Four experiments are presented to support the theory that the rule system governing the law of large numbers is not tied to a content domain, and that it can be improved by formal teaching techniques. The experiments showed that statistical training enhanced everyday reasoning. Test problems and objective example problems are appended. (LMO)

Examines why analytical thinking should be a major focus of teaching in the reading and writing classroom. (HOD)

Provides guidelines for conducting and interpreting interviews aimed at assessing the cognitive concepts of young children. Discusses the content, task, questions, and format of the interview, listing 16 points of advice for interviewers. Also elaborates on the value and use of structured interviews. (JM)

Argues that much of current science curricula and instructional strategies do not accommodate the thinking and reasoning capabilities of students. Level of capacity for abstract logical reasoning, whether the capacity can be cultivated/enhanced, consequences of mismatched intellectual levels and instructional modes, and what thinking/reasoning…

Short and long term strategies for implementing critical thinking skills into school programs are discussed. The short term strategy is to teach analytic skills within established subject areas, while the long term strategy involves recognizing and overcoming the unconscious obstacles to development of sound critical and dialectical thinking. (TE)

Reports on a survey of college students regarding what professors made them think and how the instructors initiated this response. (HS)

A significant relationship was found between modes of teacher influence and use of cognitive levels, as well as between levels of teacher cognition and that of pupils in pupil response categories but not in pupil initiation categories. (Author)

Briefly reviews psycholinguistic research, describes six categories of utterance, and reports on research into the relationship between level of thought and length of speech. Results indicate that both teachers and students take successively longer to express higher-cognitive types of utterances. (EAO)

Describes the development of a curriculum to improve problem- solving ability when faced with uncertainty by (1) encouraging students to examine their thought processes, (2) presenting fallacious arguments, and (3) providing better tools for decision making. Relevant psychological research, some problems of teacher training, and a small-scale…

The content of 228 college student's writing samples appears to be a main determiner of how many and what types of preposition errors will appear. These results indicate that preposition errors point to cognitive lags and complex, abstract writing tasks may be the appropriate treatment. (Author/PN)

Replicating previous findings that the inability to "shift" conceptual attitude on the Weigl is consistent with indices associated with cortical dysfunction, the Weigl is shown to possibly serve as a nonverbal instrument to assess cortical dysfunction where inability to "shift" appears to tap a dysfunction in symbolic rather…

Presents data on reasoning abilities of science and non-science majors at one private, liberal arts university. Indicates that most students taking physics are formal operational or into transition to formal reasoning and that six concrete operational students dropped the course. (JN)

Five Inhelder-Piaget formal operations tasks were analyzed to determine the extent that the formal operational skills they assess were ordered into a stable hierarchy generalizable across samples of subjects. Subjects were 34 collegiate gymnasts (19 males, 15 females), and 22 students (1 male, 21 females) from a university nursing program.…

Instructions involving high-level questions and answers either were or were not given to fifth and sixth graders in three learning environments: cooperative, competitive, or independent. Students who received the instructions showed greater gains in recognizing and generating high-level questions. (GDC)

Describes and critiques a study conducted with boys eight- to fourteen-years-old to test whether intensionality (defined as supraordination) and maladjustment are related. Concludes that the boys tested may have been too young to have fully developed their supraordination abilities and that boys' ability or preference to make supraordinate…