Mother-child play of 12-month-old infants (N = 130) from maltreating (N = 78) and nonmaltreating (N = 52) families was analyzed as a context that integrates infants' developing social and cognitive skills. Play was coded from semistructured and unstructured play paradigms. No group differences were found in infants' play maturity. Infants from…

In our clinical practice, we have attempted to use a positive psychology approach in working with people with schizophrenia and youths with behavioral disorders. We present three clinical applications that use a positive psychology approach with these populations: group treatment with persons with schizophrenia; individual cognitive stimulation…

This study investigates features of interaction between children that are linked to the development of understanding of mind, and asks whether these associations are evident across different relationships. Comparisons are made of the naturally occurring conversations in a sample of 43 4-year-old children, each observed with a sibling and with a…

This report is part of a long-term research on the construction of mathematical meanings through the interaction with various technologies. The research involved a set of teaching experiments based on body motion with sensors and calculators at different school levels, from kindergarten to secondary school. Here I refer to the one developed in a…

To examine how young children learn to read new words, we asked preschoolers (N = 115, mean age 4 years, 8 months) to learn and remember novel spellings that made sense based on letter names (e.g. TZ for "tease") and spellings that were visually distinctive but phonetically inappropriate. Children who were more knowledgeable about letter names…

Relations among patterns of conceptual and procedural knowledge and grade were examined in 90 six- to eight-year-olds in order to explore addition and subtraction development. Conceptual knowledge was assessed by examining children's responses to pairs of problems reflecting various part-whole relations. Children solved related problems as part of…

In accordance with McLoyd's model of African American children's development, we examined the linkages among family income, maternal psychological distress, marital conflict, parenting, and children's outcomes in early and middle childhood, using a sample of 591 African American children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Income…

This paper describes the methods and outcomes of a 12-year longitudinal study into the effects of an early intervention program, while reflecting back on changes that have occurred in approaches to research, learning and instruction since the preliminary inception stages of the study in the mid 1960s. We began the study to challenge the prevailing…

The present study investigates the performance of 96 Cantonese-speaking three- to five-year-old preschoolers on three false belief tasks--a deceptive object, a change of location, and an unexpected contents task encompassing a variety of task factors. Most importantly, the research examines the possibility that false belief performance depends on…

This paper focuses on the "match" between Botswana secondary school students' Piagetian status and the cognitive demands of chemistry education. The chemistry syllabus studied by the most talented students engaged in the pure sciences at the senior secondary level is cognitively well within the reach of most. However, a serious mismatch…

Introduction: This research addresses preschoolers' intuitive understanding of rectilinear movement and some variables which affect it, and the type of arguments used when related knowledge states are justified. A first working hypothesis is that the resolution of practical, functional situations would be based on self-regulation processes. A…

The explosion in the rate of multiple births has led to new questions about how adequately prepared parents are for the demands of raising triplets and the implications for the healthy development of the infants. The authors examined the relationship between mothering, infant social behavior, and cognitive development in a longitudinal study of 23…

This study investigates young children's humourous activity as a form of play and considers the implications on their cognitive development and learning. The study was conducted in an infant room of a university based group child care center and multiple qualitative data collection methods were used. The findings of this study suggest that during…

In the literature, learners' cognitive development is mainly discussed with respect to changes in learners' content-dependent knowledge (conceptual change or growth). Additional dimensions of time and complexity may also be taken into account to describe cognitive processes in at least three dimensions. We discuss these three dimensions of…

This article describes the way in which the curriculum for intensive French was developed. Reference is made to its similarities to and differences from both the multidimensional curriculum proposed by the National Core French Study and the communicative approach. The importance of learning outcomes stated in terms of communicative outcomes…