The shared features that characterize the noun categories that young children learn first are a formative basis of the human category system. To investigate the potential categorical information contained in the features of early-learned nouns, we examine the graph-theoretic properties of noun-feature networks. The networks are built from the…

Early childhood neglect can limit a child's normal cognitive development and result in behavior problems in the classroom. When normal attachment is disrupted, learning difficulties can result in problems with time awareness. It has also been shown that an awareness of time is a key concept for the formation of organizational and math skills. This…

Empirically describes the relative development of perceptual and conceptual understanding of left-right, back-front, up-down projective relationships between objects and provides a heuristic model of the cognitive processes involved in coordination of perspectives tasks. (Author/ED)

On the basis of a conservation of substance experiment with 189 blind and partially sighted children, it is inferred that while the best of them are performing on a par with the best of their sighted peers, the age range in which conservation is attained is more extended for the visually handicapped. (Author)

The responses of 108 children, aged five through nine, to the question, "What is reading?" were analyzed to determine whether there were age-related trends toward more mature and structurally more complex definitions of reading and whether a relationship existed between reading skill and the ability to formulate a definition of reading. The…

Spatial cognition entails the ability to mentally represent spatial relations and to anticipate the course and outcome of transformations applied to those relations. The developmental histories of four tasks used to assess the maturity of spatial cognition in children are described. Significant effects were found for age, gender, task, and for…

A sample of 838 children ages 5 through 15 years in Australia, England, North America, and Sweden were interviewed about physical and sexual development. The study covers essentially the same area as Bernstein and Cowan (1975) but extends the sample on the dimensions of age, number, randomness, and comparisons made. (Author/RH)

A study was designed to investigate the relationship between cognitive style and hypothesis testing strategies used in solving concept attainment problems. A field-independent (FI) and field-dependent (FD) cognitive style group of third grade students were administered concept attainment problems using a blank-trial methodology. The results…

This paper is concerned with the question of relationship among preferred perceptual modes, selected independent variables which cause individual differences, and the resulting effects on conceptual behavior. Subjects ranged from four and one-half years to eight and one-half years of age. Each child chosen by the plan was screened for color…

Children were tested at ages four and six for recall of clusterable objects under play and sort conditions. Conceptual clustering predicted recall performance of six-year olds in both conditions and of four-year olds in the sort condition. The stability of memory variables was low with the exception of free recall. (BC)

Two experiments investigated perceptual primacy of dimensional and similarity relations in stimulus classification of mentally retarded children. Results support a distinction between separable and integral stimulus structures, but do not support an integral-to-separable shift in perceptual development. Results suggest implications for…

Describes two studies investigating the development of recursive thinking in 60 Dutch children five, seven, and nine years of age. The first study replicated earlier research employing a verbal production procedure. The second study used verbal comprehension procedures and concluded that development appears two years earlier than indicated by the…

Extends William James' classification of phenomenalistic reality (PR) and analyzes PR using empirical data available in developmental psychology; focuses on the relation of PR to a human subject; to rational constructions; and to the idea of truth. Concludes that the development of phenomenalistic reality is qualitatively different from the…

The hypothesis, that the importance of language to mankind lies not so much in the fact that it is the means by which we cooperate and communicate with each other as in the fact that it enables each of us, as individuals and in cooperation, to represent the world to ourselves as we encounter it, is presented. In infancy, the representation is made…

In order to determine the cognitive development of Navajo children in terms of Piagetian conservation of number, mass, and continuous quantity, 168 Navajo children at seven different age levels from 5 to adult were presented with a series of three conservation tasks. The tasks consisted of a standard object and an equivalent object that could be…