This paper discusses the role of uncertainty during the early stages of problem solving. It is argued that students start the problem solving activity with some degree of uncertainty that may vary from high to low. This degree of uncertainty may affect students' decisions at early stages of the problem solving process. It may be suggested that an…

This paper addresses two questions: "Does conceptual understanding help students solve related quantitative problems?" and "Does working through a quantitative problem help students understand the concepts involved?" A class of approximately 100 students was split into two equally skillful groups, A and B. Group A was administered a tutorial…

Decision exercises using a finite state machine and replacement systems are described in this second of two articles. For the first article, see MT No. 62, March, 1973, pp. 50-55. (DT)

After being measured for test anxiety, three groups of participants observed an experimenter, who served as a model, solve sample problems prior to performing themselves. Opportunity to observe a model who verbalized while working on problems and who stated general principles had a positive effect on performance. (Author/KM)

A number of models are considered that specify how children and adults solve single-digit addition problems. (Authors)

Portions of this paper were presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Santa Monica, California, March 1969. (MH)

Research supported by National Research Council of Canada Grant No. APA-250.

Discusses current research (including that involving amnesiacs and snails) into the nature of the memory process, differentiating between and providing examples of "fact" memory and "skill" memory. Suggests that three brain parts (thalamus, fornix, mammilary body) are involved in the memory process. (JN)

Reports on a study of human problem-solving behavior in which a technique called First-Order Cognitive Analysis was employed to analyze the tasks involved in certain accounting processes such as bookkeeping. A reference list, an appendix outlining the problem employed in the study, and an appendix on the task analysis are attached. (JL)

Two nonentrenched tasks are described, one requiring projection into the future of states of objects, the other requiring complex anological reasoning where multiple terms of analogies can be replaced by alternative answer options. Some speculations are made about the implications of these results for educational theory and practice. (Author/GK)

Changes in children's cognitive strategies for solving simple subtractions were studied by analyzing verbal reports given immediately after each problem. The development of children's cognitive processes involved a gradual shift from more primitive and less demanding memory strategies to reconstructive memory processes to retrieval processes.…

In a discussion of intellectual giftedness, the author describes the main characteristics that differentiate information processing theories from psychometric theories. Interrelationships between components and factors are considered, and implications of the theory for the training of the gifted are pointed out. (SB)

Think aloud data were gathered from 19 subjects solving three statistical problems. Good problem solvers differed from poor in that they (1) more often clarified essential concepts related to the problem, or (2) appeared to attend more closely to what was actually asked for in the problem. (Author/SJL)