Most research on children's conception of death has probed their understanding of its biological aspects: its inevitability, irreversibility and terminal impact. Yet many adults subscribe to a religious conception implying that death marks the beginning of a new life. Two recent empirical studies confirm that in the course of development, children…

Discusses the logical discontinuity between object and personal knowledge. Proposes an extension of Piaget's subject-object equilibrium to a dialogic situation between an ego and an alter. Suggests that this structural model provides a scheme by which differences in adulthood between adaptive and maladaptive cognitive change can be clarified.…

A criticism of Youniss' (1975) dialectical conception of Piaget's figurative-operative distinction. It is suggested that the figurative-operative distinction does not meet the criteria for a subject-object dialectic. (JMB)

Attempts to refute Riegel's (1973) claim that Piaget's formal operations distort reality for the sake of logic. It is suggested that Piaget's figurative-operative distinction is dialectical and that Piaget's theory is valuable precisely for its resolution of how a person remains internally ordered while adapting to the external world. (JMB)

Concepts from the logic of modalities are applied to the life cycle to elaborate a new theory of adult and late-life development. Four logical modalities are described, each cognitively and emotionally governing discrete periods of life. It is hypothesized that optimal development in adult life includes explicit awareness of these modalities. (RH)

Suggests an upward extension of Piaget's theory through dialectic operations because the current theory fails to represent adequately the thought and emotions of mature and creative persons. (CS)

Provides an alternative conception of postconventional moral development which fits existing data on late adolescent and adult moral judgment better than Kohlberg's higher stage descriptions. Data is from a longitudinal study of 26 undergraduates at Harvard. (Author/SS)

Examination of the way in which children conceive the development of animals shows that there are parallels among concepts of development with those of the periods of concrete operations and formal operations. The conception of development seems to advance further in the subsequent period of dialectical thought. (MS)