Purposes of this study were to reexamine Piaget's conception of the roles of intention and consequence as bases for moral judgments, and to assess the implications of this effort for Kohlberg's concept of homogeneity of moral reasoning stages. The study examined the effects of manipulation of the severity of consequences in moral dilemmas on the…

Investigated were similarities and differences in the ability of 26 normally developing and 26 conduct-disordered children and adolescents to comprehend psychologically defensive behavior and the cognitive processes underlying differences due to age. Matched by cognitive level, subjects viewed vignettes depicting another child behaving…

Reviews recent work on knowledge acquisition with a focus on knowledge restructuring. Piagetian theories of global restructuring may be replaced by a more domain-specific approach. Several mechanisms for knowledge restructuring are discussed, and these issues are related to a theory-based approach for the study of instruction. (RB)

Notes that Piaget's theory of cognitive development was based on the child's interaction with material objects and quantitative relationships. Examines the applicability of Piaget's concept of operational intelligence and conservation to music learning. Concludes that a theory of music learning must apply equally to the non-material and…

The study was designed to allow the investigation of the following research questions: (1) What are the magnitude and direction of measurable significant differences in meaningful learning orientation and meaningful understanding of physics concepts between students with learning cycle (LC) instruction and those with meaningful verbal reception…

The work of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian developmental psychologist, has made enormous recent contributions to the fields of child development and education. This paper recounts a conversation with Gita Levovna Vygodskaya, Vygotsky's eldest daughter, also a psychologist. There were two foci of the conversation. The first was on the parallels between…

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…

Four- to 11-year-olds made duration, distance, and speed judgments on Piagetian tasks where cars ran on parallel tracks. Among younger children, duration and distance judgments had approximately the same difficulty. Among older children, distance judgments were easier than duration judgments, and symmetry of effects of temporal and spatial…

British researcher Ronald Goldman's attempts to apply Piagetian theory to children's interpretation of biblical narratives illustrates that the theory is ill suited to text interpretation. However, there are ways that child psychology can contribute to religious education. (SK)

Examines the role attributed to cultural mediation in Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories. Mediation of human action by cultural artifacts was central to Vygotsky's account of human development, but less important for Piaget. Vygotsky's claims regarding social origins of individual mental processes need to be understood in light of claims regarding…

Piaget's theory has been characterized as descriptive and not explanatory, not qualifying as causal explanation. Piaget was consistent in showing how his theory was both explanatory and causal. Vygotsky also endorsed causal-genetic explanation but, on the basis of knowledge of only Piaget's earliest works, he claimed that Piaget's theory was not…

Investigated development of altruism in children according to a theoretical perspective that integrated Piagetian micromodels accounting for change from preoperational to operational stages. Subjects were 90 children of 5-12 years of age. Older children were more likely to consider an altruistic act in terms of gain construction than cost…

Findings on 20 children who passed an area conservation task and 20 who didn't suggested that conserving children applied an additive rule, while nonconserving children presented patterns suggesting centration on one of the two dimensions. Implications for Anderson's and Piaget's conceptions of conservation development are discussed. (RH)

A study showed that 5- to 15-year-old children first employed Heider's commission rule, then his intentionality rule, and finally the foreseeability rule at about 11 years of age. Results suggest that both the Heider and Piaget attribution research traditions were correct in part. (RH)

Five studies examined adults' responses to weight conservation questions which were constructed to give subjects a choice of two incorrect answers. The results showed that adults (1) acquiesced to the misleading implications of the questions; and (2) exhibited greater nonconservation in response to questions about the body than about external…