Cognitive development of eighth-grade students, as identified by Jean Piaget, occurs during a time when many of them are transitioning between concrete operations and formal operations where the ability to think in abstract concepts becomes possible. Because of this period of transition, many eighth-grade students find difficulty in demonstrating…

Children's thinking follows natural developmental paths in learning math. When teachers understand those paths and offer activities based on children's progress along them, they build developmentally appropriate math environments. The authors explain math learning trajectories and why teaching math using the trajectories approach is effective. A…

Recent research has shown that 2-year-olds fail at a task that ostensibly only requires the ability to understand that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects. Two experiments were conducted in which 2- and 3-year-olds judged the stopping point of an object as it moved at varying speeds along a path and behind an occluder, stopping…

Generic sentences (such as "Birds lay eggs") are important in that they refer to kinds (e.g., birds as a group) rather than individuals (e.g., the birds in the henhouse). The present set of studies examined aspects of how generic nouns are understood by English speakers. Adults and children (4- and 5-year-olds) were presented with scenarios about…

The aim of this study was to document the development of illness and health causality concepts in young hospitalized children (ages 4-10 years) whose stage of cognitive development may limit understanding of illness and treatment. It was hypothesized that distinct qualitative levels would characterize children's conceptions of illness and that…

Five arguments are presented as to the inappropriateness of Piaget's "stage of formal operations" as the final stage of cognitive development. (MJB)

Presents a model of the development of desociocentering, decentering relative to the social group, which is based on Piagetian research and theory and Wernerian concepts. (Author/SS)

This study attempted to determine whether a shift from complementary to similarity concepts occurred in preschool children prior to the shift from concrete-similarity to abstract-similarity concepts and had been observed among elementary school children. (Author/SB)

Piaget's conceptualization of concrete and formal operations is presented. It is contended that Piaget has obfuscated logic, metaphysics and methodology. (MS)

Three experiments investigated 14-month olds' capacity for superordinate-level inductions, using animal and vehicle domains. Found that infants did generalize properties in these domains, and that their inductions were more influenced by conceptual category than by perceptual similarity. (HTH)

Argues that causal understanding is a developmental primitive: children develop core concepts of causality at a very early age, causality plays a necessary role in subsequent development across many domains, and basic causal processes can be activated automatically or implicitly. (HTH)

Concepts important to cognitive development in children can be classified according to several levels. At level 1, concepts are equivalent in structural complexity to binary relations and univariate functions. At level 2, concepts are equivalent to compositions of binary relations, binary operations, and bivariate functions. At level 3, concepts…

An account of studies conducted by author and others concerning Piaget's view of object concept development in infants. (HS)

Three children were observed in their homes approximately once a month for one year, from their 11th through 22nd month of life. Based on observation of the children's changing nonverbal behaviors, a five-level developmental sequence documenting the evolution of the cognitive notion of agent was developed. (Author)

Children were asked to judge the life qualities of a stimulus, justify their judgment, and judge again, after being given an anomalous probe. Analysis indicated younger children were unable to adhere to an original judgment when probed, while older children were. Results may reconcile previous empirical discrepancies in Piagetian research.…