Generating own examples for previously encountered new concepts is a common and highly effective learning activity, at least when the examples are of high quality. Unfortunately, however, students are not able to accurately evaluate the quality of their own examples and instructional support measures such as idea unit standards that have been…

It has been suggested that due to functional similarity, sortal object individuation might be a primordial form of psychological essentialism. For example, the relative independence of identity judgment from perceived surface features is a characteristic of essentialist reasoning. Also, infants engaging in sortal object individuation pay more…

Many theories of human cognition postulate that people are equipped with a repertoire of strategies to solve the tasks they face. This theoretical framework of a cognitive toolbox provides a plausible account of intra- and interindividual differences in human behavior. Unfortunately, it is often unclear how to rigorously test the toolbox…

Findings on 20 children who passed an area conservation task and 20 who didn't suggested that conserving children applied an additive rule, while nonconserving children presented patterns suggesting centration on one of the two dimensions. Implications for Anderson's and Piaget's conceptions of conservation development are discussed. (RH)

Process education practices are designed to assist the learner with coping with change in his life and living with the stress of immediate change, as to develop learning processes capable of coping with continuous change. (JD)

Explores children's understanding of a variety of interpersonal events, focusing mainly on the question of whether, and in what way, their conceptions of these events were heterogeneous or undifferentiated. (HOD)

Examines children's understanding of what variables and relations are important in problem structures, and their use of these variables and relations in problem solving. (HOD)

When a person encounters a problem, the character, form, and content of his or her response provides psychologists with useful and interesting information about processes of challenge and their relationship to intellectual development. In essence, challenge is a developing relationship that is defined on the one hand by objective factors (a person…

Describes four experiments conducted among adults and 3- to 7-year-olds to validate a task analysis that indicates that the equality, group enhancement, and superiority social decisions require a greater information processing load than the altruism, rivalry, and individualism social decisions. (HOD)

Examined the relationship between 7-, 9-, and 11-year old children's performance on a battery of selected Piagetian measures and on a proportional reasoning task. Found a strong relationship between stage level and (1) the complexity of hypotheses used, (2) the use of the proportional hypothesis, and (3) the overall use of logical hypotheses. (HOD)

Investigates the relative influence of speech and pointing gesture information in the interpretation of referential acts among children averaging three and five years of age and adults. (HOD)

Faced with a problem in which the probability of obtaining the correct answer was 70 percent, 2 of 23 kindergartners and 18 of 19 second graders generated an appropriate strategy. When the probability of a chance correct response was reduced to .45, 23 of 35 kindergartners generated an appropriate strategy. (Author/GDC)

Describes three studies that examined how young children distinguish between the real, physical world and the mental world; between objects and thoughts; and between doing something and imagining it. (HOD)

Examined 5- to 12-year-olds' judgment regarding the behavior of balance scales and other levers whose arms varied in a causal or a noncausal variable. Results indicated age-related increases in correct judgments about the influence of physical features of objects at an earlier age than about spatial relations between objects. (MOK)

Explored the relationship between adolescents' level of cognitive reasoning and their contextual judgments of the factors affecting quality of life. Showed that those 10th grade students who achieved higher levels of cognitive reasoning were more likely to identify social and interpersonal aspects of life as factors related to quality of life and…