The study focuses on the possibility that the tendency of academic underachievers to respond in terms of all inclusive language is indicative of their incapacity to discriminate the uniquely meaningful aspects of their environment. The authors hypothesize that academic achievers would differ significantly from academic underachievers in their…

Three experiments compared cognitive processes in Caucasian nursery school children from different socioeconomic backgrounds who were equated for performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The first demonstrated that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds experience more difficulty in solving a series of extradimensional and…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of modeling or training with and without rule provision on the employment of strategies in solving four-dimensional, discrimination-learning problems. Subjects were 144 second and sixth-grade children from the New York City Public Schools. The blank-trial hypothesis testing paradigm was used. The…

One of the most important capacities which children employ when learning language is the capacity to generalize. A child who hears an utterance of a verbal expression while perceiving a particular object (or action, aspect, etc.) becomes normally able to apply the expression not only to this object but also to all those objects which, for him, are…

This study was designed to examine the effects of age and sex on susceptibility to field dependence training and to determine whether the field dependence phenomenon is a function of cognitive style or of a general inability to make correct judgments because of confusing and inaccurate information. (MS)

CONCEPT FORMATION IN 50 KINDERGARTENERS WAS STUDIED BY REQUIRING THE CHILDREN TO SORT CARDS ACCORDING TO ONE OF FOUR ATTRIBUTES OF THREE DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS. THE OBJECTIVE WAS TO EXPLORE THE VALIDITY AND LIMITATIONS OF AN ALL-OR-NONE LEARNING MODEL FOR COMPLEX CLASSIFYING RESPONSES. INFORMATION WAS PRESENTED TO THE SUBJECT BY TWO POSITIVE…

A STUDY, IN PROGRESS, IS ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE THE INTERACTION OF VARIOUS REWARD CONDITIONS AND VARIOUS TYPES OF PRESCHOOL EXPERIENCE WITH DISCRIMINATION LEARNING. THE SUBJECTS ARE 240 4- AND 5-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN WITH THREE TYPES OF PRESCHOOL EXPERIENCE--1 TO 3 MONTHS OF HEAD START, 10 TO 12 MONTHS OF HEAD START, AND NO ATTENDANCE IN A PRESCHOOL…

One control group and eight experimental groups, each composed of 12 first grade children, participated in this experiment. It was designed to investigate the effects of frequency of reinforcement and repeated evaluation of stimuli on the conditioning of preferences. Each child participated in the experiment for seven consecutive school days. The…

Discusses activities that can help teachers of toddlers to design environments that stimulate and facilitate children's exploration, discovery, and understanding of color beyond the traditional boundaries of sight. Suggests that by incorporating other senses, teachers offer to the older toddlers rich multi-sensory experiences that can nurture and…

Two experiments studied the influence of an individual's cognitive style on concept identification. Subjects were high school males, classified into levels of cognitive style according to their performance on the Hidden Figures Test. For the first experiment, three non-overlapping groups of 30 each were required to classify figural patterns, which…

Literature dealing with the disadvantaged is cursorily reviewed and questions raised by the literature are considered. Specifically, this study concerns the relationship between social class and the rate of processing of visual information in young children. Although various sources of slowness in learning are mentioned, this study focused only on…

Reexamines the traditional role of observation in science and science education. Proposes that since observation is based on some view of the world, it is not innocent and unbiased, but theory-dependent. Discusses possible implications for the science curriculum when reconsidering the role and status of observation in science. (TW)

A study of response latency in a drill-and-practice task showed that variability in latency measures could be reduced by the use of self-pacing procedures, but not by the detailed analysis of latency into separate components. Experiments carried out on instructional history variables in teaching a mirror image, oblique line discrimination, showed…

Simple and complex learning and problem solving situations were employed with mentally retarded children and adults. In the Rotation-Discrimination Complex and the Size-Discrimination Simple experiments, upper and lower test achievement subgroups were subjected to two basic types of visual discrimination at different levels of task complexity.…