This study investigated students' understanding of two mathematical relations as measured by conservation tasks. Thirty students were interviewed, half each at the middle and high school levels. The results suggest that the ability to conserve equation or function varies among pupils of different ages, sexes, and mathematical backgrounds. (MP)

Teaching students test wiseness can have a number of positive results, including improving the validity of the tests themselves and improving the scores of minority students on tests. (AEA)

Describes the beginning of a study of the cognitive processes required for applying financial accounting knowledge to specific problem solving situations. Task analysis is used to describe the cognitive components of accounting, and algorithms for the tasks are appended. Eighteen references are listed. (Author/CHC)

To determine the effects of a teacher's level of questioning on the development of children's problem-solving ability, children were exposed to three five-week treatment conditions in a half-day laboratory nursery school program. High-level cognitive questioning seemed to result in children's ability to generate significantly more alternative…

Recent studies of deductive reasoning are reviewed with respect to three questions: Do people reason logically? Is reasoning introspectible? Is reasoning sequential? It is argued that the evidence of reasoning experiments suggests a negative answer to all three questions, indicating that these experiments don't study "reasoning" in its everyday…

An information-processing analysis of intelligence proposed by Eysenck and Furneaux was examined in an experimental study of semantic categorization and free recall by 11-year-old children of varying intelligence. Results, and implications of the results, are discussed. (Author/KC)

Investigated the ability of kindergarten, first-grade and third-grade boys and girls to use a mnemonic strategy in a spatial task. (Author/DB)

The interrogative strategies of 20 institutionalized mentally retarded young adults and 38 nonretarded first and fourth graders were investigated using a 20-questions-type task. (Author)

Investigates the calculation strategies used by female students in Grades Two and Three to solve word problems. Findings indicate that students used three main intuitive models: (1) direct counting; (2) repeated addition; and (3) multiplicative operation. Concludes that children acquire an expanding repertoire of intuitive models and the model…

Used computerized simulation models of qualitative, conceptual problem solving and quantitative problem solving to examine qualitative physics knowledge acquisition during textbook-based physics training. Found that qualitative knowledge was acquired on the basis of explicit textbook information, but there were also cases of qualitative learning…

The study compared the problem solving strategies of intellectually gifted (N=133), average (N=102) and mentally retarded (N=51) children on two-dimensional integration problems. Gifted children tended to integrate dimensional information by addition, average children used lexicographic strategies, and retarded children relied on a single…

Reviews procedures followed during traditional organizational change and identifies factors that lead to increased intrinsic motivation. Topics discussed include problem solving, level of challenge, competence, people as information processors, curiosity, task complexity, the need for organization, and choice in degree of control. (17 references)…

Outlines four solution methods for the Mangoes Problem, discusses how middle school students have approached the problem, suggests generalizations of the problem, and gives an example of a related problem that can be used as an extension to explore the four strategies discussed. (MKR)

Two experiments studied preschool children's ability to infer numerosity from correspondence between two sets. Found that children were able to make inferences as early as three years of age. However, differences between the two conditions suggest production deficiencies in young children's use of counting as a problem-solving strategy when they…

It is argued that efficient use of cognitive strategies also involves domain-specific knowledge, metacognition, and motivation. Issues concerning cognitive strategy instruction are explored, and it is concluded that a hybrid model representing a compromise between the notion of cognitive strategies and current connectionism may best portray human…