schemes in free recall, and that relationships between personal clustering and amount of free recall were significant at each grade level. Procedures using E-defined categories as the basis for clustering were discussed as being insensitive to children's categorizing preferences, and therefore inappropriate for the measurement of recall organization in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective was to assess how quickly children who were speakers of Black Nonstandard English responded appropriately to sentences presented in their dialect as compared to Standard English. 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds completed sentences presented on tape in differing dialect conditions. Two grammatical features that differ in standard and nonstandard dialect were investigated. There was a significant interaction of grammatical structure with dialect condition. A faster response was given to the standard form for the third-person singular, present-tense verb and to the nonstandard form for the negative, especially by the younger children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

227 African., Chinese, and European children between 4 and 10 years of age participated in a cross-cultural study of pictorial depth discrimination. Subjects had to construct 3-dimensional models representing the size and spatial relationships depicted in 3 series of pictures. Apart from minor fluctuations, the pattern of results varied little between cultures. Size accuracy, relatively high among younger subjects, increased with age and number of depth cues. Spatial accuracy also increase with age but consistently decreased with increase in depth information. The absence of marked cultural differences suggests that the phenomena under study may be universal in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of a model's grouping strategy and explanations were studied with 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Brief observation of the model was effective in creating significant generalization and retention of a size-dimension grouping strategy. The model's explanations significantly assisted acquisition; however, incentives failed to improve performance. The child's age influenced performance; 3- and 4-year-old children who were exposed to a model's size-dimension grouping responses were unable to group stimuli according to an initially used object-identity dimension. 5-year-olds could use both dimensions. However, a special training procedure in which the model grouped according to both stimulus dimensions did teach 4-year-olds successfully to utilize both grouping strategies together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of tasks theoretically presumed to require equivalent logical competence (multiplication of classes, multiplication of relations, seriation, and transitivity) was administered to 32 first graders and 32 second graders. The performance demands were made equivalent by equating across tasks the amount of stimulus information and response requirements. Response measures emphasizing the operative and figurative aspects were compared within each task. Correlations indicated that the operative measures were the most successful in producing a high degree of correspondence in the levels of performance across tasks. Factor analyses confirmed the theoretical distinction between operative and figurative factors. The findings are discussed in relation to the importance of incorporating the figurative-operative distinction in the assessment of logical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gratification which children derive from cognitive mastery on problem-solving tasks was examined as a function of task difficulty. Fifth and sixth graders were given a series of anagrams varying in difficulty. Greater pleasure, as reflected both in smiling and rated enjoyment, was manifest on the correct, compared to the incorrect, items. Among those correctly solved anagrams only, there was a positive linear relationship between smiling and difficulty level. Repetition of correctly solved anagrams produced a decline in smiling. Verbal data also supported the interpretation that the maximum gratification is derived from the active solution of challenging problems, whereas easily solved problems provide relatively little pleasure. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the concept of effectance motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research is concerned with the importance of subtle contextual factors in affecting the young child's performance on cognitive problems. To illustrate this phenomenon, the conservation task was altered to include a 1-judgment version in which the child had to comment on the stimuli only after their rearrangement. This condition was devised because it was hypothesized that the request for 2 judgments 1 before and 1 after the rearrangement is taken by the child as a cue that he should alter his first judgment so as to acknowledge the change he has just witnessed. The results indicated that first-grade children made fewer errors not only on the 1-judgment task itself, but also on a subsequent standard conservation task given 1 week later. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that contextual cues which may be deemed insignificant by the adult may have a strong influence on the child's cognitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative effectiveness of positive and negative adult preference statements in controlling children's behavior was studied using an ABA reversal design. During daily sessions each of 3 4-year-old boys first watched a male assistant play a 2-choice discrimination game and then played the game himself. While the child watched from behind a 1-way vision screen, an adult experimenter made comments to the child regarding the assistant's behavior. During positive conditions the adult made positive comments (e.g., "I like it, he pulled W") when one response was emitted and neutral comments (e.g., "He pulled X") when the other was made. During negative conditions, negative (e.g., "I don't like it, he pulled Y"') and neutral comments were made by the adult. After the assistant left, the child played while the adult watched but said nothing. Using a discrete trials procedure, the child made successive choices between the 2 responses. In all cases compliance was greater when the adult used negative preference statements. That is, the adult's antecedent negative comments exerted greater control of the children's behavior than did positive comments. Compliance with antecedent negative comments remained high even in the case of 1 subject who was differentially reinforced for noncompliant responding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3- and 4-year-olds were tested for their understanding of the system of definite and indefinite articles in 2 kinds of story-telling tasks. On the basis of the results it was concluded that competence was established early in 1 abstract semantic distinction, that between specific and nonspecific reference; when it was necessary to take into account the referential knowledge of one's listener, however, only an advanced 4-year-old group was free from error. On the basis of more detailed analysis, it was concluded that memory and cognitive factors also affected the baseline of definiteness in response to stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

