Seventy-five general and 65 special education teachers working in the same 65 elementary schools in 12 different U.S. school districts were surveyed about their mindsets concerning the malleability of writing and intelligence as well as their practices for teaching writing. All teachers taught writing to one or more fourth-grade students receiving…

In the present study, speeded tasks with differing assumed difficulties of the trials are regarded as a special class of simple cognitive tasks. Exploratory latent growth modeling with data-driven shape of a growth curve and nonlinear structured latent curve modeling with predetermined monotonically increasing functions were used to analyze…

Implicit theories of intelligence (i.e., individuals' beliefs about the nature of intelligence, such as whether it is fixed or changeable) are important because they are related to individuals' behaviors and their beliefs in other areas (Sternberg, 2000). Implicit theories of intelligence are especially important in educational settings because…

A three-stage model for the evolution of theories of intelligence is proposed and applied to understanding the evolution of correlationally based and experimentally based theories of intelligence. In stage one, alternative conceptions compete. In subsequent stages, alternative conceptions, which combine elements of prior approaches, emerge and…

This study found that 10 adolescents with mental retardation processed stimuli varying with respect to symmetry in comparable manner to peers matched for mental age and chronological age. Results argue for the robustness of the symmetry effect across groups differing in intelligence and physically dissimilar stimulus types (checkerboard versus…

The Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices Test was administered to 48 subjects who then performed a card-sorting task under single- and competing-task conditions. Hick's Law and the Roth-Jensen procedure were used in task development. Complexity should have a more central role in speed of processing models of intelligence than ability to divide…

This editorial suggests how the approaches of differential psychology and information processing psychology should be combined to study intelligence. Methods reviewed include factor analysis, componential analysis, and computer simulation. Guidelines for the specification of subtheories of intelligence, as well as future theories and methods for…

A reevaluation of a number of experiments suggests that normal and retarded persons differ on short-term memory tasks from the time of initial stimulus exposure. The hypothesis that memory differences are due to differential encoding as a result of more adequate rehearsal by the normal subjects is unacceptable. (Author/BW)

Cognitive style was modified in a sample of 50 impulsive and 50 reflective fourth-grade boys. Subjects viewed a film-mediated model displaying a response style opposite to their own cognitive style. The specific cues in the model's behavior which facilitated shifts in cognitive style varied with the intellectual levels of the subject. (Author/WY)

Discusses an alternative approach to intelligence tests as a measure of intelligence. The approach is based on three classes of performance dealing with a person's choice of an internal representation for a problem, strategies for manipulating the representation, and abilities to execute elementary information processing steps required by the…

The study of cognitive processing in high IQ and average IQ elementary grade learning disabled and non-learning disabled children found that LD students were poorer in sequential processing and planning compared to NLD students; high IQ LD students lost their IQ advantage to low IQ LDs in sequential scores. (Author/DB)

To examine whether or not retarded individuals have the same structure of intelligence as normal IQ individuals, test scores from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), Reitan's Trail Making Test (TMT), and Beery's Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration (VMI) for both a mildly retarded and normal IQ population of…

Two experiments were concerned with exploring the relative accessibility and availability of category information in retarded adolescents in comparison with CA equivalent nonretarded subjects. (Author/SB)