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This study investigates the relation between Psychosocial Maturity and a dimension of moral judgment. Form D of the Psychosocial Maturity Inventory and Form B of the Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) were administered to 182 tenth grade students. Predicted negative correlations between SEA and two Social Adequacy subscales were marginally significant for male students and not significant for female students. A previous finding, that SEA scores are curvilinearly related to maturity, was not supported. Implications of the findings for developmental models of moral development are discussed. (Author)

This study examined the transition from concrete to formal operations in very bright children in an effort to determine whether high ability in concrete operations would carry over into formal operational ability, and also to investigate precocity in regard to formal operations. Subjects were 38 white middle-class children ranging in age from approximately 8 to 14 years. Of these, 25 were younger students (approximate ages 8 to 12) with IQ's greater than 160, and 13 were older (approximate ages 12 1/2 to 14) with IQ's in the range of 150. The children were tested individually in their homes on three formal operational tasks adopted from Inhelder and Piaget as well as two moral reasoning dilemmas from Adelson and Piaget. The formal operational tasks were: communicating vessels, oscillation in a pendulum, and a balance problem. Tasks are described. Scoring was adopted from Inhelder and Piaget. Two judges assigned one of four categorical ratings, two concrete and two formal, to each task. Results indicate that high ability in children over the age of 11 does carry over into formal operations; but that bright children under 11 years demonstrate a low rate of precocity in formal operational ability, with exception of the pendulum problem. These results and responses to the moral questions are discussed. (Author/SB)

This paper describes and evaluates an alternate day-full day kindergarten program. Through the use of Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) scores and surveys, two kindergarten groups were compared. One group attended school for a half-day daily; the other attended all day on alternate days, but for a comparable length of time. A summary of survey results from parents, kindergarten teachers, and elementary principals is presented. CAT scores turned up non-significant differences between the two groups. Teacher opinion surveys found a relationship between the teacher's attitude towards her all-day program and her students' performance. Opinion surveys from principals, parents, and teachers showed the largest factor for consideration to be the child's maturation level. Large motor and social skills were more easily taught in the alternate day-full day program; art and language skills in a daily program. Considering all variables, it was concluded that the type of program was not the contributing factor for its success. It was concluded that not every child will adjust to an all-day program. Teacher instruction and program, school curriculum, and skill development are factors to be considered before an all-day kindergarten program is adopted by a school system. Appendixed are survey questionnaires and the alternate day-full day kindergarten program daily schedule. (JH)

This study attempted to replicate the research results of Frances Fuller regarding concerns and emotional maturity of prospective teachers. The report focused on the questions (a) Do concerns of prospective teachers tend toward universality? and (b) What are the programmatic implications? Subjects for this study were education majors whose experience ranged from no education courses to certification. The survey results confirmed the Fuller findings, though between-group differences in terms of three concern levels were not statistically significant, and most majors tended to be at lower maturity levels. The implication is that education programs may well require revision to reflect student concerns. (The report includes tables depicting standard deviations and variances of the four sample groups, and figures illustrating respondents' concern scores.) (Author/JS)

This research report outlines progress made in the development of a conceptual framework (called "crystallization") which is intended to explain the conditions found to be critical to the child's potential for developmental change. The research completed and proposed on crystallization has centered around four main areas of activity: (1) a field experiment, (2) the development of a diagnostic map-drawing instrument, (3) the preparation of a series of theoretical and conceptual papers, and (4) a proposed study of "precociousness" in children. The overall research goal is an attempt to operationalize, or put into explicit language, the specific conditions under which developmental advances take place, especially advances which would probably not occur without educational assistance. Each activity undertaken in the project was selected for its probable contribution to this objective and is described separately in the report. (CS)

Described is an innovative program of noncategorical education for both normal and developmentally delayed infants and preschool children. Focused upon are such aspects of program design and operation as early intervention, integration of delayed and nondelayed toddlers and preschoolers matched on the basis of developmental level rather than chronological age, parent involvement and education, and developmental programing. It is noted that the educational curriculum covers sensorimotor, motor, social and language development for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Administration of the infant and parent training components are discussed, daily program activities for toddler and preschool classes are outlined, and the rationale for developmental programing is explained. (LH)

Reasons for the present emphasis on all-year operation of schools differ from those prevailing 30-40 years ago. During the depression emphasis was on economy. Recently, a more sensible reason for an extended school year is coming into focus--the year-round school has educational value. It is not just something to be considered in order to save money, though that certainly is one of the criteria. The year-round operation of the public schools is necessary for meeting the educational needs of an urban society. After a lengthy review of the research on and practice with the extended school year, the author presents extensive findings in favor of the extended school year. He addresses such areas of concern as academic achievement, remedial programs, graduation rates, mental health, student maturity, student social needs, handicapped children, and college admission. (Author/IRT)

