An experiment was carried out to examine individual story schemata and a story theory. The theory proposed relating structural characteristics of narratives to the reader's affective response and the reader's intuitions about what constitutes a story. Two levels of narrative structure are distinguished by the theory: the chronological sequence of…

A major contribution of information-processing theory to the psychology of remembering is the concept of memory or information retrieval. Several theories of the fact retrieval processes of the human memory, which constitute a substrate for any cognitive ability requiring stored information, have drawn heavily on certain data processing…

In two experiments (N=210) conservers, transitional conservers, and nonconservers were directed to lie or pretend to other children that their judgments and explanations of a series of conservation problems were the opposite of what they really were. Nonconservers and transitional subjects in both studies made large and significant gains in…

This study examined the relationship between convergent and divergent thinking and performance errors in reversal and nonreversal concept tasks. The results show: (1) a positive relationship between convergent performance and concept errors; and (2) an inverse relationship between divergent performance and concept errors. These correlational…

This report describes research conducted regarding the development of a precise scientific language called the "Set-Function" Language (SFL) which was formulated in terms of sets and functions. The SFL retains many of the basic aspects of cognitive formulations but also provides more rigor than most of the other scientific languages. The SFL…

The study deals with the motivational characteristics which relate to divergent thinking and tests three hypotheses: no significant difference with regard to their fluency, flexibility, originality or combined divergent thinking scores exists between children with (1) high and low need for approval, (2) high and low anxiety, and (3) approval needs…

The series is a collection of translations from the Soviet literature of the past 25 years on research in the psychology of mathematical instruction and the related methods of teaching mathematics. The aim of the series is to acquaint educators and teachers with directions, ideas, and accomplishments in the psychology of mathematical instruction…

To determine concept usage performance of the mentally handicapped when confronted with familiar items used in the concept usage tasks, 32 common concepts were presented to 25 educable mentally handicapped and 22 non-retarded subjects. From the responses to this number of referents task, a concept usage task was constructed which required choosing…

In this essay, research done on concept learning is discussed. The study analyzes concept learning as one form of learning, formulating guidelines for teaching concepts, and describes the abilities underlying the attainment of concepts. An analytical model is presented; various operations such as concrete concepts and identity concepts are…

The objectives outlined for the seminar included the identification of learning problems encountered in curriculum projects in Asia and the development of solutions for these in the light of past or future research on concept development. The report is divided into six chapters. Chapter one presents a comprehensive review of literature on the…

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effect of several instructional variables on concept attainment. In Experiment I, the effect of presenting a rationally chosen set of positive and negative instances was contrasted with the effect of presenting either a rationally chosen set of positive instances alone or two randomly selected…

The present study attempted to identify and describe individual differences in concept learning. It was hypothesized that if a significant portion of the reliable individual variation in a complex learning situation could be identified and described, it would be reasonable to expect that subsequent predictions could be made about the conditions…

The development and use of intuitive thinking, at all levels of education, have been of concern to scholars in recent years. This paper discusses the findings and theories of various scholars about intuitive thinking and learning, including the work of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Richard Jones, and Robert Ornstein. The paper also explores the use…

This study investigates acquisition of two aspects of the meaning of color terms: semantic organization and reference. A longitudinal, repeated measure design was used, and data were collected from 33 subjects, 2 to 4 years old at first testing. Four tasks were used: one to assess semantic organization (the acquisition of the…

The nature of insight is discussed as it relates to mathematical models. Intuition and the intuitively obvious are argued to have no necessary connection with models. (MP)