A structured interview was used to ascertain the level of understanding of the concept of death in 52 elementary school children. Data analysis showed sex, religious affilation, and the death of a close relative had little or no relationship to the level of understanding of death. (Author/RL)

The arts are in trouble in the public schools, says the author. This article is intended to clarify the kind of investigation that artists and educators are counting on to supply some support for the balanced curriculum, that is, the inclusion of the arts in public education. (Author/KC)

In the bottom-up model of the reading process, the reader's first task is to decode the symbols into sound representations. By contrast, the top-down model assumes that the reader begins by guessing about the meaning of some unit of print. Each model suggests different instructional practices. (Author/SJL)

The current disquiet over basic numeration is briefly discussed with reference to Piaget and Bruner and attention is focused on play as a possible vehicle for enactive representation. A program of games is described including program rationale, examples, and tentative findings. (Author/SJL)

Reports a study which shows that subjects can make discriminative judgments of a speaker's height and weight from his tape recorded speech. This ability is not altered by the filtering of the speech signal. (PMJ)

The act of essay writing itself can serve to formulate thought and shape ideas. In the English as a Second Language classroom, this translates into an approach which places composition revision in a central position between content and written form. This approach more closely reflects the writing process. (Author/PJM)

The effectiveness of a procedure for identifying certain cognitive processes used during problem solving is explored. The procedure was used to: categorize types of conceptual thinking problem solvers employ; study the use of trial-and-error behavior; and investigate abilities to coordinate multiple bits of information. (Author/GK)

Applies Brunswik's lens model to a study linking environmental assessment with environmental perception and cognition. Gauges the ecological validity of cues generated by technical and observational assessments of residential streets in San Francisco for three conditions: traffic volume, family income, and residents' concern about crime.…

Space and shape, estimating and measuring, and number are viewed as the three strands of mathematics that come together as a child develops mathematically. Five cognitive/mathematical levels of development, labeled discrimination, order, application, operation, and estimation, are identified and discussed. (MP)

Discusses the implications for language teaching of Chomskyean and transformational theory. The notions of deep structure, linguistic theory building, and inutility of a corpus are far less interesting than the view of language as rule-governed behavior and language learning as hypothesis-testing. Rationalist v behaviorist theories are discussed.…

After evaluation of 125 words was obtained on 51 separate scales, six more general factors emerged: spelling and sound, imagery and meaning, word frequency, recall, emotionality, and goodness. The claim is that multivariate research is a necessary addition to the study of verbal behavior. (PJM)

Investigates the cognitive functioning of 106 college freshmen using six paper-pencil Piagetian-based tasks. Results show that only 25 percent of the freshmen tested were reasoning at a formal level. (HM)

An investigation was conducted to identify and compare the reasoning strategies used by above-average and average readers in reading comprehension. Findings indicated that both groups used various types of reasoning strategies in comprehension, but that there were significant quantitative differences between the groups in application and success…

Five Inhelder-Piaget formal operations tasks were analyzed to determine the extent that the formal operational skills they assess were ordered into a stable hierarchy generalizable across samples of subjects. Subjects were 34 collegiate gymnasts (19 males, 15 females), and 22 students (1 male, 21 females) from a university nursing program.…

Investigates differences between adolescents and older adults in their explanations of linguistic metaphors. Adults displayed a synthesizing, integrative perspective, while adolescents displayed an analytic perspective in their explanation of metaphors. (Author/SS)