The second of a three volume report on a University of Kansas approach to developing quantitative measures of motor and perceptual motor functioning in nonhandicapped and severely/multiply handicapped infants and young children presents interobserver reliability results from the measures described in volume 1. Some studies also include a limited…

Recent research studies and texts in composition demonstrate the growing belief that students' difficulties with the writing tasks assigned to them are inextricably linked with their difficulties in handling complex cognitive processes. Through appropriate writing activities, students can be provided with practice in the intellectual functions…

The development of the concept of God was assessed among 120 children between the ages of 5 to 16 years who attended private Protestant and Catholic day schools in the San Diego area. All children participated in a semi-clinical interview. Twelve interview questions were asked as the first step of a probing technique used to initiate a dialogue…

A case study of the period of repetitive babbling in one Dutch infant is reported. Repetitive babbling is seen as a systematic and continuous process, during which the child is applying certain strategies in order to form concepts concerning the possibilities of his or her articulatory apparatus. Strategies identified are: (1) variation…

This master's thesis reports results of a study that: (1) developed, used, and validated a classification instrument of Piagetian developmental levels of high school science students (N=16); (2) determined the effects of traditional and Piagetian-based instruction of two formal topics, the mole concept and atomic theory, on students not classified…

Comprehension of metaphor was examined in 36 children ranging in age from 55 months to 186 months. The subjects were audiotaped while answering questions about a target sentence that was contextually anomalous. Five pictures were drawn to accompany each story, two relating to the literal meaning of the target sentence, two to the metaphoric…

Competence in action perception seems to be achieved very early in life. Because research has indicated that competent perceivers of action must be able to discriminate breakpoints in behavior, then recognition memory for breakpoints should be superior to that for nonbreakpoints at all ages where competence in action perception exists. Two studies…

A study was conducted to determine the role of story grammar in children's ability to detect misplaced information in simple narratives. The subjects, 27 second grade and 25 fifth grade students, each read six stories that had been developed for the study. The stories were one-episode narratives comprised of six grammatical categories with two…

The paper examines the theoretical constructs that underlie currently used curricula for young handicapped children and suggests guidelines for selecting and evaluating curricula. Three developmental perspectives are reviewed: the age related developmental milestones identified by A. Gesell and adhered to by diagnostic prescriptive advocates, the…

This study explored the relationship between children's sense of justice for a criminal offender and their cognitive level. Subjects were 60 children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of the following developmental or cognitive levels: preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each child was individually pretested for cognitive…

This annotated bibliography concerns the styles and strategies used to cope with stressful situations and to adapt to pathological conditions, and provides mental health researchers and practitioners with recent, relevant mental health information on theoretical, developmental, clinical, behavioral, and social issues about coping and adaptation.…

This study examined how well adults can make inferences about children's cognitive abilities. Subjects (n=60) were four groups of adults: female parents, female nonparents, male parents, and male nonparents. They were shown the typical method of administering 13 Piagetian tasks, ranging from object permanence to the formal-operational pendulum…

A study of the responses made to problems selected from Raven's Progressive Matrices showed differences in the kinds of errors typically made by eighteen-year-old students. Nine problems were used and the 68 subjects were told to draw their answers on the answer sheets. There were two trials per puzzle. A classification system, devised for errors,…

The focus article in this newsletter contains a discussion of the theory of reading as a thinking process and offers practical suggestions for implementing instruction in teaching reading as a thinking process. The section on theory is based on observations of the reading process as perceived by psycholinguists such as Frank Smith and Kenneth…

In this study, six children were selected by age and were administered Piagetian tasks designed to measure their level of cognitive development against the hierarchical structuring of age/achievement posited by Jean Piaget. The task administrations are presented in detail with descriptions of the subject and the tasks, a verbatim report, and the…