In order to determine the ability of children aged 3-8 years to reproduce patterns of different levels of complexity, 60 children were asked to reproduce checkerboard patterns at 3 levels of complexity, measured by code length as suggested by H. A. Simon. (Author/SB)

Forty preschoolers were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus and to discriminate the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young children. (Author/BS)

Two highly contrasting models of preschool education for mildly handicapped children were compared. Direct Instruction led to greater gains on the Test of Early Language Development and the Basic Language Concepts test. Mediated Learning led to greater gains on the McCarthy Verbal and Memory scales and Mean Length of Utterance measure. (Author/VW)

Social and cognitive values of different play materials for 21 normal and 21 handicapped preschool children were examined. Analyses showed that handicapped preschoolers exhibited comparable amounts of symbolic play but lower quality of symbolic play than that shown by nonhandicapped preschoolers. Symbolic play by handicapped children depended much…

Comparision of longitudinal mental test scores for 54 educationally treated disadvantaged preschoolers at high-risk for nonbiologically-based mild retardation and 53 control children revealed that educationally treated children significantly outscored controls on mental tests. Treated children consistently scored at the national average whereas…

Studies three- and four-year-olds' answers to "before,""after," and "when"questions referring to pictured event sequences having invariant or arbitary real-world temporal orders. Results indicated the development of the ability to coordinate lexical knowledge with cognitive demands associated with responding to…

Strategies young children used to correct errors in nesting seriated cups changed substantially with age, becoming increasingly more flexible and involving more extensive restructuring of the relationships among the cups. The same trend toward increasing flexibility of thought and action also appeared in procedures children used to combine the…

Describes aspects of mainstreaming a visually impaired three-year-old child into a Montessori preschool, discussing assessment of the child, sites available for enrollment, introduction into the site, Montessori teacher and special education teacher coordination, the child's adjustment, peer reactions, and teacher intervention. (RH)

Significant correlations were found between mean play scores obtained on each play scale and the developmental level of the children. Results indicated that the collateral relationship of play to mental development found in preschool-aged nonretarded children may also be seen in young mentally retarded children. (Author)

Chicano mothers were observed teaching their own five-year-old children. Field-independent mothers used inquiry and praise; field-dependent mothers used modeling. Trends suggest that the teaching strategies to which the child is exposed may influence which cognitive style the child develops. (Author/CP)

Discusses the development of a child's view of history to show that certain childhood attitudes, though later hidden, remain with people and influence their approach to history. (GT)

In Europe preschools are viewed as providers of both child care and early education. Preschool programs there are optional, universally available, and designed to further children's social and cognitive development. In the advanced industrialized world, only the U.S. and Great Britain are still debating differences between care and education.…

Examined Piaget's claim that young children have difficulties constructing common multiples because of an inability to abstract the number of actions performed to obtain a number of objects. Subjects were two groups of preschool children in sharing tasks. Results showed improvement in performance based on certain conditions, but the significance…

Presents evidence that human infants possess a mechanism for determining and representing small numbers of entities and procedures for operating on these representations to extract numerical relationships between them. Presents a model for this mechanism and discusses its relation to later numerical knowledge. Contains 42 references. (MKR)

Acquisition of the novel name-nameless category (N3C) principle by 22 toddlers with Down syndrome was studied. Results indicated that the ability to fast map a new word to a category is not available at the start of lexical acquisition. Children who used the N3C principle had larger productive vocabularies than others and had begun to acquire new…