The main problem of this study was to examine the set characteristics of children at various age levels. Subjects were observed according to their ease of excitability and extinction in the haptic and visual modalities. Set patterns were examined at different age levels to determine if there was any trend from one age to another. The findings support those of Uznadze's in that excitability is a distinguishing feature in all children. Although the subjects did not vary in rate of excitation haptically and visually, there were significantly different rates in the number of trials it took before extinction took place. The data indicate that, as subjects increase in age, there is a drop in the number of assimilative illusions in both modalities. The study demonstrated that there are significant age differences in the way children develop and maintain sets, particularly in the haptic modality. The study suggests that the development of set has little meaning outside the context of the physiology of the nervous system and its relation to maturation and the learning of cognitive operations. (SJL)

The primary purpose of this study was to establish normative data for the cognitive style behaviors of children from kindergarten through the ninth grade. Approximately 400 students served as subjects. The measures used were a free response pictorial-, a multiple choice pictorial-, and a multiple choice verbal-test. Cognitive style behavior was found to progress developmentally from relational to descriptive to categorical modes for pictorial stimuli and from relational to categorical to descriptive modes of information processing for verbal stimuli. The consequences of individual differences in cognitive styles for school learning were discussed within a developmental framework. (Author)

To study the development of syntax in the language of deaf students, the Test of Syntactic Ability was constructed and administered to approximately 450 deaf students (10-18 years old) and 60 normal children (8-10 years old). The test contained 22 subtests covering seven major syntactic structures: relativization, conjunction, complementation, pronominalization, question, formation, negation, and the verb system. Although results showed gradual improvement of deaf Ss' performance, the improvement was slight and the retardation in comparison to hearing Ss was large. Developmental stages for deaf Ss on the structures tended to parallel the stages reported for hearing children. Certain distinct structures, apparently rule ordered, were found to appear consistently in the language of the deaf Ss but rarely or never in the hearing Ss. Comparison of the deaf Ss' knowledge of the various structures with the appearance of those structures in a series of reading texts analyzed during the project revealed differences so large as to make it unlikely the deaf subjects could read the texts. It was concluded that instruments for the assessment of syntactic structure, and curriculum materials tailored to the language of deaf children, need to be developed. (Author/LS)

Many preschool children with developmental delays in cognition and language are in the preoperational stage as defined by Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. The preoperational stage is divided into the preconceptual and the intuitive phases. During the preconceptual phase, the preschooler is unable to form true concepts and often reasons in the form of unrelated judgement without logical organization. In the intuitive phase, the child's reasoning is tied to his perceptions and therefore his thinking is often distorted. Implications for parents and teachers are that in a special preschool class, activities should be of a wide variety and should include exploring with all the senses (such as imitating the actions of people, animals and objects); that at home, parents can emphasize real experiences (including planting seeds and cooking); and parents and teachers should use language related to what the child is experiencing as well as to his general level of language functioning. (SB)

The performance of 75 congenitally blind and 75 sighted subjects (6- to 18-years-old) was compared on 32 Piagetian measures of reasoning, moral judgment, and moral conduct. Among major findings were that blind Ss did not achieve the reasoning processes characteristic of concrete operational thought with the facility or completion that would be expected for persons of their age and IQ (an average delay of 8 years was noted) and that few significant differences occurred between the blind and sighted groups on measures of moral judgment and moral conduct. Deficiencies found in the reasoning of blind Ss indicated a need to provide these persons with opportunities to interact and reason in ongoing situations. (Author/LS)

Videotapes of a deaf child of deaf parents were used to study the developmental stages and underlying processes involved in the child's acquisition of negation from age 28 months to age 41 months. The S was videotaped in spontaneous interaction with her mother or the experimenter for approximately 1 hour each month, and the films were transcribed into an English gloss notation by a team of deaf adults. Use of the negative headshake, a linguistic component of sign language, was the primary focus of study. Results revealed that the S acquired negation through stages comparable to those involved in hearing children's language acquisition. Findings suggested that the deaf are fully capable of learning to understand and use negation, and that a deaf child of deaf parents should not be considered to be communicating in a primitive or gestural manner if he negates sentences by using only a headshake. (LS)

