This study investigated the relationship between the attainment of a Piagetian formal operational concept (proportion) and personal characteristics in 117 children 10 to 12 years old. (SB)

Includes a dandelion poem that is designed to stimulate elementary students' creativity and abstract-thinking skills. Offers several exercises to go with the poem: creating mental pictures, drawing first images, and performing for better understanding. A reproducible for creating a dandelion-shaped poem is included. (SM)

Interviews 120 children in kindergarten and grades 2, 4, and 6 with five Piagetian tasks to determine the grade level at which most have constructed transitive reasoning, unit iteration, and conservation of speed. Indicates that construction of the logic necessary to make sense of the measurement of time is generally not complete before sixth…

Learning-disabled and average learners (N=52) in grades 2, 4, and 6 were asked to tell the meanings of 12 proverbs. Only at the sixth grade level was a moderately significant difference in metaphoric comprehension found. (Author/DB)

Tests semantic integration and frequency tally models of memory among 60 first-, third-, and fifth-grade children. Data from third and fifth graders show different patterns of results for regular and anomalous stories. The true-inference error rate was significantly greater than the error rates for false premise and false-inference sentences in…

Studies 6- to 8-year olds' responses to sliced task, standard and choices were discontinuous quantities, and non-sliced task, standard was continuous and choices were discontinuous quantities in order to discover whether children use half boundary in ratio comparisons between continuous and discontinuous quantities. Reveals that "dhalf" plays a…

Presents a study in which some students in grades 3-6 were taught scientific concepts using instructional analogies while others received expository texts not containing analogies. Indicates that students who received the analogical text demonstrated better inferential reasoning than students who received the non-analogical text. (Contains 57…

The WISC, Piagetian logico-mathematical and representational space tasks, the Frostig DTVP and a motor ability test were administered to elementary children at 3 age and arithmetic achievement levels to determine whether specific patterns of cognitive and/or spatial development were related to arithmetic achievement and whether patterns varied…

Evaluation of classification skills of 88 unimpaired children (grades K, 2, 4, and 6) were evaluated using the Iconic-Symbolic test (IS) of the Muma Assessment Program and follow-up interviews. Results found little relationship between the rationales the children reported using and the classification criteria presumed by the IS procedure. (DB)

The performance of third- and fifth-grade good and poor readers was compared. Results indicated that while there were no significant differences in literal comprehension, there were significant differences between the groups on both the metaphor comprehension task and the metaphor-related language tasks. Metacognitive and instructional…

Examines the relation between children's (1) probability learning performance and a measure of their memory for items presented in a sequence and (2) probability learning and performance on a test of abstractive integration. Participating were 80 six- and seven-year-old boys and girls from both low and middle socioeconomic classes. (Author/RH)

All instruction, including social studies, should be concerned with developing both halves of the brain rather than continuing to place emphasis only on those functions which reside in the left cerebral hemisphere. When presented with a social studies problem, students can view it in two ways--logically and intuitively. (RM)

Demonstrates that even very young children are capable of abstract thought and expressions of their own spirituality, and argues that spirituality can and should be a part of the educational curriculum. The author suggests that spirituality in education, if nurtured, enhances the educational experience and helps the child fully develop as a human…

Describes the mathematical processes that occur during problem solving, reasoning, and communication. Provides examples from mathematics education research with preschoolers. (ASK)

Four studies examined the cognitive bases of children's judgments of morality. Over 240 children from preschool to fourth grade were participants. Moral dilemmas consisting of information about a character's motives and the consequences of his actions were devised in such a way that the order, concreteness and imageability of information were…