Analyzed is the Piagetian concept of cognitive structure (concerning an individual's thought organization) and noted is the lack of precise psychological definition. Reviewed are deficiencies in Piaget's theories relating to developmental stages of the cognitive structure. Elements of the cognitive structure are defined; five basic assumptions are…

The relationship of infant mental development (Bayley Mental Scale, eight months) to four year Binet IQ was explored in the context of the study sample's neurological and socioeconomic characteristics for a sample of 536 full-term children. The Minnesota sample was approximately normal or average in terms of infant mental scores, infant…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of the variables of intelligence, creativity, and a language component in preschool disadvantaged Negro children. Major hypotheses were: (1) that the specific components of each variable had higher correlations within each variable than between variables; and (2) that each major loaded on a…

Examined were the cognitive preferences of sixth grade students in relationship both to student involvement in a program utilizing Elementary Science Study Materials and to the teaching strategies employed by the teachers. Two-hundred twenty-six students of eleven teachers, who had taken part in summer workshops to gain experience in using ESS…

This account of a new approach to social studies curriculum takes the form of an introductory statement on the model curriculum which is being developed in the Contra Costa County Schools of California. Three levels of knowledge are distinguished: (1) concepts, (2) significant ideas, (3) specific facts, with the students progressing from 3 to 1.…

The Committee on the Student in Higher Education conducted an 18-month study of various social and psychological influences that shape student attitudes, interests, and activities, and presents several recommendations that it believes could improve the quality of higher education. The report is based on the assumption that the college is a major…

In 1966, Powel Elementary School initiated an ungraded system to discover if this program would meet the needs of its students and community. In 1967-68, an evaluation of this ungraded program was made to determine if the reading and arithmetic performance levels of the students at Powel were higher than those of a matched graded school. An…

The concern here is with kinds of cognitive structures individuals use in making major life choices upon which subsequent development depends. The system conceptualized for describing these psychological processes, pictures each choice domain (such as occupations) as a set of concentric squares. The outermost square deals with total knowledge of…

Conditional logic, as interpreted in this paper, means deductive logic characterized by "if-then" statements. This study sought to investigate the knowledge of conditional logic possessed by primary children and to test their readiness to learn such concepts. Ninety students were designated the experimental group and participated in a…

It was hypothesized that the acquisition of conservation behavior would be facilitated when stimuli were more concrete than abstract. Eighty white second graders were randomly assigned to four groups and presented with three conservation-of-weight problems. Clay balls and the conservation transformations were either shown, demonstrated, and…

The development of thinking is accepted as the most comprehensive aim of American education. A prominent means of stimulating pupils' thinking in the classroom is the effective use of questions. To design a good question, the teacher should begin by analyzing the type of thinking to be fostered and settle on the type of task to initiate such…

The child's ability to identify numerousness as a property of a set, distinct from all the other properties of that set, may be a prerequisite to conservation of numerousness of sets. To test this theory, 11 lessons designed to develop the ability to identify properties of objects and of sets of objects and to represent length and numerousness…

Conservation of a property is the ability to recognize that the property in question hasn't altered, even though other properties have been varied. It is Piaget's view, confirmed by empirical evidence that children are not able to conserve length until age 7 or 8. Recent concern over confounding variables led to the present study in which the…

The OST is a technique quite different from anything reported elsewhere in the literature. The model underlying OST work assumes that an individual's intellect, at any given point in time, is the set of all information he has at his disposal at that point in time. The set of concepts an individual has at any point in time may radically change over…

This paper discusses questioning patterns that can be used by teachers to facilitate cognitive development in reading instruction. The questioning patterns suggested are intended to include the kinds of questions used on worksheets, tests, and in class projects. The opinions of various authors who stress the importance of teacher questioning…