64 middle- to upper-middle-class, white, second-grade children were tested on a visual vigilance task. They were selected on the basis of their scores on the Stanford Achievement Test in order to form high and low achievement groups. The vigilance task consisted of a 30-minute movie of a stationary jet plane. The children responded to a change in the star on the plane's fuselage, which occurred a total of 24 times at predetermined intervals of 30, 60, 90, and 120 seconds. The high achievers made a greater number of correct detections (p < .01) and a fewer number of false responses (p < .01), and there was a significant decline in the number of correct detections over time (p < .05). There were no sex differences in performance, and there was no relationship between performance and interval length. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

76 Ss in grades 2, 6, and college were asked to sort 50 pictures with respect to the class labels "food," "things to eat," "clothing," and "things to wear." The first and third categories, as well as the general procedure employed, were used earlier by Saltz, Soller, and Sigel (1972). The remaining class labels were employed to test for effect of label specificity. The classes "food" and "things to eat" are functionally equivalent at all ages; both show a slight increase in size with age. However, "clothing" and "things to wear" are functionally equivalent only for second graders, with a decrease in the size and composition of "clothing" with age. Details of inclusion for this class did not support the earlier findings of Saltz, Soller, and Sigel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of spontaneous verbal rehearsal on learning under delay of feedback was investigated. Session 1 Included a serial recall task used to assess individual differences in spontaneous verbal rehearsal. From session 1 performance, 36 children were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: producers, nonproducers, or naming nonproducers (children who had not rehearsed but who were instructed to label studied pictures in session 2). In session 2, the children in these groups were tested on a multiple-item discrimination learning task in which feedback was immediate for half the pairs and delayed for 15 seconds for the remaining pairs. Surprisingly, the producers made more correct responses with immediate feedback than with delayed, while this difference was not significant for the other 2 groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the processes whereby small children (17-24 mo.) learn common and proper nouns and learn how English distinguishes between them. Our thesis is that within certain classes of objects (e.g., people), the children first discriminate individuals and then learn their names, whereas among other classes of objects (e.g., spoons) they do not discriminate individuals, and learn names only for the class. These two processes enable the children to learn the syntactic distinction between common and proper nouns. The thesis is supported by two sets of experimental data derived from a total of 80 children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursery school children reproduced lines of varying orientations by drawing from immediate memory. The frame was circular, and there were no straight lines in the immediate surround to be used as reference axes. Reproductions of the vertical were significantly more accurate than reproductions of the horizontal and the oblique, but the difference between the horizontal and oblique was small and insignificant. It was suggested that the particular difficulty preschoolers have with oblique lines is due to their tendency to "center" on the horizontal and vertical cues which are usually provided by a rectangular frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children, aged 5, 8, and 11 years, were tested to assess the conformity of their developing symbolic gestural abilities to imagery processes espoused by Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder 1971). A stagelike occurrence of symbolic gestures with transformational properties occurred between ages 8 and 11. However, no correspondence between Piaget's tasks of graphic imagery and the gestural tasks was found, in part because of the lack of ability to replicate Piaget's stages of imagery. Finally, the ability to represent action sequences with symbolic gestures was found to increase for 5- and 8-year-olds under conditions of cue absence. Results are discussed in terms of task requirements and difficulties in Piaget's conception of stages in imagery development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children between the ages of 3 and 10 years were asked to rank random polygons varying in complexity from 4 to 40 sides. The rankings of both interestingness and pleasingness increased linearly with complexity in the 9-10-year-olds. Since the distinction between these 2 dimensions was not very great, younger subjects were asked to rank according to which they "liked." Such rankings increased monotonically with increasing complexity in the 7-8-year-aids and some of the 5-6-year-olds. The majority of the 5-6-year-olds, however, preferred the less complex patterns. The 3-4-year-olds were unable to rank reliably. The results are discussed with reference to other developmental changes that occur, particularly between the ages of 5 and 6 years, and a basis for children's visual preferences is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3 experiments assessed the ability of 2-5-year-old children to infer, under very simple task conditions, what another person sees when viewing something from a position other than the children's own. Some ability of this genre appears to exist by 2-3 years of age, at least. The data suggest a distinction between an earlier (Level 1) and a later (Level 2) developmental form of visual percept inference. At Level 1, S is capable of nonegocentrically inferring that O sees an object presently nonvisible to S himself. At Level 2, S is also capable of nonegocentrically inferring how an object that both currently see appears to O, that is, how it looks from his particular spatial perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses ways to help children understand and accept the fact of death. Generally, on being asked questions related to death, adults say more than a child wants to hear or they avoid the topic altogether. Researches on children's thinking may help adults to decide how the topic of death can be handled at different stages of development of children. When adults speak to child about death, it is important for them to know what he knows and his level of thinking. Then only adults can tailor their explanation of death according to the level of the child to avoid confusing him.

