A study was conducted to test a model that conceives of long term memory as a propositional network of ideas made up of knowledge clusters and related subclusters. After two pilot studies suggested that recall order of ideas was unrelated to organization, the study investigated whether units of main and supporting ideas produced during…

The automatic/controlled processing theory proposal that the modification of long term memory (LTM) occurs only during controlled processing, and that stimuli can be automatically processed with no resulting LTM effect was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, subjects were shown words while performing tasks involving either…

Children's increasing use of intentions and motives and decreasing use of outcomes to morally evaluate action are perhaps the most researched phenomena in moral cognition. However, relatively little is known about the acquisition of the ability to make moral evaluations and the processes involved. Based on the assumption that children's…

Described in the context of a computer simulation are highlights of a program of research focusing on the storage of mathematics problem solving information in young children's memory and the development of such knowledge structures in older children. Specifically discussed are the problem size effect, the network nature of the memory…

This paper reviews the aspects of cognitive science that relate best to using electrical and magnetic recording to understand the function of brain systems. It outlines a framework for relating cognitive activities of daily life (typing, reading) to underlying neural systems. The framework uses five levels of analysis: task, elementary operations,…

Procedural semantics models have diminished the distinction between data structures and procedures in computer simulations of human intelligence. This development has theoretical consequences for models of cognition. One type of procedural semantics model, called schema theory, is presented, and a variety of cognitive processes are explained in…

This report examines the theory that when people understand a text, they create a complex scenario (or model) within which the events described might plausibly occur. In order to study construction and revision of such models, five subjects were given difficult-to-understand texts, and were later asked to discuss the processing they went through…

This study tested the ability of two semantic-memory models, feature-comparison and network, to explain differences in information processing times. The feature-comparison model assumes that an item's meaning is held in semantic memory as a set of characteristic and defining features, while the network model assumes that semantic memory is…

This document discusses how the organization of instruction influences the encoding and structuring of new material in the memory and the subsequent transfer of such information to novel situations. A theory of instruction for problem solving that considers relevant cognitive variables and that specifies the conditions for productive learning is…

The first part of this paper on prose analysis explains how structural analysis of text can be used in reading research. This explanation focuses on three methodological uses of prose analysis: (1) the identification of the content and organization of the text for use in a scoring system, (2) the measurement of variations between the text and the…

This paper presents an overview of current research on causal attributions for success and failure with a focus on theoretical developments since the Weiner et al (1971) paper and applications which have been made using this theoretical model. Theoretical advances include more sophisticated measurement of causal attributions, applications of the…

This paper provides an overview of the cognitive process analysis of tasks used to measure aptitude and intelligence. As an illustration of this approach, performance on inductive reasoning tasks such as series extrapolation and analogy problems is considered in terms of the factors that contribute to item difficulty and individual differences in…

A study was conducted concerning television program decision-making based on a theory of human information processing. Twenty-eight programers from 13 markets completed experimental simulations of television programing decisions. Important steps in the procedure were determined to be evaluation, search for alternatives, and selection of…

A dynamic model of reading that represents the processes of gaining idiosyncratic integrated meaning from the silent reading of continuous textual discourse has been developed. It includes the roles of the affective interactions as well as the cognitive connections and integrations energized during the silent reading of a continuous text. The…

This paper presents a tentative model of the writing process that has been developed according to the technique of protocol analysis. (A protocol is a description of the activities, ordered in time, in which a subject engages while performing a task.) The model identifies subprocesses of the composing process and their organization; minor…