Cites research indicating competence is necessary condition of mental health. Defines cognitive competence as crucial form of mastery, attempts to show how it develops and illustrates how mental health depends on this capacity. Sketches out four conditions which psychological education curriculums can provide for facilitating students' acquisition…

Research supported in part by research grant MH-12656 and training grant MH-8298, National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Public Health Service.

In an exploration of the comprehension process of the beginning reader, 16 first and second grade students were each asked to listen to two stories--one a narrative account and the other an expository passage-- and then immediately to retell them. Recall protocols were compared by propositional analysis for text-related superordinate and…

IT IS PROPOSED THAT MENTAL RETARDATION IS NOT NECESSARILY CAUSED BY A GENETIC FACTOR OR BY BRAIN INJURY, BUT MAY BE CAUSED BY THE CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH CHILDREN ARE RAISED. WHEN CHILDREN ARE LEFT IN PSYCHOSOCIALLY DEPRIVED HOMES, THEIR RATE OF DEVELOPMENT WILL TEND TO DECLINE. IF, AT AN EARLY AGE, THEY ARE PLACED IN A SCHOOL FOR A FEW…

This document reports data on 610 secondary level Australian high school students drawn from 36 urban and rural high schools to determine levels of Piagetian cognitive development, provide a profile of field independence (FDI) across the urban population, validate the Understanding in Science Test instrument, and determine influence of reading…

The concepts of front, back, and side may be easily understood in relation to an intrinsically fronted item, but with a nonfronted object they depend on situational or psychological cues. A study investigated a child's awareness of the front, back, and side of his own body and of fronted and nonfronted objects. Researchers hypothesized that a…

Considered are optimal conditions for learning in the child care center serving preschool children. Discussed as aspects of learning based on real life experiences are provision for a rich environment, opportunities for learning about the world and space, learning one's way around, and learning about measuring numbers, time, days and seasons,…

The relative effects of chronological age, mental age, IQ or Piagetian task performance were investigated among 143 Ss of high, average, and low IQ. Two kinds of group comparisons were made on fifteen tasks: (1) groups of the same chronological age, but different mental age and IQ, and (2) groups of the same mental age, but different chronological…

This is the second report on intellectual development of children 6-11 years of age in the noninstitutionalized population of the United States as estimated from the Vocabular and Block Design Subtest data of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) obtained in the Health Examination Survey of 1963-65. It contains findings by selected…

This study attempts to raise and answer the question as to whether lateral specialization of the brain could explain some of the differences in persons at different stages of intellectual development from birth to adulthood according to Piaget's theory of individual development via sequential, qualitatively different stages.…

This article briefly describes Piaget's theory of periods of intellectual growth and the impact his theories have had in teacher training, research, mathematics teaching, textbook development and their use in the British Infant, Junior, and Secondary schools. For journal availability, see SO 506 042. (JK)

Four kinds of understanding of mathematics are suggested: instrumental, relational, intuitive, and formal. Each type of understanding is described and illustrated. (MN)

Concludes that children have a far broader range of intellectual interests than has generally been recognized. Bringing them into contact with fields of knowledge, methods of inquiry in these fields, and the processes of logical reasoning at a time when they have a natural receptivity which can have a fundamental impact on their intellectual…