The purposes of this study include: (1) determining whether socioeconomic status (SES) or verbal ability (VA) exerts greater influence on childrens' performance of Piagetian tasks; (2) devising an instrument for measuring childrens' level of cognitive development which does not depend on verbal ability alone; and (3) adapting materials for teacher…

Prior attitude intensity involvement and salience, along with prior source competence, sociability, composure, extroversion, and character can be used as predictors of recall, of perception of the source's attitude, and of perception of the attitude revealed in the message. The relationship of prior attitudes and credibility to comprehension and…

The author examines the effectiveness of the Inquiry Strategy method which he hypothesizes to be useful in developing an analytical cognitive style. Ninety-two subjects from four, large urban high schools were involved. Forty-two were experimental, having received 2-3 years of Inquiry Strategy exposure in their late elementary or early junior high…

EIGHTEEN PAPERS WERE PRESENTED AT A CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY EDUCATIONAL STIMULATION. ALL DEALT WITH EARLY AND CONTINUOUS INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION OF CHILDREN, AGES 3 THROUGH 12. THE PAPERS INCLUDED WERE--(1) INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS, (2) COGNITIVE STRUCTURE AND EARLY LEARNING, (3) OBSERVATIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR APPRAISING…

This study examined adult-child interaction during story readings, specifically the complexity and richness of extra-script dialogue as a function of how familiar the child and adult reader have become with a particular story through repeated readings. Subjects were approximately 50 children, ages 3 to 6 years. Two-minute segments were selected…

The cognitive levels of 60 children from grades one, three, and five were compared with their linguistic performance on selected examples of similes and metaphors. Cognitive level was measured using Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices; a new instrument was developed to assess children's linguistic performance. Results indicated a significant…

This research on the development of moral thinking discusses the degree of moral readiness required for the comprehension of Biblical material by children. A review of the work of Dr. R. Goldman on the growth of children's religious concepts is provided. (Author/DB)

Designs a testing situation to examine the presence of combinatorial analysis, to establish construct validity in the use of an instrument, Combinatorial Analysis Behavior Observation Scheme (CABOS), and to investigate the presence of the schema in young adolescents. (Author/GA)

A phenomenon called "pragmatic variation" is discussed as a child's individual system of behavior in response to a question the child doesn't understand but realizes that he must verbalize an answer to. (NCR)

In testing kindergartners and first graders in their comprehension of the words "before" and "after," it was found that when temporal terms are acquired, they are first used as prepositions and then as subordinating conjunctions. (Author/NCR)

Preschool children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers "very" and "sort of" was experimentally investigated in 64 children. (Author/NCR)

This experiment used two groups of preschoolers and one group of young grade-schoolers to test for their comprehension of presuppositions and negation in complex syntax. (NCR)

Two hypotheses are proposed: second language learning enhances various intellectual skills, especially those related to intellectual flexibility, dexterity, and adaptability; and second language learning can help to develop interadaptability; personal understanding. (SW)

When the descriptive interpretations that sixth and eighth graders provided for metaphors selected from fifth-grade readers were examined in a Piagetian framework, the poorest interpretations showed characteristics of concrete and pre-operational thought, while the best interpretations showed characteristics of formal operational thought. (RL)