Most research on children's conception of death has probed their understanding of its biological aspects: its inevitability, irreversibility and terminal impact. Yet many adults subscribe to a religious conception implying that death marks the beginning of a new life. Two recent empirical studies confirm that in the course of development, children…

Piaget's conceptualization of concrete and formal operations is presented. It is contended that Piaget has obfuscated logic, metaphysics and methodology. (MS)

Reviews Karmiloff-Smith's "Beyond Modularity," suggesting that her work highlights phenomena that seem counter intuitive when regarded from current developmental frameworks, and advocates that understanding them requires more complex perspectives than can be supported by either extreme nativist or domain-general models of cognitive…

Reviews "The Mind's Staircase: Exploring the Conceptual Underpinnings of Children's Thought and Knowledge," edited by Robbie Case. A main thesis of the book, which discusses theoretical issues and presents empirical evidence, is that children's cognitive development is guided by central conceptual structures, or networks of concepts that…

Paul B. Baltes and his colleagues, who are among the most prominent contemporary wisdom researchers, define wisdom as "expert knowledge in the domain fundamental pragmatics of life." By contrast, this article argues that the definition, operationalization, and measurement of wisdom should not be reduced to expertise and that the term wisdom should…

Presents and reviews Piaget's recent work on equilibration. (BD)

To resolve tension between general stages and conceptual specificity in neo-Piagetian theory, R. Case introduced the idea of central conceptual structures. To resolve difficulties of separating developmental level and conceptual diversity, this article reconceptualizes central conceptual structures as self-organizing systems that stabilize in…

Comments on Lewis's ideas about reconciling stage and specificity in neo-Piagetian theory in this issue. Summarizes R. Case's central conceptual structure and its relation to other neo-Piagetian theories. Notes similarities between Lewis and Piaget, suggesting that differences adhere to a limited number of general laws instead of being…

Provides clarification of the Piagetian theory of the development of conservation and reviews the state of knowledge regarding the theory. It is concluded that reasonable evidence exists suggesting that conservation by identity precedes and induces the emergence of conservation by inversion and compensation. (Author/DB)

Proposes a self-instructional strategy training paradigm designed to explicitly teach that the use of heuristic processes and mediational devices can be employed to compensate for age-associated deficits, such as poor problem solving. Format for the procedure was derived from the developmental research of the Soviet psychologists Vygotsky and…

Several experiments with 8- to 9-year-old children are reported to demonstrate that "decalage" observed between success in problems of conservation of weight, volume, and density is due to the different task situation as presented by Piaget and Inhelder. (Author)