The relationship among bodily movements, cognitive abilities, and academic achievement in children is receiving considerable attention in the research community. The embodied learning approach is based on the idea of an inseparable link between body and mind in learning, aiming for teaching methods that promote children's active engagement in the…

The processes and mechanisms of theory-of-mind development were examined via a training study of false-belief conceptions in deaf children of hearing parents (N = 43). In comparison to 2 different control conditions, training based on thought-bubble instruction about beliefs was linked with improved false-belief understanding as well as progress…

Theories of learning have long emphasized the essential role of social factors in the development of early reasoning abilities. More recently, it has been proposed that the presentation of conflicting perspectives may facilitate young children's understanding of knowledge claims as potentially subjective--one of many possible representations of…

The present study attempted to investigate the effect of perceptual-motor training on attention in children with autism spectrum disorders. The participants (20 girls and 20 boys) were divided into experimental and control groups. They were selected from among 85 subjects after primary tests to be matched. The design of the study was…

In most industrialized societies, the regular educational system does not meet the educational needs of gifted pupils, causing a lag in their school achievement. One way in which more challenge can be provided to gifted children is with an enrichment program. In the present study, cognitive, socioemotional, and attitudinal effects of a triarchic…

To better understand the development of children's thinking in three-dimensional geometry, we conducted a teaching experiment with 8- and 9-year olds in which children built and described polyhedra during several lessons. Analysis of pre-/post-assessments showed that children advanced in their geometric reasoning and began to identify, enumerate,…

Children sometimes solve problems incorrectly because they fail to represent key features of the problems. One potential source of improvements in children's problem representations is learning new problem-solving strategies. Ninety-one 3rd- and 4th-grade students solved mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 3+4+6=3+__) and completed a…

Two studies, an experimental category learning task and a computational simulation, examined how sequencing training instances to maximize comparison and memory affects category learning. In Study 1, 2-year-old children learned color categories with three training conditions that varied in how categories were distributed throughout training and…

Researchers have examined inductive reasoning to identify different cognitive processes when participants deal with inductive problems. This article presents a prescriptive theory of inductive reasoning that identifies cognitive processing using a procedural strategy for making comparisons. It is hypothesized that training in the use of the…

The setting of this study took place in an inner city. The purpose was to determine the effectiveness of a neurologically integrated approach in teaching 43 at-risk pre-first graders their letter sounds and formations during 45-50 hours of summer school. There were four sequential phases to teaching this alphabetic approach: imagery, auditory,…

While the productive role of social interaction between peers in promoting cognitive development has been clearly established, the communicative processes through which this is achieved is less clearly understood. Earlier work has established that different types of conversation become established between children as they work together on a…

The present study evaluates the relationship between social learning and developmental theories in the prediction of changes in cognitive behavior. (Author)

Investigated effects of two instructional interventions on 5- to 9-year-olds who could perform a balance beam task but either could not explain the principle or had naive theories. Found that more students who had observed the experimenter model and were then encouraged to explain what they saw improved performance over the pretest than students…

A cognitive training strategy was employed to investigate the nature of development in children's concepts of death. Subjects ranging in age from 3 to 11 years and attending Jewish-affiliated preschools participated in the study. Measures of verbal concept formation, abstract reasoning, general intelligence, and ability to conserve were…

Compares the cognitive development of four subcultural groups of boys (Black and White, and lower- and middle-class) in order to test Arthur Jensen's theory. Nine-hundred subjects were studied for four years, and memory, intelligence, learning and transfer measures were employed. (Author/RH)