Object exploration is considered a driver of motor, cognitive, and social development. However, little is known about how early childhood education and care settings facilitate object exploration. This study examined if children's exploration of objects during free play was facilitated by the use of particular spatial components (floor, tables,…

Preschoolers made numerical comparisons between sets with varying degrees of shared surface similarity. When surface similarity was pitted against numerical equivalence (i.e., crossmapping), children made fewer number matches than when surface similarity was neutral (i.e, all sets contained the same objects). Only children who understood the…

Compared the impact of a small box emitting sounds in response to nearby motion introduced into an infant/toddler and a preschool classroom to illustrate qualitative differences in how children of different ages recognize the same objects as mediating devices for activity. Found that the box became a social object for infants/toddlers and part of…

Discussed are results of studies of the cognitive development of 2- and 3-year-old children which suggest that the mind makes gains in the ability to think as gains in language development are made. "Thinking" in this context refers to the judgments children made as they selected objects and maneuvered them into one arrangement or…

A dissertation proposal involved a study to observe spontaneous behavior of children in interaction with materials in order to gain understanding of the factors that influence classificatory and imaginative behavior in free play. Children at two levels of ability in terms of classification skills were observed in interaction with materials at two…

Various counting tasks were presented to 24 congenitally, totally blind children, aged 3-13, to determine the behaviors employed to ensure accurate counting. Three dimensions of tactile strategies were found, including "scanning,""organizing," and "partitioning." A developmental progression in the ontogenesis of each…