Background: To understand how the human brain organises the information, how prototypes are handled in the categorisation system, researchers have pointed out that there may be a relationship between visual perception and concept acquisition. Aim: This study was conducted to examine the effect of a concept education programme, developed on the…

Cartoons are undoubtedly the TV programmes children most prefer watching. This study uses cartoons -- which have significant effects on children's learning -- for concept teaching. Within the scope of the study, four cartoons were developed for teaching position-related concepts (in-out, in front of-behind, under-above) pre-school teachers noted…

Children can recognize patterns much earlier than they can reconstruct them. A child cannot understand seriation in an operational sense unless he recognizes a seriated configuration. (ST)

Tests the distinction between inferring new categories on the basis of property information (predicted to be difficult) and inferring new properties on the basis of category information (predicted to be easier) among 57 preschool children. (HOD)

This study investigated whether object-picture discrepancy occurs because preschool children regard pictures as significates rather than as signifiers. Results indicated the children did not consistently respond to objects and their pictorial representations equivalently. (Author/DB)

A study with three- and five-year olds contrasted two important proposals regarding children's assumptions about word meanings: the taxonomic assumption proposal and the shape bias proposal. Results suggest that perceptual similarity, particularly shape similarity, is very important in early word meaning but that children gradually shift their…

Investigated the hypothesis that preschoolers encode perceptual attributes, but not conceptual attributes, of objects in recall tasks. Children were asked to recall typical and atypical objects, or objects that varied in typicality and size. Children were influenced by both conceptual and perceptual stimulus characteristics. (LB)

Results clearly demonstrated the existence of perceptual sets in children under 4 years. The interpretation of findings suggests a process whereby the present method was successful in creating the mediating conditions necessary for a perceptual set. (Authors)

Hypothesis was confirmed that more familiar and more ambiguous concepts would be less readily named in their less detailed representations. (Author/MB)

Twenty-two children ranging in age from 2 to 3 years were tested on their abilities to apply weight and distance rules to the balance scale. This study was performed to test the prediction that 2-year-olds would be able to understand either a weight rule or a distance rule, but not be able to integrate the two. The sample group was instructed in…

Reports two studies. The first study compared adults and children (aged four, six, and eight) on ability to sort paintings according to artist, a conceptual task that can reveal cognitive organization. The second study compared three groups of eight- to nine-year-olds using slightly different procedures. The results showed strong developmental…

According to J. Piaget, the child continually constructs or refines previous constructions in defining reality. Taking Piaget's lead, a study attempted to describe how children construct reality, with particular emphasis on the role of television in that construction. Four young children were observed and audio taped in viewing situations in their…

Reports two studies which investigated the acquisition of color terms by preschool children. The first was designed to clarify the role of certain conceptual factors in the acquisition of color terms. The second explored how input may interact with these conceptual factors and help to guide the acquisition of color words. (SED)

A decline exists in children's ability at ages 4 and 5 to accurately respond to the difference between polar adjectives such as "big" and "tall.""Taller" and "bigger" are both taken to mean "having a higher top point," rather than "bigger" meaning "greater overall mass." Two hypotheses are put forth to explain this. The "strong cognitive…