Sixteen preschool-age hearing-impaired children were studied to explore the general nature of their cognitive development and to identify relationships between environmental processes and cognitive development. Data were obtained from administration of the Infant Psychological Development Scale and the Inventory of Home Stimulation (when Ss were 23- to 38-months old); and from administration of the Home Inventory, the Utah Test of Language Development, a structured mother-child interaction task, and a classification task (when Ss were 36- to 54-months-old). Findings revealed that the early cognitive development of deaf children through what J. Piaget terms the sensori-motor stage proceeds quite normally, but that cognitive development which is more clearly dependent on verbal interaction with the environment, or what Piaget terms social transmission, does show a discrepancy when deaf children are compared to hearing children on the classification task. Results suggested that early intervention programs with deaf children need to focus on improving communication abilities and developing curriculum materials which better teach those concepts usually transmitted through social interaction with the environment. (LS)

Research is reviewed in support of the author's hypothesis that the majority (60 to 80 percent) of learning disabled children are not brain damaged but have above average spatial ability and major deficits in auditory-vocal memory processing which are genetic in nature. Research is reported to support other aspects of his hypothesis such as the lack of visual problems in the spatially competent learning disabled (SCLD) group, the frequent occurrence of a general maturational lag in SCLD males, and the common presence of hyperactivity is also due to an inherited maturational lag. Research is reviewed in the areas of birth order, sex of siblings, neurological impairment, pregnancy and perinatal factors, hyperactivity and brain damage, the nature of hyperactivity, the management of hyperactivity, the inheritance of specific abilities and disabilities, specific abilities underlying reading and other language processes, the good spatial ability but poor auditory-vocal memory skills in SCLD children, the incidence of SCLD children, and the effectiveness of remediation programs. (DB)

Investigated was the distinction between identity conservation and equivalence conservation in 180 preschool, kindergarten and third grade students. Ss were assigned to one of six different counterbalanced orders of presentation for the conservation task battery. The factors were age, task (identity/equivalence), criterion (judgment only/judgment plus explanation), and content area (length/weight). Among results were greater difficulty indicated for equivalence than identity conservation and significant performance improvement at every grade level for the transitivity tasks. (CL)

This report presents the preliminary findings of an in-depth study of small samples of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Hawaiian children and their families living in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Children's learning characteristics and style as well as their socialization for schooling prior to their entry into formal public schools are investigated. Section 1 reviews the literature, while Section 2 reviews the methods used. Section 3 is divided into seven parts. Each part presents a preliminary analysis of the data collected. Child testing, observations of test-taking behavior, mother-child observations, and home interviews are described. Section 4 offers recommendations for future inquiry. Recommendations are divided into two general areas. Firstly, project reports are outlined, and then directions for future inquiry are suggested. Among the former are patterns of learning characteristics in each ethnic group, patterns of family socialization, mother-child interaction, and language behavior of child. Among the latter are a replication of the present study, studies of learning characteristics, studies of Asian American families, and the relationships between verbal and nonverbal assessments of competence. (Author/AM)

Recognition memory of components of complex pictures was assessed developmentally for kindergarteners, third and sixth graders, and college students. It was assumed that the relations among items in multi-component line drawings are constrained by at least two organizational dimensions, structure and content, which influence retention of pictured information. Each subject viewed slides of structurally integrated and unintegrated versions of coherent and anomalous scenes. One component in each scene served as a target on a yes/no recognition test. With regard to the organizational dimensions, the results showed clear effects of scene content across developmental levels. Developmental differences were observed in two aspects of the recognition memory task: Kindergarteners used more conservative response criteria than older subjects, and the recognition accuracy of college students was superior to that of the children. (Author)

The paper presents a rapid scanning of the state of the art of research and evaluation of Outward Bound and related educational programs. Initial comments outline criteria for assessing internal and external validity of studies. Distinctions are made between research, evaluation, measurement, judgement, and public relations. The work of Rosen, Hutchinson, Scriven, and Stake is recommended as important background reading for those interested in the evaluation of Experiential Education programs. Summary of existing work is presented in five categories: (1) studies of Outward Bound programs, (2) studies of related educational programs, (3) studies of programs for urban youth and delinquents, (4) non-empirical studies, and (5) recent work. The 29 works deal with strengthening self-image, social functioning, changing self-concept, changes in personality and values, tolerance of others, the roles of counselors, changes in the home environment, self-awareness, dropouts, organizational change, parent relationships, college ambition, race relations, value of education, recidivism rate, consequences of aggression, the American Indian world view and Outward Bound, affective goals, and student's stability. (Author/NQ)

Both economic and sociological analyses of the "youth problem" tend to segregate young people into two classes: those who will make it through the system as it exists, and those who will need help to make it. The resulting programs for those who need help often have the effect of further stigmatizing the participants. By contrast, a program which derives from the mutual responsibility between a nation and its young people makes no class distinctions yet accomplishes both economic and sociological objectives. A National Youth Commission, which would view youth needs holistically, could be a catalytic agent in the evolution of a national youth policy, with national service as a cornerstone of that policy. (Author)

