This study tests the hypothesis that components of play such as immagination contribute to cognitive development. Twenty-four middle-class children attending a university-affiliated preschool were observed for 20 one-minute play observations during the Spring Semesters of 1978 and 1979. Play was coded using categories for both social (solitary,…

This paper discusses research on how concepts differ in their internal organization and how these differences interact with and affect cognitive processing in children. Two types of natural concepts are focused on: classes (nouns with class-inclusion organization, such as "trees,""students,""soldiers" and collections…

This test contains 16 problems which yield a measure of the development of the concept of conservation in elementary school students. Each problem depicts a set of objects on which some transformation has been effected. The child then must make a decision about whether any changes have occurred in regard to specific characteristics of the object.…

Two studies examined how nonconservers use the dimensions relevant to quantity in the conservation of substance task. Most nonconservers are very selective in their use of the information provided by these dimensions. Most preschool and kindergarten nonconservers used length to define amount, while ignoring width. This was true regardless of how…

One major purpose of this investigation was to determine and compare the effects of three different perceptual situations (screening, neutral, and conflict) on kindergarten and first grade children's ability to use the transitive property of the equivalence relation "same length as" and the two order relations "longer than" and…

Studied were eight sections of kindergarten children taught by four teachers in the Glenwood Public School, Ada, Oklahoma. Four experimental sections used the SCIS Material Objects elementary school science activities during the 1969-70 school year. Four control sections participated in other non-structured and less sequential science activities.…

Neurological immaturity, cognitive stages or lack of readiness may be erroneously inferred from young children's task performance. An alternative hypothesis suggests that an inadequate analysis of the criterion task may, in fact, account for children's inability to perform successfully. To support this thesis, investigators examined the four-part…

The text of the Final Act of the International Conference on the Conservation of Wetlands and Waterfowl is presented in this pamphlet. The conference was convened by the Government of Iran at Ramsar, Iran, January 30 to February 3, 1971, to promote international collaboration in this field. It was sponsored by the International Wildfowl Research…

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that category recall is related to the quantity conservation of mass, weight, and volume. The predicted association between conservation level and category recall was observed. (JMB)

A group of 31 institutionalized retarded adolescents responded to 18 conservation of number tasks. (Author)

This study investigated whether 4- and 5-year-old children can evoke and use kinetic imagery and whether the ability to use kinetic imagery depends on the attainment of concrete operations. Results yielded no evidence of association between kinetic imagery and conservation. (Author/JMB)

Reports four experiments focusing on Piaget's claims that conservation and transitivity concepts are experienced as logically necessary truths. Two experiments examined feelings of certainty and necessity in college students presented with Piagetian tasks. Two other experiments extended these procedures to children and the issue of developmental…

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Educational and Industrial Testing Service Concept Assessment Kit-Conservation (EITS Kit). Presented are an overview of the concept of conservation, a description of the EITS Kit, and results of the study. (MT)

Children 3.5 to 5.5 years of age who were unable to conserve length with Piaget's classical task did conserve length with parallel nonverbal tasks. Findings suggest that "preoperational" children apparently do not fail to conserve length because of centration, misleading perceptual information, or immature cognitive operations regarding…