Examines the relationship between Piagetian stage of development and achievement on the Australian Science Education Project (ASEP) unit "The Human Machine." Fifty-seven secondary school age boys took the Tisher-Dale "Understanding in Science Test" as a measure of cognitive development as well as the ASEP unit exam. The…

The classroom use of attribute blocks to develop thinking skills is defended in this article. Divergent-productive thinking is identified as an important skill that can be developed by using these blocks. However, teacher commitment and involvement in the program is considered necessary. Suggestions for using these blocks are included. (MA)

One hundred and eighty fourth-grade boys completed tasks where they were given stimulus patterns in one or two sensory modes (auditory or visual) and asked to identify equivalent patterns in the same or in the other mode. Correlations between mathematics achievement and modality matching ability were significant with "striking" variation…

An experimental and control group of thirty-two four and five year-old children received identical quantitative tasks except for the language used. Results showed that children's difficulties with simple arithmetic tasks were not purely linguistic. The conclusion supports the suggestion that the development of language is intertwined with…

Reports on twelve year-old students instructed in Nuffield Project and in "traditional" classrooms. A division of the subjects into two groups based on intelligence revealed significant differences on classification ability. Interaction effects were also observed. (CP)

The author (1) presents data drawn from a fourteen-week program on oral health care involving second-grade students; (2) concludes that such a program is successful in promoting short-term behavioral change; and (3) stresses the need for periodic reinforcement and repetition to assure behavior maintenance over time. (MB)

Investigated the rationale for teaching psychology from the jr. high school level through college and compared the three principal contemporary approaches favored by psychologists. The author concluded that, of the three, only cognitive psychology provides a frame of reference in which knowledge can be seen as valuable in its own right. Available…

Discusses the influence of teaching styles and curriculum on development of geographic concepts in children. Implications of this influence for geography curriculum development are examined. Available from: Sydney Teachers College, P.O. Box 63, Camperdown, N.S.W. 2050, Australia. (Author/DB)

Reviewed is research on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, which are designed to assess several areas of a child's cognitive and motor development from the age of 2 1/2 to 8 1/2 years. (Author)

Presentation of a "natural experiment" problem situation to fourth, sixth, and eighth graders and college students revealed that not until adolescence could subjects isolate alternative or additive causes in a multivariable situation. (JMB)

Delay of gratification and temporal span were investigated in 58 girls, ages 4 to 9 years, by estimated story durations, delay of gratification in a direct choice money test, and reproduction of a 60-second interval. (BD)

Kindergarten, first and second grade children participated in a study of the development of conservation of equality and inequality. (BD)

Three studies explored children's adoption of cultural forms of representation. Investigated were (1) children's judgments from students' drawings about the age of the artist; (2) children's preferences for drawings and the extent preferences match teachers'; and (3) differences between drawings children produce for themselves and those they…

Two short-term strategy training programs were used to teach learning disabled 9- to 12-year-old students (N=42) to use an organizational strategy for a memory task. A three-rule program stressing the acquisition of specific strategy content showed a greater transfer of learning than a six-rule program teaching both specific strategy content and…

Develops a general understanding of four categories of thinking skill components and their increasing importance: (1) problem solving; (2) decision making; (3) critical thinking; and (4) creative thinking. Methods of incorporating audiovisual media into thinking skills instruction are suggested. Twenty-one references are listed. (MES)