The articles in this special issue take an important step in beginning to test the PET framework. Together, these articles illustrate the importance of considering individual differences in attitudes and prior knowledge as well as differences in task demands when investigating the role of emotions in shaping cognitive processing while reading…

Chuderski and Jastrzêbski (2017) found a positive relationship between working memory capacity and insight problem solving, and concluded that "people with less effective cognition" are therefore "less creative" (p. 2003). This interpretation discounts substantial evidence that devoting less executive control facilitates…

Salthouse (2011) critically reviewed cross-sectional and longitudinal relations among adult age, brain structure, and cognition (ABC) and identified problems in interpretation of the extant literature. His review, however, missed several important points. First, there is enough disparity among the measures of brain structure and cognitive…

Moss and Albery (2009) presented a dual-process model of the alcohol-behavior link, integrating alcohol expectancy and alcohol myopia theory. Their integrative theory rests on a number of assumptions including, first, that alcohol expectancies are associations that can be activated automatically by an alcohol-relevant context, and second, that…

In this comment, we contrast different conceptions of mind wandering that were presented in 2 recent theoretical reviews: Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). We also introduce a new perspective on the role of executive control in mind wandering by integrating empirical evidence presented in Smallwood and Schooler with 2 theoretical…

When any object of external sense, or of thought, occupies the mind in such a degree that a person does not receive a clear perception from any other one, he is said to attend to it. The principle that is excited in his mind by a perception, or thought, is commonly called the faculty of attention; a faculty which may be justly said to be the…

Discusses quantification of stimulus variables and analytic versus synthetic strategies relating to the block design task in two articles. Provides commentaries on recent articles by Royer (1984) and Schorr, Bower, and Kiernan (1982). (JAC)

Two nonentrenched tasks are described, one requiring projection into the future of states of objects, the other requiring complex anological reasoning where multiple terms of analogies can be replaced by alternative answer options. Some speculations are made about the implications of these results for educational theory and practice. (Author/GK)

Dewey's notion of "reflective thinking" is discussed. A model of phases of reflective thinking is described: problem recognition, enumeration of possibilities, reasoning, revision, and evaluation. Each phase has at least one parameter governing its operation and one rule for setting the optimum parameter value. Sources of individual…

Questions the validity of current reductionist assumptions concerning learning differences and proposes a new science of life based on dynamic, transforming, hierarchically organized systems of energy. This view of cognition is related to Piaget's insights, which are extended to include a view of learning differences consistent with these…

Identifies automaticity as a condition allowing previously learned mental functioning to occur with minimal drain on one's attentional mechanism. Asserts that counseling becomes increasingly effective as trainees accumulate automatic facilitative behaviors and free attentional capacities to understand uniqueness of the individual client. Presents…

Addresses four major issues in developmental psychology: the preservation of structures over time; the psychological growth functions for emergent competences; the mechanisms of change in development; and the determinants of individual variation in psychological development. (Author/DB)

In S. Kanazawa's (see record 2004-12248-010) evolutionary theory of general intelligence (g), g is presented as a species-typical information-processing mechanism. This conceptualization of g departs radically from the accepted conceptualization of g as a source of individual differences that is manifest in the positive manifold. Kanazawa's theory…

Conceptual and methodological problems inherent in Aptitude Treatment Interaction (ATI) research, coupled with the impracticality of its application, call into question its use as a design model. For these reasons, ATI should be de-emphasized as an instructional design model and attention should be refocused on the structure of content and the…

Presents a proposed unifying relationship between instructional methods and cognitive operations, and argues that it is the location of the processing of the learning task that defines the function, type, and extent of the instructional method required. More than 50 references are listed. (MER)