Young children have been taught simple sequences of alternating shapes and colors, referred to as "patterning", for the past half century in the hope that their understanding of pre-algebra and their mathematics achievement would be improved. The evidence that such patterning instruction actually improves children's academic achievement…

This study investigated the relationship between the attainment of a Piagetian formal operational concept (proportion) and personal characteristics in 117 children 10 to 12 years old. (SB)

A total of 192 second- to sixth-grade children, showing three different levels of class-inclusion answers (failure, correct answer based on counting, correct answer based on logical reasons), performed four necessity tasks. Results are discussed with reference to individual and constructive generalization processes. (Author/RH)

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…

Examines the concepts employed by normal and retarded children matched for mental age in kindergarten through fourth grades. Two studies explored the schema by which these children organized their experience into meaningful patterns. (LLK)

This study investigated the use of covariation as a principle of causal analysis in children 3-4, 6-7, and 9-11 years of age. The results indicated that children as young as 3 years were capable of using covariation information in their attributions of simple physical effects. (Author/CS)

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…

Children's understanding of Euclidian space was investigated using three Piaget-type tasks to examine the ability of children to quantitatively locate a point in one, two, and three dimensions. Among the findings were that a disagreement exists between Piaget's data and the results of this study. (BT)

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…

Comparison of elementary grade students with (N=42) or without (N=42) learning disabilities (LD) on their logical-mathematical structures of thought found that, though both groups generated grouping relationships, children with LD tendered to generate solutions showing less coordinated structures of thought. For both groups, scores on the…

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…

Reports a study involving 35 learning-disabled boys attending full-time remedial schools and 35 matched normal achievers to investigate whether learning-disabled children differ from normal achievers in terms of logical thought and whether they exhibit decalages in their acquisition of Piagetian concepts. (BD/BR)

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)