This article describes the modifications that 12 early childhood educators in Japan made to the Sorry! board game to encourage kindergartners' logico-mathematical thinking. Logico-mathematical knowledge is described as including classification, seriation, numerical relationships, spatial relationships, and temporal relationships. Examples of seven…

Three studies investigated preschoolers' reasoning about ability. Findings suggested sensitivity to mental state information when judging another child's ability, and they perceived positive correlations between effort and academic success, and "niceness" and high academic ability. Comparisons with 9- to 10-year-olds suggest that…

Fifty-eight African American children (grades 4-6) responded to the Test of Core Knowledge, a divergent task that required free associations about mainstream and African American topics. Participants' knowledge of both mainstream and African American cultural items increased significantly between grades 4 and 5. (Contains references.) (CR)

Discusses the meaning and importance of sound as evidenced in film and music, and outlines the relevance of sound for cognitive and social development and personal growth. Suggests that teachers enable students to explore the meaning of sound by creating their own multimedia projects. (AEF)

Discusses the development of informal mathematics in young children, the problems with formal mathematics instruction, how the traditional approach fails to address mathematics learning disabilities, and how a developmental perspective can assist in the identification and treatment of students with mathematics learning disabilities. (CR)

Investigated children's' ability to detect and interpret another child's nonverbal, representational gestures. Found that in addition to being able to pick up general information such as affective or social information from nonverbal behavior, school-age children are also capable of abstracting specific information such as conceptual or…

Uses example of racism to compare Vygotsky's and Piaget's perspectives on the development of mind within the framework of questions regarding the mutual influence of societies and individuals. Notes that Vygotsky emphasizes knowledge transmission from older to younger, whereas Piaget emphasizes construction of new knowledge with potential for…

The cognitive demand in questions directed to Mexican-descent children by their mothers and fathers were analyzed for videotaped play situations involving gender-neutral, masculine-, or feminine-stereotyped toys. Mothers asked proportionately more conceptual questions than did fathers. Mothers' question asking was influenced by child gender,…

This longitudinal study examined the hypothesis that two different types of joint-attention skills were related to verbal and nonverbal IQ measures through middle childhood. Subjects were infants born preterm and tested at 13 months and at 8 years. Findings provide support for the hypothesis that the initiation of joint attention makes a unique…

Asserts that it is through play with materials and relationships, invention of classification systems, and solving problems in dialogue with others that young children develop the basic skills they will need to become effective contributors to the health of a changing world. Offers suggestions for teaching children play skills by providing…

The development of conceptions of academic ability was examined by comparing peer assessments made by preschoolers and children in grades 1-4. Findings from a team selection task showed that by fourth grade, children have acquired a clear conception of ability. Findings from a free classification task showed that academic skills did not factor…

Compared gestures of Chinese and American deaf children who had not been exposed to a usable conventional language model with speech of hearing children learning Mandarin or English. Found that deaf children conveyed central elements of motion events in their communications. Deaf American and Chinese children used gestures to express motion in…

Describes how preschool teachers guided 4-year-olds in a classroom project that integrated constructing with wire, drawing, and storytelling. Notes that children monitored and directed their work and responded to learning challenges. Shows how teachers supported learning of individual children as children began to influence each other's learning.…

Two experiments tested claim that transparency of Korean fraction names promotes fraction concepts. Findings indicated that U.S. and Korean first- and second-graders erred similarly on a fraction-identification task, by treating fractions as whole numbers. Korean children performed at chance when whole-number representation was included but…

Three experiments explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people were made by children and adults. Results indicated that children often predicted that people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological events. Older children…