ABSTRACT
Like many other topics in conceptual development, children's ``understanding of societal institutions, structures, and groups'' (Barrett & BuchananBarrow, Chapter 1, hereafter ``societal cognition''), or conceptions of society, was ®rst investigated by Piaget (Berti, Chapter 4) and studied further by Piagetians such as Furth (1980) and Berti and Bombi (1988). Children's understanding of their society has been considered to be as important as their understanding of the physical and biological world as a topic for research. However, it has not been a popular topic in developmental research. In terms of sheer number, far fewer studies on children's conceptions of society have been accumulated than on their understanding of the natural world. More importantly, whereas children's biological and physical understanding have both been historically central to major theories of children's thinking (Carey, 1985; Keil, 1992; Piaget, 1929, 1930; Siegler, 1978), societal cognition has never been the focus of intensive discussion.
