Discusses five- and six-year-old children's conceptions of life and death. Children were questioned about animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The most errors occurred when children judged inanimate objects; the fewest when they judged animals. The order of questions about either life or death significantly influenced children's responses. (NH)

Children (N=32) between 6 and 12 years of age were given Derry Death Concept Scale, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and subtests from Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Correlations indicated that level of death concept development was related to age and verbal-conceptual mental development. Socioeconomic status and death-related…

A developmental progression in 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children's use of strategies for gathering information was revealed in a study involving partial recall, total recall, and similarity/difference judgments. When subjects chose stimuli for exposure from an array, older children showed more ability to match strategy to task demands. Strategy…

Explores implications of two cognitive development perspectives for characterizing ontogeny of causal reasoning. Reviews literature on causal reasoning in the preschool years and concludes that the hypothesis of an invariant causal scheme is only partially correct. (Author/SO)

Delay/response inhibition in the presence of an attractive stimulus and compliance with maternal directives in a clean-up task were observed among subjects 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Results suggested (1) achievement of self-control is a major developmental accomplishment, and (2) individual differences in self-control emerge and are…

Mentally retarded (N=36) and nonretarded (N=37) children matched for MA (48 months) were assessed on gender understanding with the expectation that the two groups would show similar sequencing and attainment. The nonretarded subjects' data mirrored previous cross-sectional findings, but the retarded respondents displayed signficantly better gender…

Examines extent to which knowing that certain things go together and knowing how they do are independent aspects of developing cognitive systems. Indicates that children use temporal order as organizing principle by three years of age. Suggests an earlier developmental horizon as the origin of ordering abilities. (Author/BE)

Four hundred children ages 5, 9, and 12 were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Results indicate a greater tendency for older than younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component when advantageous to adopt another feature as the primary functional cue. (Author/SB)

The cognitive development of 125 gifted 10-to 15-year-old students was compared to that of 98 normal Ss. Results supported the invariance of stage progression but revealed that gifted Ss progress more quickly and demonstrate earlier transition to succeeding developmental stages. (CL)

Children took a group test of disjunctive reasoning containing 48 inclusive and exclusive items varying in content of the premises, and affirmation or negation of the conclusion. Performance improved until seventh grade. Negative conclusions produced more correct answers. Implications were discussed in relation to cognitive developmental theory…

Comprehension of usages of "or" was investigated in children 5 to 6 and 9 to 10 years old, and in college students. All age groups made logical inferences involving "or". All age groups perceived contradictions but disagreed regarding inferences to be drawn from contradictions. Except when set union is indicated, "or"…

The ability of three- and four-year-old children to reason about the components of event sequences involving simple transformations was tested in two experiments. In Experiment I children saw picture "stories" of the form object, instrument, and transformed object, with one item deleted. In Experiment II only the instrument item was…

Children aged 5, 7, and 9 were tested on two different tasks to assess their understanding of sentences containing the connectives "when,""as soon as,""before,""after,""if,""if not,""unless," and "unless not." (Author/SB)