This paper reports findings of an exploratory field study of the teenager's first year of motherhood. Twelve subjects, aged 14-19, were interviewed a number of times during that year. Interviews were largely unstructured, allowing mothers to express their concerns and feelings. Data for analysis were: (1) narrative style protocols that were recorded as nearly verbatim as possible immediately following interviews; and (2) neonatal perception inventories. Internal constraints included innaccurate interpretations of the situation and the infants' behavior dependence on their mothers, confusion of feminine identity, and expressions of a high level of hostility. Infants' health status reflected their mothers' difficulties; two infants experienced failure-to-thrive syndrome, and one infant suffered a skull fracture. Factors that increased mothering competence included the ability to: progress in other roles, experience reward and gratification in watching their infants grow and mature, experience a changed, more mature relationship with their mothers, and experience a rewarding relationship with a mate. External constraints included conflicting societal values and norms which increased their anxiety, making them feel like misfits. Marriage was viewed by the single teenagers as financially penalizing, as imposing additional work, and as preventing them from getting ahead. Lack of institutional support, i.e., financial help for married couples and child-care centers for all, made it difficult to pursue educational and professional goals. (Author/MFD)

Research examining the effects of sports participation on children and youth is reviewed from the perspective of psychological and physical development. Statistical information regarding the participation rate in different kinds of youth sports is given. The effects of prolonged athletic activity on bone, muscle, and adipose tissue growth is considered, as well as the general effect of sports on overall growth. Injuries due to repeated stress and physical (muscular) trauma, and biological maturation are also considered. The psychological effects are examined through a discussion of the meaning of competition and of the socializing effects sports organizations exert on participants. The monograph terminates with a discussion of unresolved problems in youth sports competition, including the exclusion and retention of athletes, possible alternatives to highly competitive athletic programs, and the need for qualified and sensitive adult leaders in the field of youth sports. (LH)

Adolescents at three grade levels (7th & 8th, 9th & 10th, and 11th & 12th) filled out open-ended questionnaires on their personal view of adolescence. Examination of the responses indicated large differences in how adolescence is defined as a function of grade level. Differences were also found in attitudes toward death, life goals, maturing and social behavior related to grade in school. (Author)

Using Quay's typology, three equal groups (n=12) of adolescent psychopathic, neurotic, and subcultural delinquent males and a matched nondelinquent control group were individually administered Kohlberg's structured moral dilemmas, two Piagetian tasks of cognitive development (pendulum and balance), and an adaption of Flavell's role-taking task. Psychopathic delinquents were more immature in level of moral development than all other groups which did not differ from one another. Psychopathic delinquents were significantly more concrete in their thinking on cognitive tasks than all other groups who exhibited signs of early formal operational thinking. Psychopathic and to a lesser extent neurotic delinquents were deficient in role taking compared with controls and subculturals who did not differ from one another. The findings provide further evidence against viewing delinquency as a unitary syndrome of deviance. (Author)

To eliminate maturation as a factor in the pretest-posttest design, pretest scores can be converted to anticipate posttest scores using grade equivalent scores from standardized tests. This conversion, known as historical regression, assumes that without specific intervention, growth will continue at the rate (grade equivalents per year of schooling) obtained at the time of pretest. Data were taken from reports of 213 Title I compensatory education programs in New York State to examine the predictive ability of the historical regression model. The approach was to: (1) express historical regression in algebraic terms; (2) produce a linear model with assigned weights from the algebraic formula; (3) produce a least squares historical regression model whose weights best fit the data; (4) compare the historical regression model with the least squares model; and (5) develop an alternative model. When compared with program-level data, historical regression underestimated final achievement for short programs with older children. It overestimated for younger children in long programs. An alternative method was developed which eliminated the bias, removed half of the error, and eliminated much computation since an expected achievement level for each child was not required. (Author/CP)

Relationships among adult and young children's behavior in extended play encounters were examined. One group of normal six-year-old children completed 20 play encounters, while a second group of clinic-referred children completed 15 play encounters. Each child encountered either a trained/supervised or an untrained/unsupervised college undergraduate. Analyses of videotapes made of the "non-directive" play encounters indicated that the children who encountered trained/supervised undergraduates emitted greater numbers of fantasy behaviors, especially those indicative of mature, coping and adaptive functioning than did children encountering untrained/unsupervised undergraduates. Adult involvement in play and allowing the child self-direction seemed key behaviors in eliciting such child behavior. (Author/JLL)