Working on the hypothesis that if readers had several alternative correct meanings of a given text set before them they would select the one in accordance with their abstract abilities and intellectual maturity, a study investigated the measurement of levels of meaning as illustrated in taxonomies and focused on the applicability of the taxonomies…

Two questions arise in examining the implications of physical education: Is physical education an education of the physical? and Is physical education an education through the physical? In these two questions there are two distinct points of view, two different ways of understanding the meaning, scope, and aim of education, two conceptions of man,…

The foundations of knowledge by tradition have been treated analytically, and knowledge has been characterized as a theoretical subject. This article introduces a steering mechanism as the prerequisite for a study of knowledge work and maintenance on empirical grounds. Knowledge is treated synthetically, that is, as something that exists only…

Systematic observations of thousands of high school students in the California Mentally Gifted Minors/Gifted and Talented Education programs identified five principles underlying the development of high level thinking skills in this population: (1) Exceptional performance on any criterion requires mutually reinforcing antecedents, the effects of…

The basic premise of this paper is that effective teacher training programs need to assist students in reaching beyond competence in subject matter and instructional methodology to focus on developing the prospective teacher's capacity to recognize and utilize the cognitive processes underlying the respective categories of the curriculum. A…

This paper examines the area of teachers' practical arguments (arugments consisting in the search for a plan of action), considering questions such as: How does rationality manifest itself in practice, and in specific human practices like teaching? Is practical reasoning in teaching moral? Do values of theoretical reasoning, such as universality,…

The study is described which examined quantitative and qualitative differences among learning disabled (LD) subgroups and between LD and normal Ss in reasoning and problem solving behaviors. The research strategy involved (1) detailed analyses of the behavior of subgroups of LD adolescents and of matched normal achieving adolescents in a task…

Research has suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain serve specialized functions, with the most recent studies portraying the left hemisphere as processing information in a linear, serial, or sequential manner and the right hemisphere as processing information in a holistic, concrete, or visual mode. Although few systematic studies have…

Previous studies have found that an object can be categorized faster at a basic level (hammer) than at either a subordinate (club hammer) or a superordinate level (tool). While some attribute this result to basic categories having more distinctive attributes, other factors might cause this result. For example, basic categories routinely have…

Information about individuals' representations of problems was obtained from studies on reasoning and problem categorization. College students (N=62) participated in a study of the transition from concrete to formal reasoning using the pendulum and chemical yellow tasks. Over a 10-12 week period, 47 students participated in 10 training sessions on…

Intelligence can be best understood through the study of nonentrenched, i.e., novel, kinds of tasks. Such tasks require subjects to use concepts or form strategies that differ in kind from those to which they are accustomed. The only partial success of the cognitive-correlates and cognitive-components approaches to intelligence that are in…

A discussion of the functions of human communication shows that underlying them is the cognitive process by which people have the ability to take the view of others, to internally represent reality, and to take into account knowledge and experience to choose future actions. These features of decentration and abstraction reveal the link between…

A study was designed to examine the relationship between certain measures of cognitive development and reading scores, particularly reading comprehension scores. Forty-one adult basic education students, ranging from 16 to 62 years of age (mean age of 25) and predominantly from lower socioeconomic groups, were administered the following three…

Described are procedures used to assess reasoning in congenitally blind students. It is explained that the Piagetian Battery of Reasoning Assessments for concrete and formal or abstract thought measures the following basic abilities: reversability of thought, classifacatory thought, spatial orientation, and mental imagery. (CL)

The objectives of this study were to determine the strength and importance of the relationships among features of oral and written language proficiency and their accompanying thought processes, and to dimensionalize variables that may be manipulated to assist development of disadvantaged children. Test scores from measures of language/thinking…