Four experiments investigated three- and four-year-old children's knowledge of projective size-distance and projective shape-orientation relationships. Results indicated that preschool children's understanding of these relationships seems at least partly cognitive rather than wholly perceptive, providing further evidence for the acquisition of…

Content analysis of the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI) revealed differences in the nature of perceptual and conceptual items. Both language-impaired and normal-language children performed significantly better on perceptual-type than conceptual-type items. The predominance of perceptual items was…

Examines how children's responses to questions about object terms varied across objects and the degree to which children specified common and conventional values for different object dimensions. (HOD)

The article suggests that Belcastro rods, which retain the basic properties of Cuisenaire rods but allow instant identification by touch, may be useful in teaching mathematical concepts to blind children. Drawings illustrate use of the rods in teaching such concepts as addition and subtraction. (Author/DB)

Reviews the research literature on the abilities of infants to categorize visual information on dot patterns; schematic faces; hue; and orientation. (HOD)

A structured system of visual features is seen to parallel the propositional hierarchy of operations usually associated with the parsing of algebraic expressions. Women more than men were found to depend on these visual cues. Possible causes and consequences are discussed. Subjects were secondary and college students. (Author/DC)

Studies five-year-olds' relative number judgements of small and large number displays with and without perceptual aids. Children were found to respond to local rather than global density differences and to benefit from the provision of perceptual aids on both small and large number displays. (Author/AS)

Assesses second-, fourth-, and eighth-grade children's perception of the social support provided by friends. (HOD)

Describes two experiments that investigated the effects of two thematic retrieval cues on the types of information recalled from short stories by elementary school children and adults. Shows adults and fourth graders, but not younger children, spontaneously generated thematic retrieval plans which enabled them to remember information from both…

Compares kindergartners' and third and sixth graders' understanding of an illusion reported by the philosopher John Locke, in which two hands simultaneously experience two different temperatures from a container of water at one temperature. (HOD)

Two experiments with 167 first-, third-, and fifth-grade children revealed age-related changes in the composition of natural categories. Categorization was investigated via perceptual similarities of objects and conceptual similarities of superordinate classes. The free-classification paradigm (Garner, 1974) was adapted to natural categories,…

Describes two studies investigating the development of recursive thinking in 60 Dutch children five, seven, and nine years of age. The first study replicated earlier research employing a verbal production procedure. The second study used verbal comprehension procedures and concluded that development appears two years earlier than indicated by the…

Investigates the contributions of tonal syllables, hand signs, and letter representations of tonal syllables to the development of verbal and symbolic tonal skills of first grade students. Finds no method to be significantly better than another. Concludes that tonal aptitude is the most significant predictor of tonal syllable and pitch…

Investigated were school children's recognition of social class distinctions, cues they used, and the relationship of their ideas about social class to other beliefs and attitudes about the social world. An ethnically mixed group of 201 male and female subjects participated in the study. Five age groups were represented: second, fifth, and sixth…

This study was designed as the first in a series of inquiries to investigate the use of multidimensional scaling techniques for observing and measuring underlying dimensions commonly perceived by viewers. Following a preliminary study to select photographs, 15 university students aged 19 to 45 were presented with stimuli consisting of 34 colored…