The efficacy of small group instructional programs in classificatory, seriation, and combined class/series skills was evaluated for a sample of 60 urban, middle-class 4- to 5-year-old children in a transfer of training design. Significant specific transfer effects were found for the seriation instructional condition whereas little differences were found for the classification, verbal intelligence, and far transfer conservation task measures. Sex differences, school location effects, teacher biases, and pretesting effects were generally absent. The apparent feasibility of sedation skill instruction for preschool aged children and the general non-effectiveness of the classificatory and combined instructional conditions, particularly insofar as far transfer effects are concerned, suggests a nonunitary picture of cognitive functioning during the transitionary phases between preoperational and concrete operations period thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposed to answer the following question: Do partially seeing children see the Snellen E, printed in selected colored inks on various colored backgrounds, at different distances in terms of initial recognition and best focus? Thirty myopic children were tested in Los Angles County District. Forty-two stimulus color combination cards were randomly presented out of focus. The subject was to report the figure's directionality and tell at what distance best focus was obtained. Different combinations yielded various discriminabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the productive thinking abilities of educable mentally retarded (EMR) children in special classes with those of EMR children in the regular grades in the U.S. The term productive thinking is employed and is defined operationally as thinking, manifested either verbally or non-verbally, which represents a respondent's performance on purported measures of originality, fluency, flexibility, and elaboration of ideas. The investigation has indicated special class superiority in the fostering of productive thinking.

The article discusses the ability of mentally retarded children to create visual imagery and the role of visual imagery in improving performance in memory for word forms. The four tests specifically designed to measure visual imagery factors are Memory for Designs Test, Memory for Objects Test, Visual Imagery Index, and Memory for Word Forms Test. Imagery practice was shown to be effective for mentally retarded children for the Visual Imagery Index, Memory for Designs Test, and Memory for Objects Test. The effect of imagery practice was shown to have a relatively uniform improvement. This generalized effect suggests that training in visual imagery can significantly influence a variety of imagery processes even when these processes do not show a high degree of commonality.

This article discusses an experiment conducted to find out absolute and relative codes in young children. This experiment demonstrates that young children are very well able to code relations, and also that they find it more difficult to code absolute values than relations. This is the first convincing demonstration that young children can code relations in learning tasks and that they have difficulty with coding absolute values. The significance of these results lies not only in their demonstration that the familiar learning theory view of one aspect of cognitive development is untenable but also in their implications for further work with young children.

The article reports on cognitive development of young children in residential care. Effects of institutional rearing would have been studied by comparing them with children from similar backgrounds who had been fostered since early infancy. All children were seen within 2 weeks of their second birthday, and equal proportions of home and nursery children were seen in each of the 2 weeks before and the 2 weeks following their birthday. The children living at home were significantly more friendly than the nursery children. The mean mental age of the nursery children was 22 months, and in a play situation they vocalized less than the home children.

The article presents an experimental study on children's mental images of geography. In school, teaching geography creates an experience on the immediate environment of a child. It trains his imagination which begins with perception. A stage of cognitive development through which everyone must pass. A child must be guided to create the right mental images. On an experimental study wherein a particular illustration is presented, it shows that these children relies more on formal definition instead of their images of the things themselves.

The article focuses on the various level of organizational capacities in children of different ages. It is noted that cognition in children for conceiving events as directed or motivated acts changes with age. The authors of the article conducted a drawing competition asking nineteen boys and nineteen girls in the age group of 7-16 to draw two pictures. Several of those pictures along with their interpretation are presented. A general interpretation has been given to suggest the impact of age on the level of perception and motivation.

The article focuses on the perceptual development in children with their age. It is noted that children's sensitivity to colors, form, and subject matter of works of arts changes with age. It is viewed that reliable information about these changes is a prerequisite to understand children's perceptual development. It is reported that the perceptual development helps in teachings art subjects. It is stated that a child can interpret representations in pictures by the age of two and becomes sensitive to color in the preschool age. Various experiments that can help in classifying natural tendencies and the degree of change in perception along with their procedures and results are also mentioned.

The article presents information on a study done to examine logical thinking and cognitive systems in thinking and talking about art objects in children and its implication on art teaching. The study was conducted on 12 girls and 12 boys aged seven and 12 girls and 12 boys aged eleven and used the theory of logical thinking by psychologist Jean Piaget for guidelines. The study used the following tests, Piaget's test for "conservation of substance" and an Art Objects Test modeled on Sigel Conceptual Style Test by psychologist Irving E. Sigel. Information on the results of the test and its importance in the teaching of arts and for art teachers is also presented.

