A study of the development of 6- to 12-year-old children's appreciation of verbal jokes was conducted within the framework of the incongruity and resolution theory of humor. Results revealed age differences indicating that older children appreciated both structural components while younger children appreciated the incongruity structure. (ST)

The dependence of immediate, short-term and long-term reproductive memory on operative understanding was studied in elementary school students. Results are interpreted in terms of Piaget's theory. (ST)

Kindergarten through fourth graders (N=170) were tested for conservation and then interviewed following the presentation of a story about an elderly woman's death, in an attempt to assess children's understanding of 3 concepts: irrevocability, cessation of bodily processes, and universality. (Author/JMB)

Examines children's ability to make both logical and pragmatic presuppositional inferences and to discriminate between the two as a function of contextual information. Five- and eight-year-old children served as subjects. (BD)

Metaphors of similarity and proportionality, together with a pictorial form of similarity metaphors, proverbs, and several Piaget-type cognitive tasks, were given to 50 boys aged 5 through 13 years. Results indicated that metaphor comprehension is a type of classificatory behavior, the development of which is related to maturing cognitive…

Discussion of the theoretical and methodological implications of six studies of the effect of children's expectations on comprehension of the passive transformation and of the Minimum Distance Principle. Study subjects were in kindergarten or elementary school. (Author/MP)

Children's ability to infer consequences from sentences automatically was assessed in two cued recall experiments. Seven- and eight-year-old children and adults served as subjects. (JMB)

This study examines developmental differences in third and sixth graders' and college students' use of distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency information for making causal attributions. (CM)

Presents a developmental study of children's understanding and appreciation of figurative language. Results replicated previous findings that kindergarten children are capable of interpreting figurative language whereas appreciation appears to require increased cognitive sophistication. (JMB)

The development of children's comprehension of cause and effect relationships was studied in 68 kindergarten, first grade, and second grade children. (BRT)

This study examined the comprehension of Wh-questions in English in children between the ages of 5 and 9. The study showed that difficulties with Wh-questions are not overcome by the age of 9. (Author/RM)

The Stanford-Binet intelligence test was administered by 104 third- and sixth-grade, disadvantaged black children in Negro non-standard dialect and in standard English. Younger children performed better than older children. No significant differences were found between dialect and standard-English test administrations. (ST)

The purpose of this teaching module is to enable participants to demonstrate and apply their knowledge of comprehension and critical thinking skills, using the Watson-Glaser Test of Critical Thinking Ability. Critical thinking is defined as an attitude of thoughtful consideration of the problems and subjects that come within one's experience,…

This monograph is based on a doctoral thesis submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota in August 1969. (MG)