Reviews "Human Minds: An Exploration" by Margaret Donaldson, which inquires into the diverse uses of minds, their ontogenetic development, and their histories. The two predominant themes in the book are the ontogenetic and historical development of cognition, and development of social-emotional understandings and experiences as well as…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether children, ages 4-7 assign invariant labels to objects or describe the objects in terms of the context of alternatives. The acquisition of adjective ordering rules and information limits on children's utterances were also examined. (JMB)

Results of a study with children ages three to eight indicated that children's understanding of the concept of surprise changes between three and five years of age. Younger children employed a principle of desirability, whereas older children employed principles of belief violation, indicating that children's understanding of the concept of…

This paper examines the relation between literacy and children's understanding of a set of concepts referred to as the "say/mean distinction," which is the notion that what a text says contrasts with subjective interpretations a reader or listener brings. (Author/MT)

A sample of 14 kindergarten children were tested on their understanding of the relations between active and passive sentences when the nouns being related differed as to how readily they could be assimilated to the child's prior knowledge. (Author/JMB)

The collection of 41 papers from a conference on individualized education programs (IEPs) for handicapped students addresses four main topics (sample titles and authors in parentheses): communication and group process ("Establishing and Maintaining the IEP Team" by W. Morgan and N. Bray; "Child and Parent Involvement in Educational Planning" by M.…

Investigated Japanese and U.S. mothers' descriptions of behavioral characteristics they found most desirable and undesirable in preschool children, noting characteristics they considered most highly positive or negative. Mothers in both cultures emphasized social cooperativeness and interpersonal sensitivity. U.S. mothers were far more likely to…

Close to 1,100 people attended the 55th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, Florida from November 30-December 3, 2005. A record number of proposals were submitted this year (548), with 392 papers, symposia, and round tables accepted. This year's conference theme was inclusiveness and synthesis…