This study was concerned with children's ability to conserve spatial relationships among objects in different arrangements, in the presence of projected changes in the observer's visual field. The objectives were: (1) to determine the effects of varying types of arrangement and number of objects in the arrangement on perspective ability…

Reports three experiments with kindergartners and first graders which used one-trial multidimensional reasoning tasks like those of Toppino (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, v30, p496-512, 1980). Feedback information and preliminary experience with simple forms of the task produced high performance levels, and verbal labeling in the…

In the first experiment, 16 kindergarten children were tested on vertical/horizontal and oblique discriminations in symmetrical and asymmetrical alignments. When stimuli were asymmetrically aligned, the former discrimination was learned as rapidly as the latter. The second experiment demonstrated that the influence of configurational cues in…

Infants 8.5 and 9.5 months of age were tested for ability to determine the location of an object hidden in one of two covered containers before their left-right positions were reversed. Only the older infants provided with different colored covers to their containers were able to do this task. (Author/DB)

The notion that a prerequisite for asking questions about new topic matter is some appropriate level of knowledge was tested. Learners with two levels of background knowledge using learning material with two levels of difficulty were studied. (SW)

Examined relations between algebraic word-problem attributes and students' strategies, errors, and problem difficulty. Found that constructed responses capture strategy formulation and high-level planning--as do traditional measures of quantitative reasoning--but are more sensitive to individual problem characteristics and procedural errors that…

Two characteristics that determine problem difficulty--the nature of the move search space and its interaction with other aspects of the task--were investigated in experiments in which 26, 69, 42, and 42 community college students attempted to solve the Chinese Ring Puzzle. The origins and implications of difficulty are discussed. (SLD)

Sixty elementary students with learning disabilities were interviewed about parallel domains of uncontested and contested knowledge on the topic of space, including questions of morality and questions of empirical law. Students clearly distinguished between uncontested and contested knowledge, suggesting that they are capable of working with…

Describes a framework for examining the effects of the cognitive complexity of tasks on language production and learner perceptions of task difficulty, and for motivating sequencing decisions in task-based syllabuses. Results of a study of the relationship between task complexity, difficulty and production show that increasing the cognitive…

For the thirty-seventh year, the Research and Theory Division and the Division of Instructional Design of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) sponsored the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Jacksonville, Florida. This year's Proceedings…

The research reported in this paper is concerned with the ability of students of English as a second language (ESL) to apply cognitive skills in reading. The paper focuses on: (1) a validation study of an experimental test designed to measure Piagetian concrete operations in reading and (2) the effects of the paragraph types (additive or…