ELEVEN GENERALIZATIONS FROM THE OUTCOMES OF STUDIES AND EXPERIMENTS CARRIED OUT BY THE SZOLD INSTITUTE OVER A PERIOD OF 2 YEARS WERE PRESENTED. THE FIRST NEGATED THE PREMISES OF A LIMITED POOL OF ABILITY AND OF THE STABILITY OF IQ. TABLES DEMONSTRATED THE POSSIBILITY OF RAISING THE IQ OF CULTURALLY DEPRIVED CHILDREN BY AN AVERAGE OF ABOUT 20…

This study investigates age differences in children's semantic expectations regarding causal relations in stories about three realistic goal situations (being friendly, getting a dog, and doing chores). Twenty children at each of three age levels (ages 6, 9, and 12) were asked to produce stories and answer probe questions about wanting and not…

Rather than being viewed as a reading skill, comprehension is viewed as inferring the task of the writer or as discerning the ends and means of a discourse. Inferring the writer's task is to reason backwards from the product to the questions with which he may have started. Discerning ends and means is to view what is described, argued, or…

The relationship between learning ability and intelligence has continually been a focus of theory and research. It is argued in this paper that the inconclusive results of studies relating individual differences variables such as intellectual abilities to learning are due to a too pragmatic, theoretical orientation. Theoretical models explicating…

The theories and practices of Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori are outlined in relation to the teaching of beginning reading. Parallels are drawn between the two authors' views of the nature of intelligence and of motivation, leading to the conclusion that there may be danger of overemphasizing reading at the expense of other areas of the…

Reduced intellectual performance in the elderly was conceptualized as an experiential dificit that can be reversed by training relevant component skills. Female elderly subjects (N=60) participated in three phases of the experiment: Training, Immediate Posttest, and Delayed Posttest. Training was geared at strengthening covert self-monitoring…

The article reviews some of the conditions that might counteract decline in the intellectual development of gifted children and adolescents. (DLS)

Reports two experiments to assess the usefulness of an alternative position to the "deficit hypothesis" and the "differences hypothesis," namely, that environmental/situational factors attenuate the performance of lower-class children, but that their competence, while genotypically equivalent to that of middle-class children,…

Analyzes the writing the author has done since he first began to write, and traces his writing development. (DD)

Administration of a placement task to 66 preschool and grade school children revealed that the concept of higher/lower was understood earlier than above/below, which in turn was understood earlier than rising/falling. Within each pair of terms, the one referring to upness was comprehended earlier. (Author/JMB)

A replication and extention of a previous study involved 61 children aged three to five, who were asked to carry out certain instructions. Results indicate that children do observe the distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns as it applies to quantity. (Author/RM)

In an investigation of comprehension strategies in young children, children in R. Brown's Stages I, II, and III responded to commands varying in length, grammaticality, and meaning. (SB)

A strong conservative current underlies much of what is currently said about authority in schooling. Educational authority should be rooted in the ideal of democratic social transformation, a function it cannot have when conceived of more narrowly in terms of institutional heirarchy and stability. (CB)