Giambattista Vico, an 18th-century Neapolitan philosopher, believed that, from children, adults could learn lessons they could not teach themselves. This learning, however, is predicated on the necessity that genuine childhood be allowed to exist and that logic and abstraction are not introduced to children too soon. (JMK)

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)

Explains how teachers can initiate mapping experiences with young children by providing motor experiences inside and outside the classroom. Experiences should be followed by work with three-dimensional models, then with two-dimensional paper, and finally with lines. (Author)

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

Children aged 6 through 9 made drawings of cubes and simple abstract designs, with or without looking at their hand. Copying errors and differences between the age groups were discussed in terms of visual realism (perspective drawing) compared with intellectual realism (structural essentials copied without a unified perspective view). (CTM)

Shows a wide variety of task performance ability. Supports the hypothesis that the tasks require the use of the same or a unified set of cognitive processes. (RL)

A study charting the development of grade school children's analogic reasoning used 26 second, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students from lower middle class and higher middle class schools. The children were asked to explain concrete, interactive, and abstract concepts to an imaginary creature (a puppet). For half the items, an initial period of…

This handbook for educators and parents discusses the need to include philosophy in the elementary classroom. The authors point out that as a question-raising discipline, philosophy is appropriate to guide children's natural inquisitiveness through the educational process. It encourages intellectual resourcefulness and flexibility which can enable…

Law-related education programs for elementary school should be based on children's perceptions of reality. Psychologist Jean Piaget's studies of cognitive development indicate that children constantly reconstruct reality as they undergo new experiences. Children at early developmental stages may not be capable of understanding the origin and…