Suggests that Kuhn's study reported in this issue (PS 524 345) offers insight into how people make casual inferences, and raises important questions about these processes. (JW)

Responds that questions of study by Kuhn and others (PS 524 345) in this issue were motivated by concerns about the role of scientific thinking in general thinking, not in development of scientific reasoning. Study was meant to increase understanding of role of strategies in development, not provide definitive explanation of how strategies fit…

Comments on Flavell's paper (PS 522 962) presented in the same issue. Stresses some of the positive aspects of preschoolers' conception of thinking, and raises questions about the relatively negative portrait of young child's introspective abilities. Discusses evidence of introspection among preschoolers, and underlines the special, and…

Comments on Flavell's paper in this issue. Examines the paper's findings on three different aspects of children's knowledge about thinking: their ability to differentiate thinking from other activities, their awareness that thinking is always going on in people's minds, and their capacity for introspection into their own thinking. Argues that…

An instructional design model defining instruction as creation of a learning environment that supports learners' construction of knowledge was tested with 32 learners. Findings suggested that the learning environment was effective in supporting learners' construction of complex knowledge structures. (SK)

Discusses special issue of the journal, which is product of a University of Oregon symposium that looked for points of contact among perspectives on second-language acquisition (SLA), second-language instruction, and cognition. Contributions make case for extension of cognitive science methods and ideas but also make case for incorporating study…

Comments on Lewis's ideas about reconciling stage and specificity in neo-Piagetian theory in this issue. Focuses on whether general stages, domain specificity, and individual diversity are compatible from a nonlinear, dynamic perspective. Suggests that, by using catastrophe theory, intra- and interindividual diversity and domain specificity can be…

Discusses the role of abstraction in the development of mathematical concepts among young children. (MDH)

Studies the role of intuitive rules in science and mathematics education. Describes the effect of two intuitive rules on students in grades 7-12 as they perform tasks related to mathematical and physical objects. Contains 28 references. (DDR)

Illustrates "hard" and "soft" theoretical constraints of cognitive structures and examines ways in which the learning mechanism feature of the Soar architecture places hard constraints on all models that use the feature. The relationship between architecture and model in terms of the degree to which a model is compliant with constraints set by the…

This paper represents one portion of an ongoing effort to elaborate on pedagogical principles based on structural-developmental (largely Piagetian) theory and research. Here, a concept of "problem structure" is developed as a means for identifying physical factors that contribute to children's ability to apply experimental reasoning.…

Assesses three papers in this volume, those by Wellman and Estes, Olson and Torrance, and Hall and Nagy, for their treatment of the following: (1) definition of semantic space, (2) defining children's processes of understanding that space, and (3) describing the contexts in which cognitive language is used. (AEW)

Investigates, using eight scenarios, children making inferences about memory from incomplete knowledge and children varying in what they judge as relevant information in their schema. Showed that older children are less likely than younger ones to invoke an inferential schema when making memory judgements. (Author/BB)

Studies six summer interns in an engineering development center. Shows that for the interns and their more experienced colleagues, learning did not precede activity but rather was the means by which they remained attuned to activity and able to function. Finds cognition was distributed not only among people but also among people and their tools;…

Presents conceptual model of group decision-making process that identifies essential factors and processes that impact upon group decisions. Integrates concepts from various academic disciplines to provide theoretical framework for research generation and to organize and synthesize past and future research findings in effort to establish…