Thirteen 4-year olds were asked to arrange dolls in order from largest to smallest. Longitudinal observations over six months revealed five approaches to ordering and four approaches to correction. The "method of extremum" was employed later in development; otherwise, the order in which approaches appeared was highly variable, with many…

Tests children for the effects of prior knowledge on the amount of learning that occurs after a training period focusing on either number skills or logical operations. No relationship existed between the amount children learned and their pretraining knowledge or the amount learned and their developmental level. (Author/BB)

Examined relationships among theory of mind construct of intention and false belief, problem-solving ability, metacognitive regulation, and strategy use in 39 preschoolers. Found significant correlations between strategy use and theory of mind, and metacognitive regulation and theory of mind. A moderate, but nonsignificant, correlation was found…

Studied use of games to teach simple classification and seriation constructs to 3-1/2-year-old children. Found substantial and maintained improvement on classification and seriation. Found that children generalized their new understanding of classification and seriation to different problems, and found that evidence for a more general cognitive…

Forty-eight kindergarten children were divided into four groups on the basis of their status (preoperational vs. transitional) and whether or not they received inversion-negation training. Results indicated no differences due to status, but differences due to training. Results do not confirm the contention that acceleration can only occur during…

This study compared affective responses to written and oral presentations of triadic situations of three groups: fourth graders (concrete operational), eighth graders, and freshmen in college (formal operational) to see whether the variation in stimulus mode produces a different kind of response in the eighth graders. (Author/NH)

In order to study developmental and task-related factors in ability to coordinate two dimensions, a simple multiplicative relations matrix task was presented to 51 children in kindergarten and grades 1 and 2. (MS)

Explored whether there are changes with age in understanding the specific distinction between natural and human-made phenomena and whether an appreciation of this distinction influences children's beliefs about the possibility of altering or transforming different categories of objects. Found that this distinction, a powerful organizer for adults,…

Examined effects of storytelling and pretend play on short- and long-term narrative recall in preschoolers. Found that: (1) storytelling and pretend play affected cognitive variables; (2) differences between storytelling and pretend play in facilitating narrative recall were significant; (3) encoding ability exceeded ability to make inferences;…

Analyzes and compares the exploration, play, and problem-solving activities of typically developing (average) and at-risk infants when they manipulate novel objects. (BB)