A study of the development of representations of economic life in 110 young children of 3 to 5 years of age is reviewed to identify the sources of the children's representations. In addition to noting the importance of the public availability of adult representations, the results indicate the significance of developmental processes. In particular,…

In England, a 40-item test of a child's ability to draw the ground floor layout of his or her home was developed. Findings of initial analyses indicated that subjects' drawings improved between the ages of 6 and 12 years. In order to test the cross-cultural validity of the standardization of the test and to see if the order of concept development…

The story of Father Christmas is widespread across Europe and beyond, and for almost six weeks each year dominates children's and adults' lives. This longitudinal study examined parental practices and attitudes towards the Father Christmas story. Participating during the first phase of the study, conducted during November and December 1998, were…

To develop a new model of the reading process, a longitudinal study investigated the importance of the concepts of cohesion and register (fiction or nonfiction) in the assessment of text readability. Subjects, 436 8-year-olds (Cohort A), 474 10-year-olds (Cohort B), and 445 13-year-olds (Cohort C) from 23 urban and rural British schools--most of…

This review of research on computer use in education focuses on the development of higher order thinking skills and the effects of programming instruction. Eight hypotheses are proposed to account for the general failure of the research to confirm the expectations, and a new programming language, Prolog, is described. (70 references) (Author/LRW)