Examined whether children differentiate or confuse the domains of folk biology and folk psychology. Children and adult subjects were asked whether the animals depicted in pictures possessed certain biological and psychological properties. Results indicated that by kindergarten, notions of folk psychology and folk biology are sufficiently…

Discusses deliberate psychological education as influenced by George Miller, Ralph Mosher, and Norm Sprinthall, and renewed calls for educational reform focusing on moral education. (JBJ)

Reviews Thomas A. Sebeok's "Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics." This book teaches the reader to use terms like "sign,""icon,""index," and "symbol" with greater precision and effect. Sebeok's work spans more than three decades and strongly contributes to a number of related disciplines, especially…

Provides a basis from which to critically examine contemporary identity research, by offering a definition of identity, a constructive criticism of the subject approach, and an empirical approach to studying sense of identity. The empirical approach is based on conceptually sound ideas and leads to important questions about identity modes and the…

Tested 6- and 8-year olds' ability to construct irony in story-completion tasks. Found that story stems based on familiar events, for which structured, detailed representations are available, facilitated irony more than did less-familiar activities, supporting irony as a metarepresentational skill. Young children's irony manipulated cognitively…

Examined how children's and adults' initial conceptions of objects and space influence predictions about the physical world, but lead the naive person to misconstrue a dynamic event. Found that participants proficiently anticipated where an oscillating screen would contact a hidden object, but underestimated the distance until contact.…

Analyzes students' attempts to answer examination questions involving stoichiometry and chemical equilibrium and reports that the majority of the students do not fully understand either concept. Concludes that the main difficulty with these topics is that they are highly abstract and first taught to students before they have reached the stage of…

Describes Developmental Counseling and Therapy (DCT) as model of helping based on Piagetian and constructivist concepts. Notes that client functioning is understood in terms of four levels of cognitive developmental functioning which parallel levels of cognitive development described by Piaget. Describes starting with client's predominant…

Examined the relationship between maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and children's intellectual functioning through age four. Found that children whose mothers smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day during pregnancy had Stanford-Binet scores 4 points lower than those whose mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. (HTH)

Four experiments with 36 infants studied how children organize objects categorically in the absence of input. Outcomes were not consistent with the predictions of bias accounts and considerably weaken the case for a psychologically real noun-bias prior to the vocabulary explosion. Findings are more consistent with children's use of information as…

Reviews "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" (S. Pinker). Defines generative grammar, examines the evidence for Pinker's Generative Grammar as Instinct hypothesis, and discusses Pinker's use of language acquisition as support for the hypothesis. Suggests alternative theories of language that begin from different…

Describes a study conducted by the Children's Television Workshop that tested two forms of Sesame Street character movement (i.e., discrete movement versus continuous motion) with three-year-old preschool children using a Nintendo controller. Cognitive factors governing children's game performance and implications for designing interactive…

Proposes a theoretical sequence of cognitive developments as influencing representational play and language in the second year of life. Structural and temporal links between play and language indicate influence of developing mental representation, but variation in timing of developments points to influence of variables. (ET)

Studied frequency and style of help-seeking in 18- and 24-month olds observed at free play and problem-solving. Found that younger toddlers sought less help than older toddlers; both groups sought more help during problem solving than in free play. Older toddlers increased vocal help-seeking whereas younger toddlers sought help through vocal and…

Teasing involves unexpected, novel, ambiguous, and destabilizing parental behaviors toward children. Teasing is displayed more often by fathers than mothers. Teasing may have a positive impact on cognitive and social development, because teasing introduces novelty and ambiguity, as well as negotiation of a struggle. (TM)