B. F. Skinner is the most eminent psychologist of the twentieth century, and it is no exaggeration to say that his discovery of operant learning (conditioning) has influenced the broader field of psychology, as well as other disciplines, including education, neuroscience, and philosophy. Skinner's discovery and elucidation of operant learning has…

Using the example of the 1937 Ontario elementary school reforms, this article will make the case for considering pedagogical knowledge as a distinct object in the history of education. In this context, pedagogical knowledge refers to the conceptual and normative aspects of teaching and learning that seek to inform the decision-making of the…

Acquisition in general and first language acquisition in particular is a very complex and a multifaceted phenomenon. The way that children acquire a language in a very limited period is astonishing. Various approaches have been proposed so far to account for this extraordinary phenomenon. These approaches are indeed based on various philosophical…

The cumulative effect on children of their massive home and classroom doses of television, regardless of the type of programing involved, may be harmful to child development. (Author)

THE CONTRIBUTION MADE BY PIAGET TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN IS SUMMARIZED. PIAGET'S INFLUENCE ON BERLYNE AND OTHER PSYCHOLOGISTS, THE RESEARCH METHODS USED BY PIAGET, AND THE CONCEPTS HE FORMULATED ARE BRIEFLY DESCRIBED. THE GOAL OF HIS RESEARCH CONDUCTED AT GENEVA IS IDENTIFIED AS THE DISCOVERY OF THE SUCCESSIVE STAGES IN THE…

The study demonstrates: (1) the occurrence of verbal mediation with its facilitory effect, and (2) the interfering effect of verbal satiation on mediational processes in a three-state chaining paradigm. 40 preschool children were randomly assigned to either a control (no satiation) or an experimental (satiation) group. The subjects in the control…

A core task in language acquisition is mapping words onto objects, actions, and events. Two studies investigated how children learn to map novel labels onto novel objects. Study 1 investigated whether 10-month-olds use both perceptual and social cues to learn a word. Study 2, a control study, tested whether infants paired the label with a…

Helping a child attain his full psychological potential consists of providing him with opportunities to learn in both natural and instructional settings. Learning is defined in the psychological literature either as a hypothetical mental ability or as a relationship between repeated stimulation and changes in performance. Both definitions are…

The author briefly reviews six recently published books dealing with aspects of child development and early childhood education. (DS)

In this book Piaget considers the way children learn about the world. He addresses such questions as the following: How does a child learn to perceive the world around him? How, for example, does he learn that by grasping an object, he can pull it towards him, or that a ball of clay, flattened, is no smaller than it was before? How does he learn…

Research supported in part by funds from the Department of Special Education, University of Minnesota, and the U.S. Office of Education. (DS)

Reviews "The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition" (S. Carey and R. Gelman, editors), a collection of essays that present a hard-scientific vision of cognitive development. Examines the arguments this work articulates and then determines the place it occupies in the analysis of the state of developmental psychology as presented in…

The advice of Jean Piaget on the role of the educator as promoter of human development in students is reviewed. Included in this study are his observations and admonitions about characteristic duties and functions of a teacher as seen from the perspective of his research findings about the development of human learning and the learner. (JD)

Discussed are Piaget's methods, his relation to other theories, and an overview of his theory. Described are the six stages of his sensorimotor period with a summary of imitation and play, and the concrete operations period with the subperiods of changes from sensorimotor in preoperation, differences from the adult in preoperation, and the…