This newsletter, focusing on literature and research on cognitive behavior modification (CBM), reviews articles and research on CBM with children. Works on retarded children, deaf children and children with learning disabilities are presented, with critical analyses. A parallel section on CBM with adults follows. Problem areas of phobias, anxiety,…

In arguing that language as speech is to be contrasted with language as writing, this paper examines some facts about the evolution of writing systems, draws upon some experimental studies, discusses the difference between speech and writing as being one of status within human cognitive structure, and notes that the difference may help explain why…

Four males and four females from each of grades one through six served as subjects in an investigation of the development of recursive thought (imagining other people's thoughts). One half of the subjects were asked to tell what a little boy in a picture was thinking about various configurations of faces. The remaining subjects were told the…

This paper reports factors influencing developmental growth of disadvantaged 3- to 5-year-old preschool children in a Title I program at Euclid School, St. Louis, Missouri. A Preschool Academy was designed to serve 45 preschool pupils in an area served by two neighboring elementary schools. Pupils were divided into three groups and each group…

This paper is a technical report of analyses carried out to determine the effects of parents' involvement in a prekindergarten program on their children's cognitive development. The research was part of a longitudinal study of the New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program. A multiple linear regression approach was used to test hypotheses…

As part of a longitudinal study of the New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program, the effect of degree of parental involvement in the program on children's cognitive development was examined. Parent involvement included employment in the program, school visits, home visits by school personnel, group meetings, and incidental contacts such…

A developmental model for an empathy-based prosocial motive is presented. The framework of the model is presented in terms of three components of empathy. The first component, empathic affective arousal, is discussed and six involuntary psychological mechanisms which underlie it are described briefly. These mechanisms, in the order in which they…

A sequence of reasoning processes based on a combination of theories developed by Jean Piaget is presented. An applied theory of concept-teaching is derived from the restructuring of Piagetian theories on logical thought specifically concerned with the notions of the additive and multiplicative ordering of groups, and the four logic processes of…

This experiment investigated the effect of children's successive encounters with a large scale environment on their subsequent reconstructions of that environment. Twenty children (10 boys, 10 girls) at each of three grade levels (kindergarten, two, and five) reconstructed from memory the spatial layout of buildings in a large model town. All…

The primary goal of this review is to acquaint developmental psychologists who have had little experience in the study of individual differences in cognition with some of the basic rules that govern this type of research. A second goal is to stimulate researchers to consider the potential benefits of studying differences among individuals whose…

A study was conducted in light of a neo-Piagetian theory of cognitive development to interpret the effect of priming executive schemes for describing relevant features in a referential communication task. Forty-eight 4-year-old children were divided into primed and nonprimed groups and were asked to describe in isolation a black and white…

Items from a widely used standardized reading achievement test were rated by trained judges according to the degree to which they required an understanding of hierarchical classification. Two subtests were constructed from subsets of items that were identified by their extreme ratings. Subtest A was judged to require classification operations from…

Generalizability theory was applied to the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF), an instrument commonly employed to assess reflection-impulsivity in children, in order to analyze the dependability of the MFF at four grade levels: second, third, fourth, and fifth. The MFF was individually administered to 114 boys. A completely crossed, two-facet…

Based on the belief that improvisational drama is superior to the traditional approach of sequence drama, this paper tells some advantages and methods of improvisational drama and compares the two methods with respect to educational goals. After defining sequence drama (a sequence of activities typically beginning with interpretive movement and…

Children aged three to five were the subjects of two studies of the development of ability to classify diverse objects into superordinate categories. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to designate two of three pictorially represented objects as representative of a given category. The second experiment required subjects to choose from a…