College students (N=135) were presented with novel, ill-defined problems and asked to select concepts they thought would help solve the problems. The use of concepts organized around long-term goals was positively related to indices of solution quality and originality. (DB)

Two studies involving five- and nine-year-old children examined the effects of planning with a partner as well as the relation of collaborative planning to subsequent solo planning. Results suggest that cognitive gains resulting from joint problem solving between children and adults or peers may be more likely with shared task responsibility. (RH)

The follow-up study of 16 nonretarded autistic children as adults found that, though most were functioning poorly in terms of occupational-social outcome and psychiatric symptoms, four had essentially recovered. Severity of early autistic behavior was a poor predictor of outcome, but neuropsychologic measures of nonverbal problem solving were…

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.…

This study examined the creative problem solving of 100 young children (prekindergarten to grade 2) in response to both realistic and fanciful story problems. Solutions were evaluated for fluency, elaboration, flexibility, originality, effectiveness, and realism. Although children's performance improved with age and experience, their solutions…

Child positive affect and task orientation in response to cognitively demanding puzzle tasks were assessed at two time points separated by 12 months in children with mild mental retardation and mental age and chronological age matched controls (ages 1-5 years). Results suggested correlates of motivation were similar for children with mild mental…

A sample of 202 students filling in a student evaluation of teaching (SET) questionnaire were asked to complete another questionnaire asking about the specific reasons for awarding a score to the specific SET questionnaire items. The aim was to find out what influenced students' judgements on those items. It was found that students' interpretation…

In 2006, more than 6 million individuals were victimized by violent crimes. Although violence is below levels of the early 1990s, it remains high. The extent of violence and its impact highlight a critical need to develop and implement effective programs to reduce violence and victimization. Communities have initiated a wide range of such…

Peace education as an educational reform originally responded to international threats of violence and wars. Since the end of the Cold War, peace education has directed its efforts to many different aspects of violence that plague both teachers and students. This paper reports on the efforts of one school district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to…

Education is the best hope for peace and progress in the world, and because education is best given and received when infused with critical thinking, critical thinking can save the world. Some of the most serious problems facing humankind are overpopulation and famine. The problems of ethnicity, colonialism, and religion further complicate matters…

Four experiments investigated college students' judgments of inter-event contingency. Subjects were asked to judge the effect of a discrete response (tapping a wire) on the occurrence of a brief outcome (a radio's buzzing). Pairings of the possible event-state combinations were presented in a summary table, an unbroken time line, or a broken time…

Conventional experimental research in mental imagery and visualization presents conflicting findings. Naturalistic inquiry offers an alternative approach for the study of mental imagery and problem solving. Paulo Freire, for example, used a naturalistic approach that emphasized active involvement in learning. Imagery can play an important role in…

A prime concern of problem-solving instruction is to maximize positive transfer of learning from a previously solved problem to a new problem. One aspect of the relationship between transfer of learning and problem-solving instruction is the order of problem presentation. In this study, order of problem presentation is controlled, while certain…

In order to determine the extent to which the LOGO programming language can be used as a reinforcer for general problem solving ability, this field study used a production theory approach to problem solving as a conceptual model, and then translated the model into a LOGO oriented framework. The methodology tested the use of an algorithm in a…

This manual describes Version 4 of Soar, an architecture for problem solving and learning based on heuristic search and chunking. Version 4 is available as of January 1986 in Common Lisp, Franz-Lisp, Interlisp, and Zeta-Lisp. An introduction to the Soar system is presented, and information is provided about the following system aspects: (1) data…