To assess the mental abilities of mentally retarded children, 100 tests were tried out on more than 350 German Ss and the TBGB ("Test-batterie fur geistig behinderte Kinder"Test battery for mentally retarded children") was developed. (SW)

Human languages can incorporate signs without obvious physical relationship to their referents. The nature of the relationship between sign (i.e., word or sign) and referent in signed and spoken languages is discussed from cognitive and historical research perspectives, and observations are given on the biological bases of this phenomenon.…

Second and third graders' competence to integrate knowledge of their ability and effort, as they would function in the child's success on a reading task, was examined in terms of the constraints of the stages of the Genevan operativity model. (Author/PN)

Discusses Piaget's notion of intelligence, characteristics of formal operational thought, and the relationship between formal thought and reading ability. (HOD)

Examines the spontaneous language of deaf children without forcing the analysis to fit the features of a spoken language system. Suggests linguistic competence of deaf children is commensurate with their cognitive age and is not adequately described by the standard spoken English language tests. (EKN)

Examines the communicative functions served by the lexical usage of normal and language impaired children whose speech was limited to single word utterances. (EKN)

A review of work related to the topological primacy thesis and a critique of some aspects of it are presented. On the basis of the psychological research, it is concluded that topological concepts ought to be taught. (MP)

Two studies dealing with length conservation and measurement indicate that caution needs to be used when one looks at and makes claims about children's cognitive ability and development with regard to conservation. (MP)

Proposes a model for attitude change that accounts for attitude stability in normal life, as well as the possibility of attitude change brought about experimentally, and which also attempts to account for the variable ease of attitude modification. (CS)

A study was done to examine whether certain observed play behaviors of young children might show relationships to scores of assessments of cognitive constructs. The investigation sought to determine the extent to which responses related to such behaviors as pretend play, sense of humor, acts of aggression, and talkativeness. (JN)

Presents a theoretical framework for viewing adolescent contraceptive usage. The problem-solving process is used for developmentally examining the competencies that must be present for effective contraceptive use, including: problem recognition, motivation, generation of alternatives, decision making and implementation. Each aspect is discussed…

Instruction using computers is viewed as different from most other approaches to education, by allowing more than right or wrong answers, by providing models for systematic procedures, by shifting the boundary between formal and concrete processes, and by influencing the development of thinking in many new ways. (MP)

Described the development and evaluation of a measure of cognitive belief systems and thinking styles. Reliability and validity results were poor for junior college students. For university and nonstudent populations, cognition scores discriminated social anxiety. The Cognition Scale of Assertiveness is a reliable and valid measure of cognitive…

Seven-year-olds compared successively presented oblique lines which varied as to their position within a square display and their relation to the diagonal axis of the display. Children apparently encoded lines in terms of position and axis features. They used a categorical spatial representational system to compare oblique lines. (Author/RD)

Examined six- and eight-year-old children's use of contextual expectations to detect inconsistencies in story information and their ability to discriminate between information that resolved or was irrelevant to these inconsistencies. Results showed that six-year-olds frequently detected inconsistent events but that they failed to discriminate…