Three paper-and-pencil formal operations tests were administered to groups of eighth graders and adults. These measures provided scores that indicated each subject's level of reasoning for three second-order operations: combinations, proportionality, and propositional logic. (JMB)

Two experiments compared the cognitive maps (mental representations of the spatial environment) of first graders, fifth graders and college students, and investigated developmental changes in the ability to manipulate cognitive maps mentally. In the first experiment, subjects were asked to move from stationpoint to stationpoint and at each, to…

Tested with adolescents and adults two predictions from Markovits and Barrouillet's developmental model of conditional reasoning related to the effects of the association between antecedent and consequent terms and the formulation of the minor premise on uncertainty responses. Found results consistent with hypotheses and indicating importance of…

This paper reports two experimental studies of the development of time, speed and distance concepts in children. In Experiment I subjects (12 in each of four age groups: 5-, 8-, 11-year-olds, and adults) were asked to judge which of two electric trains on parallel tracks went faster, for the longer distance, or for more time. Subject's knowledge…

Interactions between metaphor comprehension and level of operational thought were examined to determine what advantages individuals at the formal operational level had in natural language tasks such as the understanding of figurative language. After 30 undergraduate students were classified as either late concrete, early formal, or late formal…

This paper presents a cross-sectional investigation of adolescents' and young adults' reflective epistemological development. Three groups of 8 subjects (4 male and female) ages 10, 14, and 18 were given Piagetian tasks, the Kohlberg moral judgment questionnaire, and an epistemology interview covering such concepts as knowledge, thought, feeling,…

This study had two purposes: (1) to determine when children distinguish ambiguous from precise messages and when they can resolve ambiguity through additional questioning, and (2) to identify whether implicit messages were more difficult to identify than explicit ones. All children found ambiguous messages significantly more difficult to…

Interview data on the learning experiences and techniques of 90 Swedish teenagers and adults were further analyzed to explore changes in views on learning reported by the subjects themselves, and differences between subjects with respect to age (range 15-73) and formal education (range 6-17 years). Some subjects equated knowledge with discrete…

Compared the use of conditional logic in adult-adult and adult-child conversation. Results indicated that conversation patterns and inferences were similar except that children made fewer independent inferences and shifts in taxonomic level and responded more frequently to socially controlling statements than did adults. (AA)