Recently, interest in research measuring stream of consciousness or thought has increased. A study was conducted, based on a previous study by Hurlburt, Lech, and Saltman, in which subjects were randomly interrupted to rate their thoughts and moods on a Likert-type scale. Thought samples were collected from 27 subjects who carried random-tone…

Orientation to time, place, and person is a central aspect of cognitive functioning. Measures of orientation, as employed in the psychiatric mental status examination, evaluate the accuracy of orientation in present awareness, and are applicable only to severely disturbed psychiatric populations in whom obvious deficits would be expected. The…

Studies have shown that depressed people have a significantly higher number of irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions than nondepressed people. The purpose of this study was to identify the causal relationship among depression, irrational beliefs, and cognitive distortions through the use of cross-lagged panel correlational analysis. On two…

Recent research in persuasion shows that while message recipients often use little cognitive effort when assessing message validity, they may instead rely on a heuristic processing strategy. This study used a priming-like paradigm to manipulate the reliability that subjects apply to the heuristic "message length implies message strength." Subjects…

The role of affect in counseling has been examined from several orientations. The depth of processing model views the efficiency of information processing as a function of the extent to which the information is processed. The notion of cognitive processing capacity states that processing information at deeper levels engages more of one's limited…

Eighty high school students enrolled in social studies classrooms participated in a study exploring the hypothesis that field dependence-independence is a perceptual dimension of cognitive style influencing text structure variables and the quality of free recall. Based on results of a test of field dependence/independence, 10 subjects served in…

An interactionist model of creative behavior is proposed, combining elements of the personality, cognitive, and social psychology perspectives on creativity. The model considers the interplay of factors including antecedent conditions, creative behavior, consequences, the individual, cognitive style/ability, personality traits, contextual…

Twenty-two college students from each of three different epistemological groups--dualistic, multiplistic, and relativistic--completed both a syllogism and ink blot problem-solving task. Findings indicated that the three epistemological groups reliably differed in how they mentally organized the ink blot stimuli but not the syllogism problems.…

Cognitive psychologists believe that knowledge is multifaceted and that people process more than just semantic content from a stimulus array. To investigate the implications of recall and impression formation processing objectives on the representation of serial order in memory and judgment, subjects participated in two recall and impression…

Investigated the cognitions of low, moderate, and high test-anxious children under naturalistic test-taking conditions and examined the role of classroom environment in the test anxiety-performance relation. Results indicated high test-anxious children showed more task-debilitating cognitions during testing, including more negative…

This research examined the learning style factor of field dependence/independence and the problem solving strategies of Hmong male refugee students 17 years old and older who were attending or planning to attend post secondary education institutions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The research was conducted from July 1986 to July 1987 to test two…

Documents the different problem-solving styles and approaches of two first-grade children having strong mathematical abilities. One child demonstrated an extrinsic, algorithmic style of problem-solving, while the other used an intrinsic, individual-in-control style. (NH)

This review of the research on aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) discusses four methods or assumptions that might explain why ATI research has not generated the anticipated empirical support: (1) the lack of a theoretical base; (2) disagreement over what a given aptitude means and how it should be measured; (3) difficulties in defining…

This two-part study began with a replication, statistical validation, and extension of the Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder study of children's construction of theories about balance. The 128 subjects (ages 4 to 6) were videotaped as they tried to balance blocks on a fulcrum. A scale was developed to assess the degree to which the child's performance…

Research has suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain serve specialized functions, with the most recent studies portraying the left hemisphere as processing information in a linear, serial, or sequential manner and the right hemisphere as processing information in a holistic, concrete, or visual mode. Although few systematic studies have…