A longitudinal study among American adolescents revealed (1) an insignificant impact of field dependence-independence on the development of formal operational thought; (2) continuous development of combinatorial reasoning and propositional logic abilities, but little increase in comprehension of proportionality; and (3) sex differences in formal…

Proposes a three-level model of cognitive processing to account for complex monitoring when individuals are faced with ill-structured problems (i.e., problems on which opposing or contradictory evidence and opinion exists). (Author/RH)

Presents 10 guidelines that staff developers can utilize when assisting teachers in teaching thinking skills to students. Provides guidelines for both practical and theoretical guidance for developing workshop materials, conducting training sessions, and conducting follow-up activities. (AH)

Encourages college writing teachers to promote composition as a way of learning and developing basic to all disciplines. (DD)

A total of 82 fourth and fifth graders participated in a 15-week intervention program during which they confronted problems requiring formal operational thought. Subjects showed advancement toward formal operations on the pendulum and chemicals problems (Inhelder and Piaget) and on a third problem on immediate and 4-month posttests. (Author/JH)

Examined development of ability to inhibit thoughts within free speech by manipulating the content requirements of overt streams-of-consciousness. Investigation with kindergartners, second graders, fifth graders, and adults revealed a developmental improvement in inhibitory ability over the middle-childhood years; results are consistent with…

Hypothesized that elevated ratio of phenylalanine to tyrosine in blood of children with phenylketonuria uniquely affects cognitive functions dependent on prefrontal cortex because of the special sensitivity of prefrontally projecting dopamine neurons to small decreases in tyrosine. Found that children whose phenylalanine levels were three to five…

Tested 4-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information following brief occlusions. Found that when target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks, infants increased looking times following changes in identity or color but not changes in location or combinations of feature and location. When objects were…

Reports on connectionist models that simulated the formation of global-level and basic-level representations in young infants; revealed a global-to-basic order of category emergence; uncovered formation of two global-level representations--initial "self-organizing" perceptual level and subsequent "trained," non-perceptual…

Attempts to integrate the formulations of Brehm and Brehm and of Guidano and sets forth a cognitive theory of resistance and reactance within a cognitive developmental and individual differences context. Differentiates resistance from reactance and explores developmental antecedents of characterological reactance. Describes implications for…

Testing of the similar structure hypothesis (which states that when matched for level of cognitive development, mentally retarded and nonretarded individuals do not differ in cognitive processes) with 40 mentally retarded adults and nonretarded mental age peers on Piagetian tasks found the developmental theory favored 4:1 over the difference…

Reyna and Brainerd supplement arguments they made previously in this issue by advancing five additional reasons for preferring output-interference explanations over the resources hypothesis. (RH)

Discusses two cognitive models that are appropriate for the study of language acquisition: the "holodynamic" model, and the "production systems" model. (CFM)

Examined children's reasoning regarding the relation between mental representations and reality. Found that children perform better when reasoning about imagination in relation to reality than when reasoning about the relation between belief and reality. Results suggest that understanding that mental representations can differ from reality emerges…

Investigated relationship between young children's ability to predict another observer's interpretation of an ambiguous picture and to identify the source of a misinterpretation after it had occurred. Found that six-year-olds were more likely than four- and five-year-olds to predict that a puppet would misinterpret the target-restricted view and…