In three studies, 5-10-year-old children and an adult comparison group judged another's certainty in making inductive inferences and guesses. Participants observed a puppet make strong inductions, weak inductions, and guesses. Participants either had no information about the correctness of the puppet's conclusion, knew that the puppet was correct,…

This study investigates how shared picture book storytelling within a peer-group setting could stimulate causal reasoning in children aged 4½ to 6 years. Twenty-eight children from preschool classes of three schools were allocated to one of six groups (four to five children per group). Each group participated in six storytelling sessions over a…

In this work, a new method of teaching psychology based on the union of scientific, artistic, and information-technological knowledge is presented. The author teaches Cognitive Development in Early Childhood analyzing Anton Chekhov's short story "Grisha" and uses both traditional and computerized instructional methodology. In the authors' two…

Research shows that mental representation such as analogical reasoning is a fundamental cognitive tool for design problem solving (Daugherty & Mentzer, 2008; Hey, Lensey, Agogino, & Wood, 2008; Lewis, 2008). Not much is known, however, about the way students and professional engineers actively generate and change their mental representation when…

The Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT) and the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) are two of the instruments most widely used by science educators and researchers to measure students' formal reasoning abilities. Based on Piaget's cognitive development theory, formal thinking ability has been shown to be essential for student achievement in…

This study investigated the geometric cognitive growth of pre-service mathematics teachers in terms of the Van Hiele levels in a technology-enriched environment, as opposed to that of students in a learning environment without any technological enhancements. In order to investigate this, a quasi-experimental non-equivalent comparison group design…

Data representing two styples of approach to the logical abilities of young children are analyzed. The result of this analysis is contrary to popular interpretations of Piaget's views concerning the logical abilities of young children. (ST)

Gross comparisons (easiest) were solvable by all; intensive comparisons (medium difficulty) were inversely related to IQ, and extensive comparisons (hardest) were easiest for low IQ, low M.A. and high IQ, high M.A. retardates. (MH)

This paper argues in favor of using interactional strategies in the study of formal operations reasoning. Interactional designs allow a convergent approach to specifying processes underlying the interaction of variables. In contrast, current methodologies contain two inherent disadvantages: they have limited utility in specifying the processes…

The effects of two training sequences on the development of young children's logical operations and number concepts, including rational counting strategies, were investigated. Forty-five preschool children, aged 3.11 to 4.10, were randomly assigned to two treatment groups and one control group. Subjects in the treatment groups received training…

Examines the relationship between formal operational reasoning and two language variables--subordinate clauses and tentative statements. Supports Piaget's position of independence between linguistic and cognitive development, showing how subordinate clause use and tentative statement use are not related significantly to performances on reasoning…

Twenty-nine children with learning disabilities (LD) in grades 2 and 4 through 7 were compared with children without LD for their development of proportional structures of thought. Significantly fewer children with LD had constructed second-order logical structures necessary to act on problems using multiplicative and preproportional reasoning.…

The purpose of this article is to analyze the results of a study of the development of analogical reasoning in deaf children coming from two different linguistic environments (deaf children of deaf parents--sign language, deaf children of hearing parents--spoken language) and in hearing children, as well as to compare two groups of deaf children…