This paper attempts to specify the ways in which bilingualism might affect cognitive functioning. Two general ways, the "linguistic" and the "non-linguistic," are distinguished. Linguistic explanations explain the effects of bilingualism on cognition as a direct result of the fact that the bilingual has access to two verbal…

This paper consists of a critique of a paper by James Cummins which appeared in issue number 1 of the Working Papers on Bilingualism, entitled "A Theoretical Perspective on the Relationship between Bilingualism and Thought." Cummins' paper gives the impression that nearly all of the recent studies exploring the effects of bilingualism…

With the pervasiveness of television, especially for children, visual literacy is a growing concern. Television should be regarded as part of a potential solution to the country's need for improved education. "Sesame Street" has proved that children do learn from television, that active interaction is not always necessary for learning,…

Examined longitudinally were the rate and proportion by grade level of the cognitive development of 202 13- to 16-year-old educable mentally handicapped students. A 20-item written test composed of eight problem solving and 12 cognitive development items representing the concrete I, concrete II, and formal I operations levels of Piagetian theory,…

An attempt is made in the present paper to resolve inconsistencies between the results of recent studies which have reported that bilingualism is associated with positive cognitive consequences and earlier studies which suggested that bilingualism might adversely affect cognitive and scholastic progress. Because recent studies involved balanced…

Cognitive effects in children's learning of altruistic behavior were tested with an adaptation of Aronfreed's test design and machine. Children in grades 1-4 were presented with a machine with 2 levers. One lever, when pressed, released bubble gum, and the other turned on a light. For two of the three groups the experimenter exclaimed delightedly…

The perceptual-developmental research of Kagan and Witkin elicited this study of cognitive style. The work of these two researchers leads to the conclusion that differences between graphic expressions of children of the same age reflect differences in the children's mode of information processing. Specifically, this study sought to test the…

Fifteen bilingual and 15 monolingual Head Start children, ranging in age from 4 to 6, were administered three types of tasks: (1) object constancy task: subject was shown a common object, a transformation was done on the object, e.g., crushing a paper cup, and then that object plus an identical pre-transformed object, were shown to the subject and…

Students in grades K, 1, 3, and 5 were administered the Rod and Frame Test (RFT), the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test, and the Piagetian tasks of Discontinuous Quantity, Class Inclusion, Multiplication of Classes, and Multiplication of Relations. Cross-sectional trends were found in all tasks with older children being less impulsive, more…

Two techniques were used to modify an impulsive conceptual tempo on a visual discrimination task. The subjects were 42 first grade white children who had previously been classified as impulsive or near-impulsive on the Matching Familiar Figures Test given to 82 children. These subjects, who had scored above the median on errors and below the…

Digraphs, graphs and task analysis were used to map out the content structure of a programed text (SMSG) in elementary probability; mathematical structure was operationally defined as the relationship between concepts within a set of abstract systems. The word association technique (WA) and paragraph construction technique (PC) were used to…

The problem of this research was to construct a list of behaviorally specifiable objectives for secondary school teachers to use in teaching the higher cognitive skills (ie., problem solving, rational thinking, and discovery) as well as subject matter. Process, as contrasted with content, was the focus. The specific Thought Process Objectives are…

Abstracts of important research on cognitive style, which has implications for individualized instruction, are presented. Studies are presented which investigate the effect of early childhood coorelates of cognitive style, consider the impact of family environment on the highly intelligent and highly creative adolescent, examines similarities and…

The idea of semantic features has taken some force within psychology and a number of research workers have suggested that semantic acquisition is, in some manner, determined by semantic components. This notion has come to be called the "semantic feature hypothesis". An examination of the semantic feature hypothesis was made by testing 80…

A conservation problem of numerical equivalence which 80% of adults reliably fail and 40% of third graders pass was developed, and responses of 188 subjects (Grades 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and college) to it and related number conservation and probability problems indicated that the differences in nonconservation were rooted in subjects' different…