Twenty-four papers prepared for a conference on Piagetian theory and its implications for the helping professions are included in this report. The conference included the following symposia: (a) Present Status of Formal Operations, (b) Implications of Piaget for the Development of Curriculum, (c) Arithmetic and the Development of Logical…

Research has indicated that across the second to fifth grade range, there was evidence to suggest a difference between the oldest and youngest groups in the memory representations which directed recall of logically related sentences. The developmental trend was from what seemed to be an unstable and fragmentary memory rperesentation, which…

The development of children's humor is described, focusing on the cognitive aspect of what is funny and how this relates to children's intellectual growth. Cognitive elements that facilitate children's humor are identified as: (1) the ability to grasp incongruities, (2) the presence of an intellectual challenge, (3) timing, (4) novelty, and (5) a…

A proposed study of the differences in the way children perceive, approach, and behave in problem-solving situations is described. The behavioral measure to be used is "glancing," which has been related to outerdirectedness. Children will be given two sets of two puzzles to put together. On the basis of the number of glances and the situation in…

The development of the concept of seriation was studied for 415 children, ranging in age from 3 to 9 years. The subjects were required to learn to identify the larger or smaller object in a two stimulus series, the smallest or middle-sized object in a three stimulus series, and the largest or next to the smallest in a four stimulus series. The end…

Learning of the concept of horizontality by fourth graders was investigated. Comparisons by age and sex were made. (BB)

To determine the impact of child abuse on the developmental functioning of infants, 30 cases of physically abused children (2 to 29.8 months old) were compared to a reference group of 30 nonabused children. (Author/SBH)

Honest discussion of the fact of death with children is essential in helping them to accept and face it. (JD)

Notes that the poor performance of malnourished children appears to be a part of a larger pattern in which vigorous efforts are made to keep children from crying by giving them heavily sugared food, carrying them most of the time, and providing very little verbal stimulation. (Author/AM)

Evaluates a system of toy classification developed to improve the assessment of gender differences in cognitive and social development. One hundred adults rated 50 children's toys on 122 "functional" dimensions. Results showed that these toys could be reliably described according to multidimensional similarities, and confirmed that toys considered…

Examines and discusses origins of parents' beliefs concerning children's developmental processes and specific abilities, and the relations between these beliefs and parental behavior on the one hand and children's cognitive development on the other. (PCB)

Discusses the findings of a recent study concerning the ability of an infant to see an object as a symbol. Reports that infants between 36 and 39 months old significantly outperformed informed infants between 30 and 32 months old on a symbolic task. (TW)

Reports on a study in which the symbolic relation between a scale model and the larger space that it represents was displayed by two groups of young children. Three-year-old children outperformed 2.5-year-olds in finding an object in a room after seeing an analogous object hidden in a model. (TW)

Summarizes recent research which attempted to discover what children of different ages know about the appearance-reality distinction and related phenomena. Findings show that what helps children grasp the distinction is an increased cognizance of the fact that people are sentient subjects who have mental representations of objects and events. (PS)

Reviews research on aspects of metacognition in children's comprehension of television, particularly how skills in meta-memory, meta-attention, and meta-social cognition-correlate with comprehension. (PD)