A study tested several different cognitive models of the way people use supporting arguments to arrive at belief in a claim. The models tested were (1) the model based on the assumption that human information processing is essentially logical; (2) R. S. Wyer's model; (3) the message-plus-context model; and (4) the weighted average model. One…

A study was conducted as part of a program to develop and test an individual level communications model. The model proposes that audience members bring to communications situations a set of learned cognitive processing strategies that produce cognitive structural representations of information in memory to facilitate the meeting of the various…

Two major factors have shaped writing research from the cognitive processing viewpoint. The first factor contains the strategic decisions about the course of such research, suggesting what is interesting and how best to proceed. The decisions made in regard to writing as a cognitive process have been to focus on the act of writing, to seek a…

Hitherto, theories of similarity have restricted themselves to judgments of what might be called literal similarity. A central thesis of this paper is that a complete account of similarity needs also to be sensitive to nonliteralness, or metaphoricity, an aspect of similarity statements that is most evident in similes, but that actually underlies…

This study examines the development of children's preference for task difficulty levels. Subjects were 78 boys and 66 girls, aged 63 to 105 months. The sample was separated into older and younger groups. Within each age group, half the children of each sex were randomly assigned to one of two forms to test their level of aspiration. Subjects were…

This paper describes an approach to task analysis which seeks to identify potential sources of difficulty in the self-discovery of improved procedures by students who have been taught simpler procedures. The approach considers novices' procedures in terms of the changes needed to produce an expert procedure; the knowledge required to make those…

This report describes research on Bartlett's theory of constructive memory. In experiment one, schematic retention is related to Tulving's distinction between episodic and semantic memory. With the passage of time, memory for prose reflects decreasing output from episodic memory and increasing output from semantic memory. In experiment two,…

The concept of an algorithm derives from the physical sciences, but it has often been misunderstood and misapplied in the social sciences and in education. The theoretical and practical significance of algorithms stems from their applicability to problems of learning, instruction, and instructional design, and they may potentially provide the…

Evidence from studies of memory for meaningful materials such as sentences and prose passages is reviewed in this paper with emphasis on its implications for the nature of the memory representation. It is argued that models of memory which involve the retrieval of stored copies of originally presented material cannot account for two crucial…

The concept of "structure" is discussed in connection with the biological and psychological sciences and shown, through a short historical analysis, to have been subject to imprecise use. The recent "structuralist movement" in the social sciences has also tended to cloud the meaning of structure rather than to clarify it. Using…

The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to test the hypothesis that a Similarity Rating Model based on a Classification Scheme of relationships between six words in physics is representative of human subjects' judgments of similarity between the six words, and (2) to test the hypothesis that the Classification Scheme could be used in a Word…

In trying to minimize the disadvantages of children from minority cultures in their first years of elementary school, the usual approach is to employ diagnostic tools which yield quantitative measures of such children's inadequacies, and then to teach in an attempt to yield higher scores. In the area of speech-communication, this approach focuses…

THE EFFECTS OF TWO TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING CHILDREN'S LITERATURE TO SAMPLES OF FIRST-GRADE CHILDREN WERE INVESTIGATED. THE EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT WAS BASED ON LAWRENCE KUBIE'S MODEL OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS. THE CONTROL GROUP RECEIVED THE CONVENTIONAL PRESENTATION OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE WITHOUT KUBIE'S EMPHASIS ON METAPHORICAL AND PRECONSCIOUS…

This study compared children's dependence on situational cues by a model to their reliance on the general affective valence of the model, in order to assess the role of each in determining vicarious changes in preference. Subjects were forty 4-year-olds attending a day care center. Among five toys used in pilot testing, a box of clothespins was…

This paper discusses a basic methodological and philosophical confusion in the study of human communication. Various scholars have assumed that the study, description, and definition of various systems have led to an understanding of the processes which underlie, or generate, human communication behavior. In effect, two levels of analysis and…