Learning-disabled and average learners (N=52) in grades 2, 4, and 6 were asked to tell the meanings of 12 proverbs. Only at the sixth grade level was a moderately significant difference in metaphoric comprehension found. (Author/DB)

The WISC, Piagetian logico-mathematical and representational space tasks, the Frostig DTVP and a motor ability test were administered to elementary children at 3 age and arithmetic achievement levels to determine whether specific patterns of cognitive and/or spatial development were related to arithmetic achievement and whether patterns varied…

Investigates inferential behavior in five- and six-year-old children who made inferences about the spatial locations of models of animals and people in three experiments. Two levels of inference were found. Inferences of most five year olds were consistent with information given; Inferences of most six year olds were logically necessary ones.…

Reports three experiments based on the hypothesis that qualitative changes in verbal reasoning emerge, not from the conclusions children draw, but from what they accept as conclusive evidence. Results show a gradual development across 7-13 age range in ability to distinguish logically certain from only suggested or probabilistic conclusions.…

The relationship between memory and reasoning was investigated in three experiments involving children in grades one, four, and seven, and college students. Results indicated that performance was dependent on subjects' abilities to integrate relevant subskills, rather than on deficient reasoning or missing subskills. (RJC)

To determine whether children possess representations and concepts of space before they acquire verbal descriptions of these, children's formation of symbolic representations of space and their acquisition of verbal referents for them were observed. It was found for subjects in the study that conceptual representations of space relations were…

This study investigated the development of the concept of a critical search area by means of an action sequence in which a cartoon character loses his toy while walking through his house. The results showed that it is not until ages 7 or 8 that children readily make the inference that the critical area is the only plausible place to search for the…

Deductive reasoning problems were presented to 72 public elementary school students, half of whom were identified as gifted (mean age of 9.6 years) and half of whom were regular education students (mean age of 9.3 years). They were used to test an hypothesis that gifted children who score significantly higher than average on standardized…

A cross-sectional study examined age differences in children's conceptions of early U.S. history. Students in grades 2, 3, 6, and 8 (n=281) were asked to respond to a question about how the United States became a country. Their essays show significant changes with age. Older students were more likely to include errors of historical fact in their…

Ratings of concreteness and picturability and production data for meaningfulness of 310 words were gathered from sixth-grade children and college students. (JMB)

This study examined above-grade-level abstract reasoning abilities of 150 students (grades 2-6). Understanding of abstract concepts varied by age for only four of eight subscales or concepts: probability, proportion, momentum, and frames of reference. Performance varied widely within age level for the understanding of volume, correlation,…

Two experiments compared the cognitive maps (mental representations of the spatial environment) of first graders, fifth graders and college students, and investigated developmental changes in the ability to manipulate cognitive maps mentally. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to move from stationpoint to stationpoint and at each, to…

Two studies with first- and fifth-grade children in two learning tasks showed that preoperational children did not necessarily learn responses followed by a stimulus object previously instrumental in obtaining a reward, while postoperational subjects did. (Author/JMB)

Second and third graders and fifth and sixth graders were tested in a very large, unfamiliar environment to determine the relation of their knowledge of an abstract reference frame to performance on a spatial inference task. (HOD)

A developmental study of elementary school children's use of rule v computation in solving spacial perspective-taking problems. (CM)