Studied changes in prejudice toward blacks and Native Indians among white children between ages six and nine. Found that older children were less prejudiced than younger children. Favorable-white and unfavorable-black evaluations did not decline with age, but unfavorable-white and favorable-black evaluations increased with age, and counter-bias…

Three experiments using university students explored what constitutes an event and what determines its boundaries. Results supported the hypothesis that sequences of stimuli repeating in different contexts are cut out to become cognitive entities ("things" with a beginning and an end) in their own right. Results suggest that the…

Discusses a questionnaire designed to measure parents' perceptions of their child's developmental and academic histories, classroom learning characteristics, and previous foreign language learning. Results suggest parents' perceptions may provide helpful screening information to foreign language teachers. (51 references) (Author/CK)

Pragmatic and semantic problem solving are examined as processes that enhance acquisition of mathematical knowledge. It is suggested that development of mathematical cognition involves restructuring and that math teachers can help restructure children's knowledge systems by providing them with situations in which semantic and pragmatic problem…

Reviews six books on child cognitive and emotional development. The books address the following topics: the assessment of cognitive competence; children's theories of mind; early grammatical development; the psychological consequences of parental belief systems for children; the role of culture in human development; and perspectives from…

Explored the environment for literacy in day-care centers, its relationship with traditional measures of day-care quality, and its influence on children's cognitive and language development. Observations in 30 community-based day-care classrooms revealed relatively impoverished literacy environments. Found that both day-care quality and…

Investigated the effect of using gender as a functional category in elementary school students' gender stereotyping. Results support the idea that the functional use of gender categories leads to increases in gender stereotyping, particularly among those children with less-advanced classification skills. Advanced classification skills proved to…

Developmental assumptions that are frequently regarded as constraints on elementary school science curricula are analyzed. The argument that elementary school children cannot function as experimentalists because they have not yet attained formal operational thought is not supported by the Piagetian or non-Piagetian research reviewed. (SLD)

Conservation and metaphor acquisition were studied in 35 hearing-impaired children (ages 6-19) using either cued speech or oral-aural communication. Significant positive relationships were found between conservation and metaphor in both communication modes, age and metaphor, and age and conservation. Neither conservation nor metaphor was related…

This article describes a problem-solving strategy unit to be used as a supplement to the regular mathematics curriculum at the primary level. Specific teaching steps and examples are given for three developmental stages of thinking: (1) concrete, (2) representational, and (3) abstract. (DB)

The intuitive simplicity of probability can be deceiving. Described is a dialogue that presents arguments for conflicting solutions to a seemingly simple problem determining the probability of having two boys in a two-child family knowing that one child is a boy. Solutions contain multiple arguments and representations. (MDH)

Great care must be taken when making the jump from the finite to the infinite. The concept of infinity is explored through a series of examples from infinite sequences, presenting potential contradictions that could occur from a natural extension of finding the fraction form of a repeating decimal. (MDH)

Teaching the concept of integration differs depending on which of four perspectives is used to introduce the topic. Presents a method based on the historical development of the use of integration that introduces integral as antiderivative. Discusses examples of differential equations used in the development and ways to connect this to the other…

Discussed is the idea that energy is the cause of change. This idea, going back to early cognitive development, means that the teaching of energy needs to confront how, thermodynamically, people can perform actions. The change in energy caused by differences is emphasized. (KR)

Presents a developmental approach to educating school-age children about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome/human immunodeficiency virus (AIDS/HIV). The paper describes, for three age groups, general characteristics of children's thought processes, ways in which they assimilate information about aspects of AIDS, and implications for educating…