The Mind's Staircase: Exploring the Conceptual Underpinnings of Children's Thought and Knowledge.

This book, which contains 19 chapters, examines children's learning processes in light of reconceptualizations of Piagetian theory. Part one traces the theoretical question underpinning this examination and includes three chapters: "General and Specific Views of the Mind, its Structure, and its Development"; "A Neo-Piagetian Approach to the Issue of Cognitive Generality and Specificity"; and "Advantages and Limitations of the Neo-Piagetian Position." Part two examines the role of central conceptual structures in the development of children's logico-mathematical thought in four chapters: "Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Development of Children's Scientific Reasoning"; "Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Acquisition of Children's Everyday Mathematical Knowledge"; "A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Response to Instruction in the Sight-Reading of Musical Notation"; and "Testing for the Presence of a Central Quantitative Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm." Part three focuses on the role of central conceptual structures in the development of children's social and emotional thought in five chapters: "Young Girl's Conception of Their Mother's Role: A Neo-Structural Analysis"; "The Development of Empathic Cognition in Middle and Early Childhood"; "A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Narrative and Its Development"; "Young Children's Awareness of Their Inner World: A Neo-Structural Analysis of the Development of Intrapersonal Intelligence"; and "Testing for the Presence of a Central Social Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm." Part four addresses the role of central conceptual structures in the development of children's spatial thought in two chapters: "Stage and Structure in the Development of Children's Spatial Representations"; and "Horizontal and Vertical Structure: Stages and Substages in Children's Motor Development." Part five examines cross-domain synchrony and asynchrony in the acquisition of different central conceptual structures in four chapters: "Parallels in the Development of Children's Social, Numerical, and Spatial Thought"; "Analyzing the Basic Cognitive-Developmental Processes of Children with Specific Types of Learning Disability"; Stage and Structure in the Development of Children with Various Types of Giftedness"; and "Cross-Cultural Variation in the Structure of Children's Thought." The final chapter, "The Mind and Its Modules: Toward a Multi-Level View of the Development of Human Intelligence," serves as a conclusion. The book includes 450 references, as well as author and subject indexes. (MDM)