It has been suggested that not only domain-specific factors but also working memory (WM) may play a crucial role in mathematical learning included Geometry, but the issue has not been deeply explored. In the present study, we examined the role of domain-specific factors and of verbal versus visuospatial WM on geometric learning of a new…

Listening narrative comprehension is a complex process that requires the processing of explicit (i.e., information presented in the text) and implicit information (i.e., information inferable from the text) and involves several linguistic and cognitive skills. However, the specific role of these skills in children's comprehension remains unclear.…

This article highlights the main ideas that underlie the differences in potential pragmatic knowledge constructs students experience when solving problems, between the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and the zone of potential construction (ZPC). This qualitative research is based on a phenomenological approach to finding the meaning of things…

Girls are more likely than boys to use counting strategies rather than higher-level mental strategies to solve arithmetic problems. Prior research suggests that dependence on counting strategies may have negative implications for girls' later math achievement. We investigated the relation between first-grade girls' verbal and spatial skills and…

Gifted students with spatial strengths have areas of remarkable talent but are often overlooked, underidentified, and underserved in American schools. Their preference for learning through imagistic reasoning conflicts with traditional verbal instructional techniques typically used in schools. To better serve these students who have the potential…

The issues that prompt this study are based on current research indicating the positive effects of inquiry learning on the cognitive development of children. The purpose of this case study was to understand the effects of inquiry learning on the academic achievement and bilingual verbal ability of 5th grade bilingual students in a French/English…

The purpose of this study was to examine the existence and strength of relationships between students' cognitive skills and mathematical problem-solving performance. Specifically, relationships between students' verbal, spatial, and analytical skills and their problem-solving performance on items that require a verbal response, items…

In this study, we explored whether creativity was domain specific or domain general. The relationships between students' scores on three creative problem-solving activities (math, spatial artistic, and oral linguistic) in the DISCOVER assessment (Discovering Intellectual Strengths and Capabilities While Observing Varied Ethnic Responses) and the…

The involvement of working memory (WM) was examined in two types of mental calculation tasks: exact and approximate. Specifically, children attending Grades 3 and 4 of primary school were involved in three experiments that examined the role of verbal and visuospatial WM in solving addition problems presented in vertical or horizontal format. For…

The paper presents findings of primary school children's performance on classification and generalisation tasks to demonstrate the fundamental connection between their verbal thinking processes and problem-solving, on the one hand, and the practical activities of their society and culture, on the other. The results reveal that, although children…

Math achievement is not a unidimensional construct but includes different skills that require different cognitive abilities. The focus of this study was to examine associations between a number of cognitive abilities and three domains of math skills (knowing, applying and problem solving) simultaneously in a multivariate framework. Participants…

The authors believe that exposure to cultural diversity may force children (or even adults) to form new neural connections in the brain to be able to sufficiently interpret meaning in things to which they are not accustomed. Once formed, these new neural connections may be at one's permanent disposal to assist in a myriad of potential cognitive…

Children's performance on multidimensional classification tasks was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, preschool, first-, and third-grade children were shown a standard stimulus and were then asked to judge whether several comparison stimuli were the same as or different from the standard. Comparison stimuli differed from the standard…

Research supported by the U.S. Office of Education, Project No. 8-B-002, Grant OEG-0-8-080002-0220-010