The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) emphasizes the teaching of "Big Ideas" in mathematics. This study focuses on the part-part-whole (PPW) relationship as a crucial aspect of word problem solving involving addition and subtraction. This study, conducted in the United States, evaluated the effects of conceptual…

Many individuals with autism experience challenges using language in social contexts (i.e., pragmatic language). Characterizing and understanding pragmatic variability is important to inform intervention strategies and the etiology of communication challenges in autism; however, current manual coding-based methods are often time and labor…

An assessment of graphic literacy was developed by articulating and subsequently validating a skills-based cognitive model intended to substantiate the plausibility of score interpretations. Model validation involved use of multiple sources of evidence derived from large-scale field testing and cognitive labs studies. Data from large-scale field…

This study used a multiple probe across participants design to examine the effects of a model drawing strategy (MDS) intervention package on fraction comparing and ordering word problem-solving performance of three Grade 4 students. MDS is a form of cognitive strategy instruction for teaching word problem solving that includes explicit instruction…

This commentary is focused on Robert Sternberg's new Active Concerned Citizenship and Ethical Leadership (ACCEL) model. The new model is well conceived and goes far beyond existing models. It is especially attractive in that the emphasis is on ethics. Now more than ever before there is a clear need for education to support ethical reasoning and…

Recent intervention studies directed to improve problem solving accuracy in children with math difficulties (MD) have found support for teaching cognitive strategies. This study addresses the question: What role does working memory capacity (WMC) play in strategy outcomes for children with MD? Four prediction models can be applied to strategy…

As a result of the upcoming Federal reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), practitioners and researchers have begun vigorously debating what constitutes evidence-based assessment for the identification of specific learning disability (SLD). This debate has resulted in strong support for a method that…

Background: Changes in reward processing are thought to be involved in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other developmental disorders. In addition, different forms of therapy for ADHD rely on reinforcement principles. As such, improved understanding of reward processing in ADHD could eventually lead to…

This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological short-term memory [STM], and visual-spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy in elementary schoolchildren (N = 392). The battery of tests administered to assess mediators between WM and problem-solving included measures of…

In this experiment we studied the effect of goal setting on the strategies used to perform a block design task called SAMUEL. SAMUEL can measure many indicators, which are then combined to determine the strategies used by participants when solving SAMUEL problems. Two experimental groups were created: one group was given an explicit, difficult…

At a time when, in most countries, the profession of school psychology is experiencing a period of growth and expansion, many problems still remain. The origins of these problems are linked to the historical development of the profession which has provided school psychologists with a unique and distinctive role in administering IQ tests and using…

The basic problem under investigation was the determination of empirical relationships between two models, developed by Piaget and Loyola University and employed in the assessment of cognitive processes in a problem solving context. Among objectives explored were: (1) investigation of the sensitivity of the intelligence test in distinguishing…

Reviews the articles in this issue of "School Psychology Quarterly" and briefly compares their methods for identifying profile patterns. Argues that subtest profile patterns on the existing generation of intelligence tests have modest reliability and weak relationships with achievement and diagnostic categorizations. (Contains 13…

A multidimensional model of social intelligence was empirically derived. Through the use of factor analytic techniques, five domains of social intelligence were identified and found to be independent of verbal and abstract intelligence. (Author/LMO)

This commentary on a paper by Douglas Detterman and others (EC 604 995), which tested a model assessing basic cognitive abilities in young adults with and without mental retardation, criticizes the paper for drawing conclusions not justified by the empirical results. (JDD)