The current focus on high level planning and abstract goals runs the risk of misrepresenting the contributions that cognitive psychology could make to the study of writing if it neglects important linguistic features that distinguish the writing of natural language from other problem solving tasks. An alternative perspective on writing emphasizes…

Resource allocation decisions are a fundamental class of problems common throughout a business and therefore are found throughout business school curricula. Entrepreneurs must allocate capital, financiers must allocation cash, and production managers must create the best mix of multiple-use resources. Within this context, a business school's…

Two studies were conducted, with three-to-five-year-olds, to assess the relationship between language comprehension and production and the development of quantity concepts. The asymmetry of acquisition of adjectives, "big" and "little," was also assessed, as well as differences in the acquisition of the underlying concepts. In Experiment 1, it was…

The first section of this report reviews traditional memory studies, which have provided much of our information concerning memory development. Major strengths and weaknesses of memory-development studies are illustrated by comparison with recent research into children's problem-solving skills. The report concentrates on one area of general…

The study reported here extends the investigation begun by Piaget of content effects to laboratory and naturalistic tasks. If the accuracy and completeness of the subjects' expected variables is related to content, then performance on laboratory and naturalistic tasks should differ systematically. The subjects' expected variables were measured by…

Detailed is a strategy for teaching the transformation of word problems into equations, equation systems, or inequalities. Classroom experiments using the method are described and are favorable. The underlying philosophy of the method is that the transformation will be accomplished by means of comprehension at first, but in the second stage the…

The focus of this study was on the processes students used in making mathematical conjectures for five divergent problem situations. The relationship of the processes to creativity factors across the problems was also examined. The results of various cluster analyses and correlational measures indicated that students use different sequences of…

Human information processing is analyzed in terms of eight fundamental concepts: procedures, operations on procedures, frames, planning language or meta-language, heuristics, knowledge in other forms, critics, and pointers. Examples of this processing are given. (MK)

The ordering of difficulty of logic principles and the age of acquisition for each were examined with 160 gifted children (20 each from ages 4 to 11). Five principles of class logic were explored: three orders of enthymemes, i.e., missing conclusion, missing minor premise, and missing major premise; and two additional third order enthymemes, i.e.,…

TWO BASIC NEEDS OF THE DECISIONMAKER ARE IDENTIFIED--THE NEED TO FUNCTION UNDER CONDITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CERTAINTY AND THE NEED TO BE VIGILANT AFTER THE INITIAL DECISION HAS BEEN MADE. PSYCHOLOGICAL CERTAINTY IS DETERMINED BY THE PERSON'S ASSESSMENT OF HIS ENVIRONMENT OR LIFE SPACE AND THE RESOURCES HE HAS AT HIS COMMAND, BOTH OF WHICH ARE…

Investigated were the inferences that children draw from science tests and their relation to the intuitive, concrete and formal levels of thinking and mental development postulated by Piaget. It was found that the older the pupil is, both chronologically and mentally, or the higher his grade placement, the more frequently he uses the formal level…

This study examines the impact of one important task characteristic for the process by which groups solve problems. The principal comparison is between a generative problem and a choice task, and whether or not the differences between these types of tasks affect the group's methods for arriving at a decision. Two types of analysis are conducted of…

The research reported in this paper was designed to analyze the incidence of use of higher-order rules by students solving geometric construction problems. A carefully selected set of construction problems was subjected to rigorous a priori analysis by mathematics educators to determine what basic and second-order rules might be used by able high…

Experimental hypotheses are proposed which assert (1) that "thought" and "language" are distinct but both are part of linguistic performance; (2) that "thought" is central, and "language" is a symbolic system that one uses to refer in various ways to what he thinks; and (3) that immediate memory works with utterances and linguistic texts over a…

Learner controlled instruction in which the student controls the computer (e.g., computer programing) instead of it controlling the student (e.g., drill-and-drill-and-practice) is described. The nature of this mode of computer use is explored, and some examples based on case studies conducted by the author are given. A rationale for learner…