Researchers studied the effect of cognitive conflict between peers in a collaborative problem-solving task in which the relationship between participants could not be described as "expert-novice" and in which development was potentially possible for all. A total of 156 subjects between 5 and 9 years of age, inclusive, participated in the…

Preschool children were trained to acquire transitivity, conservation, and class inclusion of length via feedback to their judgments. Feedback was found to facilitate the learning of all three concepts. (ST)

The aim was to determine whether logical concepts acquired in one language could be transferred to another language. (Author)

Kindergarten and first-grade children participated in a study of the role of reciprocal and inversion reversibility in language acquisition and cognitive development. Subjects completed cognitive tasks assessing conservation, seriation, and class inclusion, and language tasks assessing the active-passive transformation and the negative…

Derives Kepler's three laws of planetary motion algebraically from conservation principles without introducing Newton's law of force explicitly. This procedure can be presented to students who have had no more than high school algebra. (Author)

Sinclair-de Zwart's findings on relationships between cognitive and linguistic development were compared with data gathered in Australia from 162 first-, second-, and third-grade Greek-English bilinguals (tested in both languages) and 136 English monoglots in the same classroom. (Author/CS)

Research supported by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity grant 1492.

This experimental study investigated (1) the effects of cognitive dissonance on the acquisition of conservation by field dependent (FD) and field independent (FI) elementary school students, and (2) the relationship between cognitive style and cognitive development. In the first phase of the experiment 248 students from kindergarten through third…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between 64 six- and seven-year-old children's perception of the reality of television and the Piagetian construct of cognitive development. The children were asked to view two television episodes (a highly similar, closely matched pair from the television series "Star Trek")…

Several studies have shown that the elderly do not perform well on the Piagetian problems of logical thinking; the present set of studies aimed at demonstrating that the elderly maintain the competence to solve such problems. The first study performed by the authors assessed performance of 60 noninstitutionalized middle-class elderly females on…

Piaget's theory of cognitive development is explained, especially in relation to the teaching of elementary school science. Several research projects involving Piaget's theories are reviewed. (MLH)

A total of 100 second graders were pretested for conservation of length and weight. Fifty pairs were then formed, each pair consisting of one conserver and one nonconserver. During the second session, the children attempted to resolve their opposed answers on the conservation tasks and on two control questions as well. On both length and weight,…

A total of 72 kindergarteners received eight conservation of number trials which varied in the degree of perceptual support for one-to-one correspondence (four levels) and type of stimuli (toy animals or corks). A between-subjects variable was the method of presentation (standard conservation presentation, a partially fixed array, or a fixed…

This study was designed to assess the effects of teaching the concept of interior volume, and methods of computing this volume, on the ability of fith-grade students to conserve volume. Conservation of volume was measured by an instrument developed by Lovell and Ogilvie. Instruction was in a mode compatible with the majority of elementary…

This paper examines recent research for differences on rate of conservation achievement between the subcultures: (1) rural vs. urban-suburban, (2) white vs. black, (3) subculture of poverty vs. middle class WASP, and (4) lower vs. middle socioeconomic status. The author concluded from his examination of research that: (1) among middle-class whites…