Involving children three and four years of age, studies examined the basis for the difficulty of discriminating between left-right orientations of a shape in standard two-choice task. It was concluded that difficulty of left-right judgments lies in the cognitive demands of the task and is to be understood in the same terms as other problems in…

Describes the nature of change processes and discusses how the endeavor toward wholeness is a fundamental human characteristic that some forms of education tend to impede. Attempts to illustrate that the concepts of meaning and person belong beside those of education and personality. Discusses relevance in education in terms of the individual. (CH)

Stating that the most pressing and puzzling scientific questions are questions about properties, not about change, the authors examine Piaget's and other theories of human development. Disputes the constructivist view that the initial cognitive state is one of emptiness, showing that from birth, humans react to certain stimuli in specific ways,…

Thinking strategies (sequences of steps undertaken to produce a thought product) should be an important goal in gifted education. Suggestions are made for creating a curriculum to promote thinking development. (CL)

The article discusses ways that cognitive behavioral training (CBT) methods might facilitate acquisitions of basic skills in mildly handicapped students. Elements of the CBT approach are described and studies are reviewed regarding effective teaching, time, and technology. (CL)

Interest in cognitive science resulted from social trends that occurred in society due to the postindustrial revolution. A discussion of the key ideas of the cognitive sciences is offered. (DF)

Assessment of conceptual level of 130 secondary students identified as gifted and 131 students from schools without gifted programs revealed significantly higher scores for gifted students. Findings suggested that such a measure of cognitive complexity may enhance identification of gifted students. (CL)

Discusses how youngsters learn to think in a recognizable adult fashion about political, social, and humanistic issues. Reports on research on the development of political attitudes over the course of adolescence. Concludes that the major difference between younger and older adolescents is the ability of the latter to think abstractly when…

A total of 96 binary statements were administered to 120 children randomly selected from 3 academic levels. The Constituent Comparison Model accounts for the results obtained in this study. (HS)

Models of development and models of memory reflect either a mechanistic or organismic world view. A merger of the information-processing models of memory and qualitative models of development is suggested, and has valuable implications about the possible nature of "locus" of memory development (ST)

What is questioned here is not the teaching of words but their premature imposition upon the child before he has acquired the concepts that underlie them. (Author)

Presents the procedures, results, and conclusions of a study designed to compare the cognitive performance of students from a new curricula (PSSC) and from traditional (non-PSSC) curricula. Results essentially supported contention that PSSC materials were more effective in developing higher cognitive skills. (DS)

Traces the child's growing understanding of the recursive nature of thought through mastery of a sequence of four steps. Recursive thinking may well be a prerequisite for complex, role taking-type inferences found in adolescent thought. (WY)