Visual learning, the capacity to construe meaning from visual images and to create meaningful visual forms, distills complex information and presents information directly. It plays an important role in development of the ability to abstract and decode. (SK)

Research over the past 20 years has revealed that even very young infants possess expectations about physical events, and that these expectations undergo significant developments during the first year of life. In this article, I first review some of this research, focusing on infants' expectations about occlusion, containment, and covering events,…

A multidimensional model of the growth of moral reasoning is described that is significantly different from those proposed by Kohlberg and Piaget. A study that tests several aspects of the model on university students is reported. The suggestion that well-developed chains of reasons are a prerequisite for the emergence of metaethical reasoning was…

Literature on cognition is surveyed with a special emphasis on the development of academic skills in handicapped children. (Author/KM)

Examines the concepts employed by normal and retarded children matched for mental age in kindergarten through fourth grades. Two studies explored the schema by which these children organized their experience into meaningful patterns. (LLK)

This study investigated the use of covariation as a principle of causal analysis in children 3-4, 6-7, and 9-11 years of age. The results indicated that children as young as 3 years were capable of using covariation information in their attributions of simple physical effects. (Author/CS)

Twenty children, 3-12 years old, were given a newly constructed interview on their concepts of human reproduction (social causality), in conjunction with Piaget-type tasks assessing physical conservation-identity, physical causality, and a new social identity task. The children's concepts of human reproduction appeared to proceed through a…

Three experiments with children between 5 and 7 years are described. It is shown that nominal predication of an unknown word by a superordinate term enables young children to make appropriate inferences concerning its attributes. The results are discussed in relation to semantic development and reasoning in the young child. (Author/RM)

It was hypothesized that the acquisition of conservation behavior would be facilitated when stimuli were more concrete than abstract. Eighty white second graders were randomly assigned to four groups and presented with three conservation-of-weight problems. Clay balls and the conservation transformations were either shown, demonstrated, and…

Cites reasons for the formation and continuance of the Intellectual Development Project ( IDP). The impact of IDP research is described. (CP)

Contending that mathematical representation sustains a resemblance to the representational activity preceeding it and that it is this analogical resemblance that makes the developmental sequence of children's representational ability visible as a sequence, this paper explores the application of this notion to an undergraduate class in early…

Presents the idea that playwrites adapting plays for children often simplify it so extensively that they do not serve the developmental needs of the child or the artistic conception of the play. Suggests that developing a thematic point of view for the play would help playwrites create fuller characters that are still understandable and enjoyable…

The relationship of cognitive development to learning science is considered. Views of thinking from both a psychological and a scientific standpoint are compared in order to shed light on current science teaching practice. Metacognition and problem solving are discussed. (Author/MT)

Explains the theoretical positions of Russian Marxist psychologist and educator, L. S. Vygotsky, and their philosophical foundations. Discusses Vygotsky's major psychological theories regarding cognitive development, the development of scientific and spontaneous concepts, the zone of proximal development, and language's relationship to thought.…