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The article presents comments to the article "Elementary Science for a Changing World." In contrast to the previous article's concept about science talent, the author has argued that a science-talented child is a child who has received sufficient satisfaction from a certain kind of activity to participate in it more frequently and with more intensity than do most of the children in the same age group. Otherwise stated, he claimed that the provision of resources and direction of action are facilitated by the teacher, but the climax however is reached by the formation of a concept image as a result of the group dynamics. His emphasis on the role of parents in the child's acquisition of scientific knowledge concludes the article.

The article investigates the relationship between the perceptual preferences of elementary school children and their performance on pictorial model-based tests of selected science concepts. The concepts were selected from the particle nature of a matter conceptual scheme. The authors hypothesized that students perceptual preferences for colors, sizes and shapes will not affect their achievement on a test with pictorial models options. A perceptual preference test was constructed with three subjects, one each for the color, size and shape preferences.

The effectiveness of four combinations of reinforcers at two development levels was analyzed in this experiment. The combinations were Right-Wrong, Right-Nothing, Nothing-Wrong, and Buzzer-Nothing. It was assumed that the nothing aspects of these reinforcers would be sufficiently ambiguous to permit age differences in sensitivity to reinforcing cues to function. The Ss, age 4 to 5 and 8 to 9, were required to learn the concept "larger than" by responding to pairs of blocks. A significant age X treatments effect for the acquisition series was interpreted as meaning that the effectiveness of these reinforcers is related to level of development. The Nothing-Wrong group performed significantly better on the extinction series than the other groups. This latter finding was interpreted as meaning that nothing when paired with wrong acquires positive reinforcement value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights on concept identification (CI) and psychophysiological parameters in depressed schizophrenics as functions of Imipramine and Nialamide. Depressed, male, chronic schizophrenics participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of Imipramine and Nialamide. The subjects performed on CI tasks, that varied in complexity. Concomitant measures of electrodermal activity were obtained. The results of the study revealed that both antidepressants facilitated CI performance, and there was a negative relationship between CI errors and spontaneous GSRs.

The article discusses the logical operations of Jean Piaget in science instruction that may enhance the learning and comprehension of science concept among children. The study reveals that achievement on cognitive tasks using these logical operations can be helped by the use of programmed instruction techniques. It also presents various levels of intellectual development in understanding the sets of logical operations including the sensory-motor stage, the pre-operational stage and the concrete operations stage. It suggests that knowing the concept starts when information processed using logical operations. The study shows that additional exercise of the abilities in understanding the content is beneficial and the child's interests in the content achievement needs stimulation and focus.

Examines the generality of perceptual biases in inference and concept usage in children. Consistency of biases toward stimulus dimensions and cue locations; Results indicating that the salience of cue locations during inference is unrelated to performance on stimulus selection.

Investigates conceptual style and conceptual ability in children ranging from kindergarten through the eighth grade. Differences in preference for the inferential style between kindergartners and older children; Increase in the occurrence of the ability variables as children age.

Examines the validity of previous research which has indicated that young children have difficulty conserving concepts under conditions in which a previously positively evaluated instance of a concept is endowed with negative attributes. Reluctance of children to use the concept label due to the negative transformation; Dependence of children's belief systems on semantic representation.

Tests whether intelligence is modifiable by training in the verbalization of simple class concepts and the statement of word definitions in terms of these concepts. Comparison of the outcome of training groups of five-year-old children in concept verbalization and word definition and in spatial-perceptual skills.

The article discusses the importance of inquiry, process, science concepts and textbooks in teaching science to elementary school children. Inquiry is happening when a child is required to go beyond the presented facts to gain new ideas and to form his own conclusions. The basic forms of inquiry are rational inquiry, inquiry by discovery and inquiry by experimentation. The process of science determines the skills scientists or children must do to conduct scientific inquiry. It is also recommended that science may best be studied as a number of big ideas or concepts.

The article provides a historical analysis of the development of concepts and bodies of knowledge. The historical development of the concept of motion illustrates that there is a hierarchal progression in the development of complex concepts. This progression contains the following two dimensions. The first dimension is concerned with the progressive step-by-step dependency of one concept on another concept. The second dimension of the progression pertains to the increasing degree of complexity in the arrangement or ordering of the concept.

The article presents a study on the application of a concept classification scheme to the development of a testing instrument utilizing a motion picture format to assess elementary school children's concept attainment. The problem reported in the study is to develop a limited verbal-type instrument for assessing the knowledge possessed by elementary school children on selected concepts from the conceptual nature of matter. An animated motion picture format was chosen as the best medium for presentation of the question. To compensate for guessing, five questions were prepared for each concept. The study concludes that evaluation instruments using a motion picture format can give meaningful measures of concept attainment at the knowledge level.

The article provides information on concept formation, process-oriented and pre-college science instruction. It is essential that science teachers develop a perspective that transcends periodic change, one that relates pedagogy to the nature of concept formation and learning theory. At the pre-college level, a number of programs have been developed in the past decade which aimed at focusing on the central concepts of the discipline. Among the many other science curricula with a concept-centered emphasis are the Earth Science Curriculum Project and the Science Curriculum Improvement Study at the elementary school level.

The article presents a study on the different learning methods of concept formation in education in the U.S. There are two gross differences in procedure for student learning in class namely adoption of a rote memorization method by repeating verbalizations of definitions and by memorizing discrete items of the various classes and identification of common characteristics of class members to discover the underlying principles that differentiate classes. Based from observation on students' behavior, it was found that efficient learning methods for students must be handled in terms of specific characteristics such as personality patterns, intellectual habits, special abilities, attitudes or both students and instructors. This study attempts to collect data on the difference between a functional condition of concept learning and a rote condition when outcomes are measured in terms of retention and demonstration of a meaningful grasp of acquired concepts.

