LINKING WRITTEN LANGUAGE TO COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENT - READING, WRITING,AND CONCRETE OPERATIONS

This study investigated Piagetian measures of concrete operations in r elation to specific school-type tasks in an attempt to link cognitive development and school learning. We predicted that the ability to sequ ence (seriation) would make a unique contribution to grade five childr ens' comprehension of a narrative composition they read and to the org anization of a narrative they wrote. We also predicted that the abilit y to classify would make a unique contribution to childrens' comprehen sion of a comparative exposition and to the organization of their own written comparisons. Two group sessions were conducted to collect narr ative and comparative compositions from 65 children. Results indicated that seriation ability was especially relevant to the organization of temporal and causal relationships in their reading and writing of nar ratives and that classification ability was especially relevant to the organization of similarities and differences,in their reading and wri ting of comparisons. However, analysis also suggested that development of the theoretically relevant cognitive abilities is a necessary but not a sufficient condition far high levels of performance in reading a nd writing. Moreover, relatively low correlations between reading and writing within the two genres studied suggested support for the view t hat reading and writing represent somewhat different sets of skills An d that there are still other important skills specific to reading or w riting.