This article (1) discusses the progression of children's thought from realism to objectivity, to reciprocity, and to realitivity; and (2) describes seventeen types of explanations children give to explain the causality of physical occurrences in the world. (SB)

Before and after formal instruction, 140 elementary school children answered questions designed to elicit their concept of structural stability. A three-year follow-up showed they tended to retain useful ideas and discard those less useful over time. Their information sources included external as well as school experiences. (SK)

This document reports the results of two studies performed to determine the effectiveness of special lessons in facilitating the attainment by children of the basic concept "tree." The first study, which utilized 103 fifth-grade students, also investigated the effects of pretesting. Results showed no significant effects of pretesting and…

Assesses comprehension of the mental verbs "remember" and "forget" among three-, four-, five-, and seven-year-old children by having the child judge whether or not toy characters in different situations remembered or forgot. (Author/RH)

Suggestions are given relating to having plants and animals in the classroom to stimulate development of the understanding of the concept of being alive, a concept not really understood by children under age nine. The research reviewed promotes firsthand experiences to help form concepts of living and nonliving, of identity and causality. (EB)

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)

Concludes that children have a far broader range of intellectual interests than has generally been recognized. Bringing them into contact with fields of knowledge, methods of inquiry in these fields, and the processes of logical reasoning at a time when they have a natural receptivity which can have a fundamental impact on their intellectual…

Demonstrations are presented in which children can be introduced to evidence of specific concepts enabling them to participate in such a way that any conceptual conflicts that might arise in this learning situation can be gradually reduced. (EB)

The rule assessment approach was used to examine five-, eight-, eleven-, and twenty-year-olds' concepts of time, speed, and distance. (CM)

An examination of the status of teaching mathematics to deaf students showed that teachers ignore the hands-on exploration of objects that promotes conceptualization of basic mathematic principles. An arithmetic teaching strategy is proposed which is activity-based and is derived from Piaget's theory of intellectual development in children.…

In this report, the formation and use of a creative movement program by a group of Israeli educators as a means of promoting intellectual development in culturally disadvantaged children, mostly of North African and Asian origin, is described. The theoretical framework of the experiment, based on the work of Piaget and other educational…

A conceptual category approach to the study of the comprehension of natural language is presented as an alternative to previous approaches made solely in terms of information gain or specific linguistic variables. Elementary school children between the ages of 6 and 11 years were given a referent identification task to test their comprehension of…

This paper takes the position that logical knowledge is distinct from conceptual and procedural knowledge and can make a unique contribution to the understanding of knowledge acquisition. This view of logical knowledge departs from the traditional Piagetian view of stages and the overriding view of logic as the sole means of constructing new…

The literature of reading theory and research suggests a number of key factors involved in the comprehension process. In simplest terms, comprehension is the process by which an individual actively generates meaning from some linguistic input. Five factors of reading comprehension have been identified through research: vocabulary knowledge, the…

Uses test questions from the Basic Economics Test (BET) to reveal that elementary students are capable of understanding economics concepts. Maintains that neither ethnic background nor parental income makes a difference in economic learning. The most statistically significant determinant of improved scores was the extent to which a concept was…