The article focuses on the importance of drawing in teaching science. Diagrams which are well made and illustrative can correspond to the pupil activity comprehensibly. In a class activity, different types of drawings such as diagrammatic, representative, and the artistic drawings can be used. The use of drawings satisfies one of the fundamental principles of educational psychology and philosophy i.e. pupils learn by doing. Teachers may come across to some difficulties while using drawing in science education. Some children in class cannot draw well and they are expected to get bore soon with the process. Keeping this fact in find, teachers may use a formula that is to say a systematic method of drawing. The use of formula can be encouraging and positive. Further, it has been suggested that teachers are required to provide the necessary information and incentive to help the children in arranging their concepts of science.

The article presents a study on the development of the concept of acceleration in elementary school children in the U.S. The objective of the study was to determine the developmental relationships among the speed and the acceleration concepts described by Piaget. The subjects used in the study were ninety six children from third to six grades. The results indicate that the speed and acceleration tasks that require intensive logical operations could be used by the third and fourth grade children.

The article cites a study on concept development and communication abilities in children five to eight years old utilizing variations in leaf structure. By using leaves, four tests were made: picture association test, leaf discrimination test, generic association test, and communication ability test. Each test measured one aspect of concept development or communication ability of children. Results were, the performance of five-year-olds was significantly different from that of older children and interaction of sex and age was not significant. Also, some children at all age levels exhibited an ability to give rational explanations to natural phenomena and many children exhibited a genuine interest in a study of leaves.

The article presents a study that explores on the impact of the cultural biases in the learning attainment of scientific concepts by elementary school children in the U.S. It compares the literacy performances of the Jordanian and American pupils in Grades 3-6. The instructional device used was the standardized tests designed to measure the student's comprehension and application of selected science concepts relative to the biological cells. The results of the study indicated that culture is not a factor in learning the concepts used in the study.

The article presents a study on the effectiveness of the two methods of instruction in teaching the classificational concepts of physical and chemical change to elementary school children. Physical change is defined as the type of change which does not result in the formation of a new material while chemical change would result to the formation of a new material. The first method demands the children to develop the generalization while the teacher is expected to devise the generalization for the children in the second method. The findings of the study showed that the classificational concepts of physical and chemical change should not be included in the lower levels of the elementary school curriculum. It has been suggested that an evaluation instrument must be develop to measure the child's level of understanding of the concept.

The article presents a study on the relationship between concept attainment and level of maturity of children in grades 2 to 6. The study viewed concept as a summary of the necessary characteristics of a group of ideas or facts which can be a classification or description of objects or a nature phenomena. The results of the study showed that the ability of a pupil to gain mastery of a specific concept is not significantly related to the child's age. The study also found out that the pupils are having difficulties to gain mastery of the concepts when it is not correlated with other meaningful facts. However, certain concepts can be successfully taught to lower grade levels when presented in a concrete fashion.

The article focuses on the importance of the development of conceptual understanding among school children in science instruction in the U.S. The understanding of the relationship which connects the answer to the problem demands a change in the conceptual structure of the student. Concept development represents the dynamic interaction of the student with the phenomena of experience. The implication of this is that more and better concepts will be developed wen the student is given more opportunity to experience.

This article reviews literature from approximately June 1964 to February 1967 regarding verbal and concept learning. The author would like to report that educational researchers and psychologist now have a generally accepted taxonomy of learning tasks, but he argues that this is not the case. Principle learning requires mastery of relevant concepts thus, the more complex forms of learning are based on less complex forms all the way down to basic classical and operant conditioning. One important consequence of arranging all learning tasks in a hierarchical system is that failure to reach the criterion on a task implies that tasks above the failed task in the hierarchy will also be poorly learned. A trend in both verbal and concept learning literature might be characterized as an increased interest in complex response systems that result in the acquisition of new behaviors or a change in the stimuli which control existing behaviors.

While research indicates that verbal pretraining has a positive influence on the discrimination learning performance of subjects of normal intelligence, a comparable influence has not been shown for other types of conceptual tasks for retarded subjects. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effects of stimulus pretraining on concept learning by subjects who had a ‘high risk’ of being classified as mentally retarded at some future time. A group of 27 ‘higher risk’ and 27 ‘lower risk’ subjects was randomly divided into three pretraining groups: verbal label, attention, and control. Subsequent to pretraining on the stimuli used for Transfer Task 1, subjects in each group were presented with a concept learning task (Transfer Task 1). After reaching the criterion of learning on Transfer Task 1, subjects were presented with a second, new, concept learning task. Analysis of the data revealed that there were no significant performance differences between risk groups and that pretraining had a significantly positive effect on performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how children learn concepts and how concepts are to be taught. A concept represents as a selective system in the mental organization of a person which interrelates previous experience and current states with stimulus objects. For children who are confronted with novel experiences, the sequence of psychological event in concept formation is considered as a progression from perception to abstraction to generalization. Thus, a child needs to see and experience an item first so that he can distinguish it from others. The teacher may confirm a child's knowledge of concepts by grouping and asking for opposites.

The article presents information on an activity program developed to enhance the knowledge of school students about various concepts related to radio. In the program students discussed various questions about radio with each other and their teacher in the classroom. Students got the relevant information from library books and science books. In the classroom discussions children were taught about the mechanics of radio, dry cells, wave form of water waves, and principles of radio. Pupil activity was encouraged at every opportunity. The actual building of the two-tube radio was the most interesting activity. Diagrams and illustrations were also made. Students presented radio programs in the classroom after being informed about techniques in radio writing. Voice and speech were emphasized. Parents of the children also showed great interest in the activity program.