Mean response times and slope of response times were correlated with intelligence and achievement for 94 sixth-graders. Mean response time reliability was greater than that of slope, and correlated significantly with IQ and achievement. Speed of processing information generalized across experimental tasks and reliably indicated intellectual…

High-level behavioral objectives did not produce greater learning than low-level, contrary to previous findings using study questions interspersed through written prose. Overt use of objectives at both levels produced greater learning, supporting the idea that procedures requiring semantic encoding are instructionally superior to those requiring…

Emphasis on the systems approach in economic and social studies education demands attention to hierarchical analysis and sequencing of desired skills and instruction according to valid learning hierarchies. Learning hierarchies are arrangements of intellectual skill objectives in a pattern of prerequisite relationships among simple and complex…

Evidence is provided for gradual age (and, seemingly, cognitive developmental) changes in the acquisition of complex problem solving strategies. Differential performance as a function of exposure to a child-model exhibiting the best strategy also suggests the role of learning in strategy acquisition. (Author/MV)

Significant differences were found between teacher emphasis of the memory and application levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and pupil achievement at those levels. At the memory level, differences in achievement were probably not due to differences in ability. At the application level, differences in pupil achievement may be due to ability, not teacher…

Three experimental tasks were devised to assess the nature of memory processing limitations in fourth-graders' oral reading comprehension. (Author/MP)

Characteristics of 11 Repgrid indices of cognitive structure, particularly Smith and Leach's hierarchical complexity index, are investigated among boys and girls, aged 9-15. The Smith & Leach index is shown to be significantly reliable; but in common with seven indices of cognitive differentiation, it is of dubious validity. (Author/GDC)

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)

Attaining the insight needed to solve the Mutilated Checkerboard problem, which requires discovery of an effective problem representation (EPR), is described. Performance on insight problems can be predicted from the availability of generators and constraints in the search for an EPR. Data for 23 undergraduates were analyzed. (TJH)

Experiments with 35 male/39 female college students and 220 male Navy recruits examined the nature of a general ability factor of intelligence--Spearman's "g." Patterns related to task complexity and reaction time variability were studied. "g" appears related to the ability to reconfigure working memory contents flexibly and…

Cardinality responses are affected by both the direction and nature of the elements in the counting sequence. Error analysis suggests six stages in the acquisition of cardinality. Although there appears to be a developmental dependency between counting and cardinality, this relationship is not significant in all cases. (RH)

To set an optimal decision criterion on a test of recognition, a subject must estimate the degree to which they can discriminate previously studied from unstudied stimuli. To do so accurately, the subject must assess not only their mastery of the material but also the extent to which the distractors yield mnemonic evidence that makes them…

The main goal here is to introduce a new perspective through which cognitive learning theory plays an active role in instructional hypermedia design and evaluation through testing educational mediums that elicit two distinct levels of cognitive processing for materials of different levels of complexity. Results indicate that if the cognitive level…

Cognitive load can be defined as the amount of mental effort that performing a specific task imposes on a learner's cognitive system. It can be measured by the number of new concepts embedded in a learning task. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, with their limited English proficiency and minimal entry knowledge of a subject matter,…