Discussion of text segmenting and comprehension highlights a study of elementary students in Australia that tested two hypotheses, one concerning reading abilities and one concerning information processing skills involved in syntactic analysis. Tests that measured vocabulary, comprehension, and processing skills are described, results are…

Describes a study of undergraduates that was conducted to determine the impact of advance organizers on students' achievement in computer-assisted video instruction (CAVI). Treatments of the experimental and control groups are explained, and results indicate that advance organizers do not facilitate near-transfer of rule-learning in CAVI.…

This article focuses on the empirical effects of cognitive differentiation and persuasive skills on transformational, transaction, and laissez-faire leadership. Subjects (N = 294) completed measures of independent and dependent variables. Findings confirmed prior findings, however some findings reflected differences. Cognitive differentiation was…

This paper focuses on the importance and the significance of the teacher's mastery of an abstract body of knowledge that underlies an educational innovation. Concepts and principles from organizational sociology are applied in order to investigate the relationship between teacher's mastery of this body of knowledge and the process of…

The Scientific Theory and Method Project (STAMPS) is concerned with students' understanding of two areas of science in secondary schools. One is understanding what a scientific theory is, and the other is understanding the methods used in conducting scientific research. In the science curriculum these topics are often described as the process of…

In a test the presence or absence of a "structure" in the individual's cognitive processes of formal operations thinking, 61 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students were administered three tasks supposedly requiring such a method of thinking. The three tasks were (1) a problem solving task (PS), (2) a chemistry task requiring a certain combination…

This inquiry examines the composing process of twelfth-grade writers, using a case study method. Eight twelfth graders were asked, in four sessions, each, to give autobiographies of their writing experiences and to compose aloud three times in the presence of a tape recorder and an investigator. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) Twelfth-grade…

Background: Deficits in executive functioning are supposed to have a predisposing influence on impulsive or aggressive behaviour. We tested the hypothesis that oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) children with or without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have problems in executive functioning. Method: Seventy-seven 7- to 12-year-old…

A review of the literature in science education shows that most students have difficulties in hypothetico-deductive reasoning. The author's objective in this study was to investigate the abilities of high school teachers and university teachers to understand the difference between the terms "hypothesis" and "prediction" in the…

The main hypotheses addressed in the research were (1) whether imprecision in the phonological representations of lexical items underlies the impaired expressive naming abilities of disabled readers, and (2) whether weak verbal memory might mediate the relationship between naming and reading skills. From samples of 93 first graders and 67 fourth…

A study was carried out at Pennsylvania State University to examine the effects of both textual and computer animated orienting activities--i.e., mediators through which new information is presented to the learner--and practice on the application and problem solving skills of elementary school students. It was hypothesized that students provided…

This study used secondary education students to investigate three instructional design variables hypothesized to improve rule learning. Results show structuring information by a schematic analysis improves learning over taxonomic analysis; response-sensitive sequency adapting instruction for generalization, then discrimination, improves learning;…

The use of restricted item response models to test hypotheses regarding item difficulty ordering and slope uniformity was demonstrated in a study in which 597 algebra students were asked to solve word problems reflecting various types of cognitive processing. Benefits and limitations of the procedures are discussed. (SLD)

Reviews studies that were carried out with children to compare cognitive processing of audio and television stories, and describes a study conducted in the Netherlands where children aged 10-12 either watched a television film or read a print version of the same story and then retold the story in writing. (23 references) (LRW)

Developmental changes in the understanding and use of the logic of experimental control were addressed with three tasks in a longitudinal study. In all three tasks, understanding of experimental control was assessed by production measures (children were asked to test potential causal relations in a multivariable situation) and by choice/evaluation…