This paper discusses the role of language in early childhood education. The concept of Chomsky's generative grammar is explained briefly and the linguistic approaches of Piaget, Vygotsky and Whorf are compared with regard to the relations between cognitive structures and inner linguistic structures. An enigmatic discussion of language acquisition…

This paper deals with one view of cognitive social learning and its applications to the psychological analysis of moral competence and moral conduct. The concept of cognitive and behavioral construction competencies is explained and cognitive competencies are said to be among the very best predictors of "honesty" in conduct. Moral…

This study examined the extent to which situational context differentially influences components of play. Two groups of play variables were distinguished: (1) style variables, (reflecting the overall tempo and diversity of play) and viewed as relatively sensitive indicators of short term reactions of situations; and (2) structural variables,…

The two studies reported here examined processes involved in learning and remembering sentences. Experiment one identified processes in sentence acquisition, and experiment two analyzed memory for sentences one week after initial learning. Subjects for the experiments were students in a college educational psychology class. The experiments…

Sixteen research reports related to mathematics education are abstracted and analyzed. The reports abstracted were selected from five educational journals, four psychological journals, a mathematics journal, and a book of readings. Eight of the articles are related to logical thinking, inference, proof, and problem solving. Three reports deal with…

Investigated, within a Piagetian framework, was the degree of abstract preferences exhibited by five different grade levels of science students as they completed eighteen problem solving tasks. Three hundred twenty-nine randomly selected students from five grade levels, ranging from eighth grade to college seniors, were given the Shipley Test of…

Piaget and Inhelder, in The Child's Conception of Space (1956), described the coordination of viewpoints (CV) spatial operation as one of the prerequisites to the development of the rotation and development (RD) spatial operation. This study investigated this developmental dependency notion and also evaluated the effects of age and sex on the…

This study attempted to determine if 3-year-old low socioeconomic status children possessed a generalizable concept of circle/round, and examined two methods of teaching to those children who did not already possess it. Twenty 3-year-old children were first presented with training sets consisting of 12 pairs of stimuli: six pairs of objects…

This report presents data developed for testing the theory that there are social processes which result in differing cognitive styles for subdominant and dominant social groups. The results of surveys of black and white persons in an urban area, of white rural farmers, and Hopi Indians are presented. The research attempts to integrate data and…

Longitudinal support was obtained for a positive relationship between cognitive and social development. From a large sample of kindergarteners, three groups of 12 children of comparable age and IQ were selected as displaying substantial, moderate, or no mastery of Piagetian concrete operations. From kindergarten through second grade, the social…

In this paper two questions are raised: (1) Is there any meaning to current research? (2) Is meaning important to the language acquisition process? It is necessary to explore the nature of research in general to evaluate what kind of research we are doing. This leads us to consider next the content of research on human learning and on the…

This study contrasted the science-related cognitive skill attainment of children experiencing high and low individualized science programs. Teachers involved in the study were classified as high-individualized or low-individualized according to the degree of individualized instruction they practiced as measured by the Instructional Practices…

An explanation of the child's mind and his language, stated in terms of the nature of the learner, is presented in this book. The authors ask teachers to think about the competence of the child and try to discover what he must know to be able to read. They ask teachers to examine the nature of the learner--what he knows that enables him to learn…

The main purpose of this study was the exploration of the relationship between first graders' performance on traditional readiness measures and their performance on an instrument based on Piagetian tasks. All correlations among the predictive indices considered were significant (p less than .01), as were the correlations of these measures with…

The purpose of the monograph was to determine if the process of science or the content of science should be emphasized in elementary school science teaching. The discussion attempts to show why process, and not content, should be the primary emphasis in elementary school science teaching by examining the history of elementary school science in the…