This translation of an article by Vygotsky traces the major theories of periodization and evaluates these views of child development. In addition, he advances his theory of periodization that is based upon the development of the child's personality. (ST)

Desirability judgments (values) of 4 personality dimensions (affiliation, autonomy, achievement, nurturance) and 2 control scales were investigated in a total of 120 male and female subjects from 4 different age groups representing childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Clear age and sex differences reflected multiple value systems.…

Three age groups were read the same short story. Their responses to interpretive questions were taken as texts and analyzed for age-distinctive word usage. Characteristic forms of talk were found, and age-specific patterns of interpretive thinking were derived from the forms. In general, 10 year olds saw a plot, adolescents a plight, and adults a…

Comments on the study reported by Feldman and others in this issue. Suggests that, in the study, subjects' word frequencies might be the result of subjects' familiarity with the words rather than the words' narrative role and that there is uncertainty in inferring interpretive patterns of subjects from word frequencies. (BC)

Replies to the commentary by Olson and Salter on an article by Feldman and others, both reported in this issue. Maintains that the evidence does not support Olson's and Salter's conjecture that the source of age-distinctive lexical differences reported in the Feldman study is a simple function of word frequency. (BC)

Concepts about and evaluations of the unequal distribution of personal possessions were examined in Americans and Israelis of various ages ranging from kindergarten to 50-year-old adults. A number of developmental and cultural differences are discussed, and the general pattern of results is interpreted as reflecting different experiential…

To learn how children acquire "metalinguistic competence," the development of the concept of "the word" was experimentally studied in four- to ten-year-olds. (Author/SDH)

A study of whether perceptual processes of children can be viewed within a structuralist frame of reference and whether the concept of the group of transformations and related notions can be used to formulate perceptual phenomena and to predict experimental results. (Author/CS)

Studies the effects of perceptual salience on performance in problems requiring the coordination of information. Subjects were groups of children, younger adults, and older adults. For each of the age groups, those problems containing the most salient information were solved faster and more accurately than problems containing the least salient…

Several experiments with 8- to 9-year-old children are reported to demonstrate that "decalage" observed between success in problems of conservation of weight, volume, and density is due to the different task situation as presented by Piaget and Inhelder. (Author)

Reports on the findings of a comparative study of mental abilities of Mexican and American children. Discusses age, sex, social class, and urban-rural differences, as well as cultural differences. (SS)

Examined U-shaped development of graphic symbolization in children and in nonartist and artist adults. Found that drawing scores of adult artists did not differ from those of youngest children and artist adolescents, with a developmental sequence in acquisition of the ability to construct referential connections underlying visual metaphors.…