This study used a sample of 3- and 4-year-old children of female respondents from the 1986 National Longitudinal Surveys Youth Cohort to analyze the relationship between maternal labor supply and children's cognitive development. Respondents were 21 to 29 years old in 1986. Thus, the sample consisted of children of relatively young mothers.…

Two theoretical frameworks, which underlie education programs for young Limited-English-Proficient (LEP) children, are explored: cognitive/developmental and maturational/linguistic theories. The cognitive/developmental view supports the idea that intellectual and language growth and learning are action oriented and variable among young children…

This paper applies value-added analysis to study the cognitive development of disabled high school sophomores over the period 1980-1982, in order to determine whether staying in school yields any cognitive return for students with disabilities and to identify those school factors that influence the relationship between staying in school and…

Equivalent fractions are usually introduced in fourth grade and reviewed repeatedly in the subsequent grades as the four arithmetical operations are taught. In spite of this repeated instruction, the results are disappointing. This paper reviews some data from previous research documenting the difficulty of equivalent fractions, explains this…

The literature review considers characteristics of autism in three general areas of impairment: communication; cognition; and social behavior. Briefly noted are incidence and etiology facts. A variety of definitions are presented including a psychiatric definition, Leo Kanner's definition, and the definition of the Autism Study Committee of Iowa.…

This report aims to characterize, in greater detail, the delicate psychological processes children go through when facing two languages and two cultures. In doing so, it is suggested that bilingualism can play an important role in cognitive and linguistic growth. Data used in this study is taken from a larger study involving 30 Italian bilingual…

A series of experiments investigated 5- to 17-month-olds' comprehension of adults' direction of gaze and manual pointing behaviors. Findings indicated that a change in the adult's direction of gaze and orientation of head does not seem sufficient to enable the infant to reliably localize a referent when the infant must choose between pairs of…

Evidence from children's performance in a variety of tasks suggests a change in the kinds of similarities children notice and use. Children tend to focus on literal similarity and then shift to the use of common objects, followed by common relations between objects, and finally relations between relations. Research from a variety of different…

Investigations were made of the development of (1) children's abilities to produce and interpret requests with nuances, and (2) the ability to identify requests as being "bossy" or "nice." In the first study, the development of children's ability to produce bossy and nice requests and the linguistic means by which they do so…

An analysis of educational professionalism is presented within the framework of sociology and class stratification. If a profession is defined as any area of human activity which requires some level of advanced skills or education to perform, there should be certain prerequisite conditions, such as the acquisition of necessary knowledge and…

Reported are results of three studies: (1) Hand Preference Consistency during Infancy and Preschool Years (K. Bathurst and A. W. Gottfried), (2) Asymmetry of Verbal Processing: Influence of Family Handedness (K. Bathurst and D. W. Kee), (3) Consistency of Hand Preference and Cognitive Development in Young Children (K. Bathurst and A. W.…

Developmental patterns and interrelationships of various informal skills, reading and writing of numerals, and a range of base ten/place value concepts/skills were examined in a study involving 78 primary school children from four schools who were individually examined in a standardized interview. A total of 23 tasks were administered and…

Studies exploring the transition from early to middle adolescence have found a significant increase in formal-operational thinking, but it is questionable whether the typical adolescent is capable of consistently applying formal operational logic. To examine the relationship between Piagetian-based training techniques and formal-operational…

Suggests the United States is behind other nations in providing for its children's needs because of the forces of our economic system. This view is examined in the context of three problems: the depopulation of the family, the intellectualization of the child and the perpetuation of exclusion. (Author/ED)