Piaget's theory of cognitive developmental levels is criticized on the grounds that it blends empirical and philosophical issues of knowledge and, therefore, confuses genetic psychology and epistemology. (JN)

Discusses the nature of wisdom and its function in the developmental process and how it differs from cognitive ability. Compares these two constructs with respect to the domains of behavior they represent, the operational tasks used to assess them, and the relationship of logic and time in their development. (Author)

This research study shows that it is possible to advance the use of proportional reasoning of many secondary school students by means of a well-designed teaching program. (MP)

All of the children were presented conservation of liquid and weight problems and 12 metaphor items. The results suggest that hearing loss did not affect the solution of either conservation or metaphor. (Author)

Canadian children follow an apparent sequence in the development of a concept of nationality from a verbal level of understanding of geographical relationships (beginning about age six), to an ability to demonstrate spatial relationships, then to an understanding of one's nationality, at about age 10. There are important educational implications.…

Children follow a Piagetian cognitive-developmental sequence in their ability to understand age concepts, as shown by the association between responses on the Concept of Age instrument and level of reasoning on conservation tasks. Education in aging must consider the reasoning patterns of children of various ages. (Author)

Reports that spatial ability was unrelated to formal reasoning task performance. Notes that sex differences occurred with balance tasks and pendulum tasks, suggesting male superiority at manifesting proportionality and isolating variables. (Author/RL)

Twenty-seven suicidal, aggressive, or normal children (ages 10 to 12) were administered the subtest of similarities from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, a questionnaire to assess the concept of death, and a questionnaire to assess the concept of life. Results favor assumption that distortions in the death concept are specific and,…

Presents a brief overview of research and developments in the study of formal operations thought since 1972 along with some speculations concerning future research directions. (Author/MP)

A total of eighty 9-month-old infants were presented with a problem consisting of several different conditions which separated response, position on a table, and absolute spatial position as factors leading to errors in search for hidden objects. (MS)

Three experiments investigated children's typical errors in judging the truth of universally quantified conditional sentences containing "P and not-Q." The error survived on sentences referring to particular things. For second- and fifth-graders, the error survived for nonuniversally quantified conditionals, and for second-graders, the…

Studied children's grasp of make-believe transformations they had seen enacted. Children indicated the pretend outcome by choosing a picture depicting no change or a picture depicting the pretend change. Older children chose correctly, even with the addition of a picture of an irrelevant transformation, but younger children did not. Autistic…

Three- and four-year olds were asked to recall their own or another person's actions and to acknowledge the false belief upon which the action was based. They showed excellent recall of inappropriate actions based on a false belief, but failed to use the recalled action as a clue to acknowledge the false belief upon which it was based. (TJQ)

Comments on the articles presented in this issue devoted to the Japanese perspectives on conceptual change. Discusses the overall conveyed message: The human cognitive system is a thematically organized knowledge base with agentive causality as the main mechanism for explain phenomena and analogy as the main mechanism for promoting conceptual…