Advocates artificial neural networks as models for cognition and development. Provides an example of how such models work in the context of a well-known Piagetian developmental task and school science activity: balance beam problems. (Contains 59 references.) (Author/WRM)

Discusses a study designed to understand 11th-grade students' learning during conversations with their teacher over and about a computer-based Newtonian microworld, Interactive Physics. Illustrates that students' learning was not local but persistent, in that they used appropriate canonical science talk without teacher support. (36 references)…

Examines the relationships between the development of proportional reasoning strategies and three cognitive variables from Pascual-Leone's and Case's neo-Piagetian theories: (1) degree of field independence; (2) M-space; and (3) short-term storage space. Describes the ability of students to transfer problem-solving schemata to new contexts as well…