Selected research studies that explore the assumption that college science students operate at a formal cognitive level are presented in this information digest. Studies are reviewed that relate to the areas of: (1) formal thought (examining the relationship between measured formal thought and that required to understand formal college physical…

Preschool children, elementary school students, and adults participated in a study that examined various processes used to interpret contradictory communications. A screening test determined that all subjects were capable of discriminating between contradictory and congruent communications. Subjects were presented with contradictory verbal-facial…

Comparisons of expert and novice problem solving in physics have helped characterize some of the key features of expert behavior. There is considerable debate, however, as to whether these characteristics are specific to the field of expertise (physics) or exportable to other fields. While the question seems difficult to answer in general, at…

A study examined the spelling of reading disabled (RD) and average ability students within the context of the developmental lag hypothesis, which was then contrasted with a developmental difference hypothesis. Subjects were 38 regular class third graders and 18 average intelligence fifth graders receiving resource room assistance for reading…

The field of the explicit teaching of thinking skills has attracted renewed and growing interest in education since the late 1970s. Much of this movement has its roots in earlier works in education, philosophy, and psychology. Writers in the fields of elementary/secondary education, curriculum, cognitive psychology, epistemology, and teacher…

This paper examines research studies that have concluded that elementary school children can learn more difficult and abstract social studies concepts than are taught in the traditional social studies curriculum. Research studies that focus on constraints on cognition, the use of embedded concepts, and understanding knowledge restructuring and…

Freedom is subject to a variety of conceptions in life because people think of it from where they are in life. Psychological literature contains a great deal about freedom but it is almost always found under the rubric of freedom versus determinism. This study examined the concepts of freedom in subjects (N=450) who ranged in age from 7 to 21…

This paper deals with questions having to do with the nature and effects of teachers' beliefs about schooling, and to the psychological relationship between theory and practice. It is posited that teachers' beliefs are likely to have a profound influence on their actions. A critical analysis of current school performance and teacher education…

Previous research by Maratsos found that 3-year-olds were more accurate than four and 5-year-olds in selecting 'big' rectangles or animals when choosing between pairs of stimuli. A study then investigated the nature of the previous experiments themselves, particularly the procedures the researcher followed and the possible inferences which he drew…

A series of studies was conducted over a three-year period to determine whether the teaching technique developed in the 1960s called "inquiry training" is effective for teaching problem-solving, thinking, and/or decision-making skills. (Inquiry training is a process in which students are provided with a puzzling situation, are given the…

This is the second in a series of six units for administrators and teachers to serve the Environmental Goal, one of Pennsylvania's Twelve Goals of Quality Education. The environmental goal states that quality education should help every student acquire the knowledge and attitudes necessary to maintain the quality of life in a balanced environment.…

Using five metamemory question types and the Counting Span Test (CST), this research investigated the effects of metamemory task demands, and the relationship of the amount of information one can hold in working memory to metamemory question performance. One hundred twenty kindergarten, first, third, and fifth grade children served as subjects.…

Written for curriculum developers and vocational education instructors, this publication provides an understanding of cognitive concepts and methods using an information processing paradigm and shows how to apply this knowledge in development of curriculum and instructional plans. Chapter 1 reviews needs and characteristics of vocational education…

A study investigated the relationship between cognitive style and coherence in discourse. The primary hypothesis was that coherence would vary bimodally by cognitive style classification. Forty-four freshman composition students from three west coast colleges completed the Culture Fair Intelligence Test, the Group Embedded Figures Test, and the…

A basic problem of disadvantaged students is their inability to deal with information: to assist the teacher the Niagara Centre of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has described a set of skills sequences that might be called Basic Thinking Skills. (JM)