Presents a framework of developmental tasks which focuses on growth over the life span. Tasks include competence, sex role identity, capacity for meaningful relationships, independence, personal purpose, integrity, and acceptance of the world. Limitations of the approach and implications for counselors are discussed. (JAC)

Four experiments examined the development of negative priming (NP) in 3-5-year-old children using as a measure of children's executive function (EF) the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task. In the NP version of the DCCS, the values of the sorting dimension that is relevant during the preswitch phase are removed during the postswitch phase.…

Investigates the knowledge of thematic and taxonomic relations of 15 children of 26 months and 24 children of 34 months. Both age groups were able to identify thematic matches. However, 34-month-olds were able to recognize a wider range of thematic associations than 26-month-olds. (RJC)

Suggests some difficulties and challenges in understanding and teaching Piaget's new theory. Outlines some differences between Piaget's new and standard theories, such as the diminished status of the emergent skills that mark the onset of concrete operational thinking and the perception of achievements in concrete operations as empirical…

This paper describes three classification criterion tasks and the rationale for their selection. A set of parameters is defined and then used to describe the item format for the test. The test format and content domain are presented and discussed. Sample testing directions and materials are appended. (Author)

Tests the claim to comprehensiveness of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives by analyzing educational objectives of some freshmen orientation programs and those connected with human developmental tasks. It is concluded that the taxonomy should be enlarged with a fourth domain: actual induction into tasks for which students are being…

Employed regression analysis to determine the association between multiplicative classification and inductive reasoning. Subjects were 103 fourth grade children. (SDH)

Investigation aided by a grant from the Foundations' Fund for Research in Psychiatry.

Used multiple baseline design with four 6-year-old Latino children to train in class inclusion through counting, feedback, and verbal reinforcers, and in English language skills (of benefit in their own right), over 5 months. Found that post-intervention gains in the two domains were significant and were stable over at least 4.5 months. (KB)

A total of 60 kindergarten and first- and second-grade girls were presented with three tasks: concept-shift, sort, and hierarchization. Without exception, children who failed a task also failed the higher-order task(s), and children who passed a task also passed the lower-order task(s). Implications in relation to Piaget's theory of development of…

A taxonomy of response processes has been developed to facilitate the designing of training programs; each kind of task presumably would require a different set of training methods for greatest efficiency, so classifying a task would be part of determining which methods to use. A pool of response distinctions was collected, with special attention…

Two studies investigated the functional equivalence of three different scoring systems used to assess the child's ability to understand and carry out multiplicative classification tasks. All three scoring criteria produced reliable and homogeneous tests. Their factor matrices were similar, and the corresponding factor structures were invariant…

The hypothesis that variation in accessibility of categorical knowledge affects its use as an organizational device was tested in this experiment using 36 second graders and 36 fifth graders from a middle-class community within San Diego, California. The students memorized each of two lists of words that differed in category representativeness.…

A MAIN PROBLEM ARISING IN THE STUDY OF CATEGORIZING BEHAVIOR IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN BY MEANS OF SORTING PROCEDURES WAS THAT PERFORMANCE APPEARED TO BE VERY MUCH A FUNCTION OF THE CHILD'S COMPREHENSION OF THE PARTICULAR VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS EMPLOYED BY THE EXPERIMENTER IN PRESENTING THE TASK. THE SPECIFIC AIMS OF THE FIRST STUDY WERE TO INVESTIGATE…