Although exploring students' thought processes can be rewarding, most teachers rely heavily on reponses to tests and assignments that fail to disclose learners' thinking patterns. Concept maps grouping interrelated ideas can encourage students to demonstrate effective and meaningful assimilation of organized study areas. Includes five footnotes.…

Synectics, the making of analogies, was used with learning disabled high school seniors to provide them with a creative process that aids in developing a deeper understanding of literature. After studying Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the students completed a six-step process and produced a short writing assignment. (VW)

Examines problem-solving in selected software, considering what packages really teach and how useful they are in classrooms. Includes a table listing 21 packages with information in such categories as: suggested ages; solving standard logic puzzles; trial/error or predicting outcomes; breaking tasks into smaller parts; drawing conclusions; and…

Teaching thinking skills is an important part of preparing students for tomorrow's technological world. Provides a model for teaching thinking skills. (MD)

The article describes the oral interview, a mathematics assessment technique in which the learning disabled adolescent's thinking stragegies are examined. Both efficient and inefficient thinking strategies related to multiplication are discussed, and implications for instruction considered. (Author/CL)

Surveys modern language and cognitive theories and their implications for the teaching of undergraduate composition. (JL)

Uses a Bruegel painting to illustrate the view that a child's I.Q., relative intelligence, and problem-solving abilities may relate directly to the number of games the child has mastered at the critical or sensitive periods of his or her life. (Author)

The author's findings about the effects of learning disabilities on adolescents are detailed according to four major areas (sample subtopics in parentheses): academic achievement and ability (low achievement and underachievement); cognitive processing (relationship between motivation and strategy use); setting demands (independent functioning);…

Describes a demonstration for college-level cognitive psychology classes of Miller's "Magical Number Seven" concept of the limitation of sensory capacity for processing information. Students report on the number of pennies they observed in a box after viewing the coins for two seconds. Demonstration results consistently support Miller's…

The role of visual imagery is explored as an information processing strategy, and its relationship is counterpointed to the linguistic system. The importance of visual imagery as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool to aid both visual and nonvisual performance and learning problems is discussed. (Author)

Three of the four stages of cognitive development as spelled out by J. Piaget are reviewed, and several key thinking areas which relate to the development of thinking skills in young hearing impaired children are identified. Techniques for developing such skills used at the Tucker-Maxon Oral School (Portland, Oregon) are offered. (SB)

Describes a writing exercise that requires students to solve a murder mystery and persuade their readers that their solution is the correct one. (FL)

Argues that allowing students five seconds to think about a question both before and after they answer it improves the quality of the answers they give. (FL)

Suggests a method using mathematics to help students begin to understand how they can recognize their own opinion and claim credit for it. (TJ)

Discusses the primacy of thought over speech, and "semantic translation" vs "communicative translation," relating the former to thought, and the latter to speech. (AM)