Two studies examined short- and long-term effects of phonological awareness training on reading and spelling of German kindergartners. Found no long-term effects on reading and spelling skills beyond first year of elementary school. Determined that training affected phonological awareness skills but not phonological processing, letter knowledge,…

Used path analysis in two experiments to examine possibility that age difference in infants' long-term retention were artifacts of correlated differences in learning rates or learning opportunities. Found that developmental declines in forgetting rates between 12 and 18 months were independent of developmental differences in learning. Age…

Uses results of laboratory and natural language analyses of 2- to 4-year olds' explanations of human behavior to argue for a theory-type view of biological, psychological, and physical domains of thought. Concludes that children as young as 2 years show three different reasoning systems in their explanations of everyday phenomena, especially human…

Examined reasoning in normal, autistic, and deaf individuals. Found that deaf individuals who grow up in hearing homes without fluent signers show selective impairments in theory of mind similar to those of autistic individuals. Results suggest that conversational differences in the language children hear accounts for distinctive patterns of…

Elementary school children were interviewed about how gears move on a gearboard and how they work in commonplace machines. Children's reasoning became more general, formal, and mathematical as problem complexity increased, suggesting that mathematical forms of reason may develop when they provide a clear advantage over simple causal…

Analysis of 10 nursing doctoral students' written vignettes and sharing of residency experiences showed four phases of progression: anxiety, disillusionment, acceptance of diversity, and integration. Use of mentoring and critical reflection facilitated their cognitive development. (SK)

Teachers at Mililani Mauka Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii are using technology to encourage higher-order thinking with a model of effective thinking developed at Harvard University (Massachusetts): being broad and adventurous, sustaining intellectual curiosity, clarifying and seeking understanding, planning strategically, being…

Investigates the possibilities of self-reflection for the teaching profession by relating the problem the philosophy of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Edmund Husserl. Explains that in philosophy reflection has always played a major role, while it has not always had a major role in education. Concludes that it is possible to learn from mistakes…

Examined parental speech data demonstrating that linguistic input to children does not contain sufficient information to support unaided learning of the pronoun "one." Examined 18-month-olds' interpretation of sentences with a "one" substitution. Found that 18-month-olds have command of the syntax of "one." Because…

In a study of 66 in-utero drug exposed (IUDE) infants, evaluated infant cognitive status, caregiver-infant interaction, and caregiver cognitive functioning (IQ) to determine which caregiver variables were associated with infant cognitive status. Analysis indicated that caregiver IQ was the only statistically significant coefficient in the model…

Describes a study of the influence of the Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) program on the scientific creativity of secondary school students. Scientific creativity is measured by the Scientific Creativity Test for Secondary School Students. Results indicate that the program did promote the overall development of scientific…

Two studies examined progression in children's and adults' ability to monitor attempts to recall event details and the dependence of metamemory on question format. Only with an unbiased question format did subjects give higher confidence ratings after correct than after incorrect answers. When interviews contained misleading questions, children…

Discusses conception of moral formation. Traces progress to moral maturity through well defined stages of cognitive, conative, and/or affective growth. Explains that logical status of developmental theories are not clear. Argues that the accounts are more evaluative than descriptive. Explores the problematic moral educational implications of this…

Four studies examined 10- to 18-month-old infants' ability to detect and encode correlations among features in a motion event. Findings indicated that the youngest infants process static features in an event independently but do not process correlations among dynamic features; the oldest detect correlations between all three features when the…

Explains a strategy called "What Do I 'S'ee? What Do I 'T'hink? What Do I 'W'onder?" (STW) which helps students look carefully at pictures in storybooks and think about a story's character, setting, and events. Notes that the STW strategy provides opportunities for students with varying reading abilities and diverse experiences to work together…