Process education practices are designed to assist the learner with coping with change in his life and living with the stress of immediate change, as to develop learning processes capable of coping with continuous change. (JD)

Used latent class analysis to test statistically Siegler's rule assessment methodology, the number of rules needed to fit a set of data. Found that rules can be identified, that some are different from those proposed by Siegler, the correct rule is not acquired by subjects, and that the rules in the transitional period are difficult to identify.…

Focuses on the impact of severe visual impairment on the development of play skills that facilitate concept development and discusses interventions that can enhance play experiences for infants and young children with severe visual impairments. Strategies encourage intrinsic motivation, spontaneity, active engagement, positive effect,…

Pointing and gestures in 47 infants was investigated in 2 experiments contrasting declarative-referential vs. imperative-instrumental conditions of communication, and another study of 7 infants examined prepointing transitional phenomena. Results show gestures are produced differently in experimental conditions: reaching is only produced in…

Investigated the proposition that two distinct factors involved in life span cognitive development are mental speed and coordination efficiency. Results show dissociable speed of processing and working memory functioning over the life span and age-related differential effects of coordinative demands. (ET)

Discusses creativity, play, and nonconformity in children, including the illusion of thought disorder or abnormality, and aspects of everyday creativity, health, and survival. Describes creative divergence, chaotic amplification, the evolution of information, and primitive cognitive processes. Concludes with a discussion of cognitive styles,…

Examines the perceptual cues used by three- and four-month-old infants to categorically distinguish perceptually similar animal species. Indicates that cues form the facial and head region provide the critical source of information that allows young infants to categorically differentiate cats and dogs and presumably a number of other animal…

Assesses the effect of delay between an event and new postevent information related to it in six-month-old infants' memory. Three phenomena were studied: memory impairment, memory facilitation, and categorization. Suggests that postevent information has different qualitative effects depending on its timing, and provides a basis for understanding…

Three studies of how workers construct knowledge associated with vocational practice were examined within a framework classifying dispositions as interest, attitudes, and values. Findings suggest that dispositions are rooted in individual history and participation in communities of practice and that consideration of how cognitive structures…

Children were asked whether someone would get sick from drinking juice placed near a bug. Some preschoolers and most seven- and eight-year olds recognized the need for physical contact with the bug to make the juice noxious, whereas some believed the mere presence of a contaminant made it noxious. Thus, associational contamination sometimes plays…

Suggests that Kuhn's study reported in this issue (PS 524 345) offers insight into how people make casual inferences, and raises important questions about these processes. (JW)

Responds that questions of study by Kuhn and others (PS 524 345) in this issue were motivated by concerns about the role of scientific thinking in general thinking, not in development of scientific reasoning. Study was meant to increase understanding of role of strategies in development, not provide definitive explanation of how strategies fit…

Comments on Flavell's paper (PS 522 962) presented in the same issue. Stresses some of the positive aspects of preschoolers' conception of thinking, and raises questions about the relatively negative portrait of young child's introspective abilities. Discusses evidence of introspection among preschoolers, and underlines the special, and…

Comments on Flavell's paper in this issue. Examines the paper's findings on three different aspects of children's knowledge about thinking: their ability to differentiate thinking from other activities, their awareness that thinking is always going on in people's minds, and their capacity for introspection into their own thinking. Argues that…

Examined the ability of 1-year olds to remember the location of nonvisible targets. Found that infants were able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and to code its distance and direction with respect to themselves or the larger framework. Difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks was associated with cognitive complexity and…