The reasoning of adolescents in indeterminate situations was examined with particular attention given to how individuals incorporate the possibility that outcomes are determined jointly by more than one variable. Kuhn and Brannock's (1977) plant problem and two other similarly structured problems were administered to 25 inner-city adolescents…

Explores the relationships between seventh-grade students' misconceptions of genetics and natural selection and four cognitive variables: reasoning ability; mental capacity; verbal intelligence; and cognitive style. Reports that only the reasoning ability was significantly related to the number of misconceptions. (Author/YP)

Studied children's transitive inference where representation of premises provided contradictory information depending on position of two elements in a A, B, C series. Eight-year olds did significantly better on the more complex problems than did six-year olds, suggesting the presence of a developmental sequence of algorithms that enable children…

Examined the effect of mothers' familiarity with a formal operations task on performance and monitoring of a cognitive task with their children and on the child's later performance alone. The task-familiar mothers elicted higher level strategies during problem solving and allowed their children to participate more than did the other mothers; their…

Reasoning abilities of Cypriot 12th graders in five forms of formal logical thought were studied in relation to academic achievement and gender differences. Results support proposals that suggest that there are specialized abilities dealing with specific domains of reality. The five reasoning modes were significant predictors of achievement. (SLD)

Contends that student success in introductory science courses at the college and university level depends on formal operational reasoning ability, size of working memory, and the degree of field independence. Reports the study findings related to cognitive predictor variables based on the testing of Venezuelan science majors (N=95). (ML)

The undergraduate liberal arts program is assumed to promote sophistication in thinking. At the same time, certain levels of cognitive ability are assumed to be present in students accepted into selective undergraduate colleges. Beginning in the fall of 1991, a long-term research study was undertaken at a small residential liberal arts college…

A task was developed to differentiate the reasoning of elementary school students in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. Subjects completed 16 matrices containing two, three, or four dimensions and varying in the embeddedness of the dimensions. They also solved a formal operational task assessing ability to isolate, exclude, and include variables.…

The role of content in formal operations tasks was explored in research that systematically varied the content of tasks and children's performance by developmental level and socioeconomic status (SES). Subjects were 110 Icelandic 12-year-olds who had entered a longitudinal study when they were 7 years old. Two extreme ability groups of children…

Investigated were the relation between functional M-capacity and student performance in solving chemistry problems of increasing M-demand. Student performance decreased as the M-demand of the problems increased. (Author/YP)

A 1-year lag was found between the effect of an intervention intended to promote formal operational thinking in students initially 11 or 12 years of age and the appearance of substantial science achievement in the experimental groups. A one-year lag on cognitive development and an age/gender interaction were also reported. (Author/KR)

Five- to six-year-old children estimated the size of Euclidian objects using an addition rule of Height plus Width, rather than a multiplying rule. Within the framework of information integration theory, tested whether intensive handling of objects would facilitate shift from addition rule to multiplication rule. Found that following handling,…

W. M. Gray's "How is Your Logic?" a Piagetian-based, group-administered written test of cognitive development, and B. Leadbeater's Livian Wars Task, a formal operations-based, written, social-cognition problem were given to 348 college undergraduate and graduate students to investigate the impact of chronological age and amount of formal…

This study investigated preservice elementary teacher reasoning ability levels, science anxiety levels, and content achievement in a large midwestern university. Pretest and posttest measures were taken on three dependent variables: (1) reasoning ability (cognitive development); (2) science anxiety; and (3) science content achievement. In…

Researchers of writing ability have often applied the developmental schemes of William Perry, Lev Vygotsky, and Jean Piaget in describing basic writers. As a result, some researchers have concluded that basic writers think well below the formal-operations or true concept-formation stage of cognitive development. To investigate the theory that…