Reports on a study designed to identify the hierarchical relationships among Piagetian cognitive modes and integrated science process skills for different Piagetian cognitive reasoning levels, and to determine whether positive vertical transfers could be validated. (TW)

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)

In this article, the author gives a general introduction of a few ideas on cognitive development in children. In the first part, he deals with the topic of development, a process which concerns the totality of the structures of knowledge. He reviews the stages of development of operational structures, distinguishes four main stages of development,…

Reports on an investigation of young children's (n=15) spontaneously constructed or naive understanding of the particulate nature of matter to any formal instruction in the domain. Speculates that children first develop local frameworks particular to different classes of substances, then slowly expand those frameworks to include a wide range of…

Describes an analysis of test items used to measure the science process skills of 11-year-olds in Great Britain. Concludes that the level of cognitive demand was a reliable predictor of the difficulty of an item. (TW)

Reports on a study designed to examine the effect of concrete and formal instruction upon reasoning and science achievement of sixth grade students. Results indicated that the concrete instruction group had significantly higher levels of performance in science achievement and cognitive development and that males outperformed females. (TW)

This study explores the acquisition of proportionality by investigating the relationship between an understanding of proportionality and the development of cognitive structure in the domain of mechanics. (Author/MA)

Piagetian tasks varying in complexity were administered to elementary school children in grades K-3. Differences between the attainment of similar concepts occurred when the tasks required different types of inference patterns, had different goals, or involved different percepts. Discusses curriculum implications. (AL)

Hypothesized that instructional methods employing concrete models and exemplars of a concept will lead to better student understanding at both the concrete and formal operational levels of cognitive development. However, concrete operational students did not profit from the instructional methods and results were not clear for early formal…

This study was designed to assess the effectiveness of one semester's instruction in science and mathematics, using an inquiry-based methodology, in facilitating cognitive growth in first year college students. Results indicated the inquiry approach did not promote cognitive growth in comparison with a more didactic or expository teaching…

Students who viewed demonstrations or manipulated apparatus understood the relational concepts (of the form a/b = a'/b') of speed, force, and work better than a control group, but did not differ significantly from each other. (AL)

Describes an empirical method of developing learning hierarchies by comparing success on each tested behavior with all other behaviors. Advantages, compared with validation of a particular logical hierarchy, are illustrated by application of density principles to prediction of flotation. (AL)

This commentary refers to a recent paper (1975) by Sayer and Ball in this journal concerning the relationships between formal operational thought and science achievement, and requests additional information on the representativeness of the sample and the performance of boys and girls on the Piagetian tasks. The requested information is provided.…

Proposes a theoretical model of cognitive development and applies this model to the secondary analysis of two large-scale studies which focus on the acquisition of formal operational schemata by adolescents in the United States and Israel. Results support the "unity" hypothesis of cognitive development that the various schemata of formal…

Points out the fact that Piaget's objections to tests as ways of identifying cognitive structures and processes have been largely ignored in most of the replication studies conducted by English and American psychologists. (PEB)