The authors explore how children's play can support the development of the foundations of mathematics learning and how adults can support children's representation of--and thus the "mathematization" of--their play. The authors review research about the amount and nature of mathematics found in the free play of children. They briefly…

Nonoperational first graders were taught Piaget's horizontality concept. In comparison to control subjects, training group subjects significantly increased correct responses, maintained their gains, and transferred their training from a straight-sided jar to a round-sided jar. (Author/DB)

Two experiments found that (1) by age 8 months infants perceived that leaning extends their effective reaching space to grasp objects; (2) by 10 months they perceived the effective limits of leaning and reaching; and (3) by 12 months they began to perceive how this space may be extended by a mechanical aid. (MDM)

To identify the role of the child's own action in the development of the ability to coordinate perspectives, a spatial localization task was presented to 2 groups of children: 16 children between 18 and 24 months old, and 16 children between 42 and 48 months old. A reward was hidden randomly in one of two identical left-right locations on a…

Examined whether spatial classification is discovered during play and if external products of play lead children to use space to represent similarity. Found through two experiments--a longitudinal study of four children's classification behaviors, and the examination of play behavior with two types of objects--that comparison of different kinds…

Examined the ability of 1-year olds to remember the location of nonvisible targets. Found that infants were able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and to code its distance and direction with respect to themselves or the larger framework. Difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks was associated with cognitive complexity and…

Serial order is fundamental to perception, cognition and behavioral action. Three experiments investigated infants' perception, learning and discrimination of serial order. Four- and 8-month-old infants were habituated to three sequentially moving objects making visible and audible impacts and then were tested on separate test trials for their…

Examined how children's and adults' initial conceptions of objects and space influence predictions about the physical world, but lead the naive person to misconstrue a dynamic event. Found that participants proficiently anticipated where an oscillating screen would contact a hidden object, but underestimated the distance until contact.…

Explores longstanding inconsistencies in Piaget's account of development of spatial representation and perspective-taking. Examines Piaget's early writings and the findings of the original "three mountains" experiment. Concludes that Piaget's alternative theory is compatible with contemporary thinking and is important as a contributory…

Investigates effects of perceptual salience and specific orientation values on 16 kindergarten and fourth-grade children executing a speeded sorting task. Kindergarten results supported the cognitive processing prediction that orientation sorting times would vary as a function of condition, but no differences were obtained for the fourth-grade…

Research in progress on some unresolved issues regarding the relationship of cognitive development and language acquisition is reported, especially the relationship between conservation of length and knowledge of relevant comparative dimensional adjectives. Much further investigation is recommended and possible educational implications are…

Second and third graders and fifth and sixth graders were tested in a very large, unfamiliar environment to determine the relation of their knowledge of an abstract reference frame to performance on a spatial inference task. (HOD)

Verbal-to-spatial associations in working memory may index a core capacity for abstract information limited in the amount concurrently retained. However, what look like associative, abstract representations could instead reflect verbal and spatial codes held separately and then used in parallel. We investigated this issue in two experiments on…

Examines the fallacies about the nature of abilities and learning and about the interaction between sense modalities which follow from the dichotomy in relation to explanations of spatial development in the blind. Suggests that interactions between cognitive and perceptual factors need to be considered to explain more adequately effects of sensory…

Seven-year-olds compared successively presented oblique lines which varied as to their position within a square display and their relation to the diagonal axis of the display. Children apparently encoded lines in terms of position and axis features. They used a categorical spatial representational system to compare oblique lines. (Author/RD)