The article contemplates on a study done to examine the possible relationship of consistencies in mode of perceiving and mode of cognition to possible consistencies in the mode of graphic expression. The study was done on 114 boys from grade two to grade six and was based on two general hypothesis that an individual's preference for an analytical mode of perceiving is also evident in his preference for analytical mode of conceptualization and an individual's preference for a global mode of perceiving is also evident in his preference mode for globalization. Several tests were used for the study including Conceptual Style Test, Children's Embeded Figures Test and Drawing Test. Information on the results of the test and its implication on teaching art to children is also presented.

The article presents information on the research findings of development psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget has done vast research on cognitive development in children. He says that there are three stages in a child's cognitive development, sensori-motor period, the concrete operations period, and the period of formal operations. He concludes that young children perceive things differently from adults. His findings suggests that a child is able to detect the uninterrupted nature of a line or surface. Piaget has shown experimentally that a child cannot accurately conceive of a cross-sectional drawing until he reaches the age of nine. He says that between the ages of nine and eleven, the child's visual symbolization becomes more naturalistic than ever before.

The article examines the patterns of cognitive ability in nonretarded and educable mentally retarded (EMR) children. Subjects of the study consist of 60 nonretarded children and 60 EMR children, both matched on mental age. Cognitive tasks of reasoning and memory are being administered to the respondents. Results show that both samples have disparate loadings for some of the tests, which suggest that distinct modes of coding information might be used by the two groups.

The article focuses on the participation of educable mentally retarded (EMR) children in a game program in intentional learning of number concepts. The results prove support for the efficacy of the Game Training Program in improving the knowledge of the EMR child in basic number concepts. A table shows the major findings on the number knowledge test scores, spontaneous quantitative vocabulary scores, and general game skill error scores.

The article relates the study which examines the relationship between visual motor ability, visual memory and reading ability of children with mental disabilities. The study found out that the reading disability of a mentally retarded child is not associated with poor visual motor ability, but rather to his inadequate ability to remember what has been perceived.

The article discusses the theory of Jean Piaget on the development of intelligence in the concrete-operations period. Piaget's system of concrete operations intends to impose a logic derived model on the demonstration of the reasoning processes of children particularly the development of their thinking ability.

The article presents a study which determines the interrelations of self concept, mother concept, and food aversions in emotionally disturbed and normal children. A group of 11-year old normal boys and a group of 11-year old institutionalized boys for emotional disturbances were the subjects of the study. Indices of self-concepts and mother concepts were measured through the direct methods and projective methods of assessment while the food aversions were assessed through an objective inventory. Results showed that self-concepts and mother concepts were positively associated and there were negative correlations between these measures and the number of food aversions. Also, normal boys showed higher self-concept and higher mother-concept and fewer food aversions.

This article examines ways in which children conceive of space and space activities. Children's drawings of satellites can give some understanding not only of their ideas about satellites but also, as they place the satellite in a setting, of ways in which they visualize the surround. Equally important perhaps, their drawings can show the information they are picking up and the ways in which they are clustering details in wholes that may then provide working models for their own later elaboration. Perhaps most important for the future, is the children's multidimensional depiction of space. Adults should attempt to make available their newer conceptions of space—which they themselves, having been brought up in a different age, have such difficulty in moving into—to young children so that they may make the most of multidimensionality through their own developing associations.

The article focuses on the plan that embraces teaching to give school children clearness of thought and expression. In this teaching strategy, children will be pushed into a competition requiring rapid as well as clear thinking. The author points out that when a teacher has taught her pupils to think clearly and concisely and to express themselves clearly and simply, she has given them the most that an education can give.

The article focuses on the use of assemblies for socializing instruction. The use of assemblies for socializing and integrating purposes in high school is clearly recognized as essential for the proper social and mental development of the pupils at this age level. Assembly may present facts, introduce or summarize knowledge, present general information and furnish vocational and educational guidance, among others. The success of the assembly will depend on the extent to which the work of the assembly is related to that of the classroom.

The article presents information about the Language-Cognition Test (LCT) for educationally disadvantaged school children. LCT provides an estimate of a child's status of development into areas closely associated with success or failure in academic learning, namely, language and cognition. So, LCT attempts to sample a child's knowledge of language through his use of it; and his knowledge and use of concepts, relationships and general cognitive methods. The conceptual and methodological bases for the LCT have been developed from research and writing in areas like cognition, linguistics, child development, educational disadvantagedness and general principles of test construction. LCT test is available in both English and Spanish and has two general parts, namely "Spontaneous Language" and "Methods of Thinking."