Misconceptions are systematic, intelligently conceived, and quite reasonable theories that have been constructed on the basis of experience. Research studies on misconceptions have indicated that students develop intelligently conceived and sophisticated concepts of science. Although some of these are compatible with the principles of modern…

This booklet describes research carried out under sponsorship of the Psychological Sciences Division of the U.S. Office of Naval Research during Fiscal Year 1985. The booklet is divided into three programmatic research areas: (1) Engineering Psychology; (2) Personnel and Training; and (3) Group Psychology. Each program is described by an overview…

A study examined acquisition of new vocabulary through oral stories in first-, third-, and fifth-grade children. Each subject heard four stories, each including four nonsense words repeated three times. These novel words represented common nouns whose meanings could be derived from propositional information associated with their occurrence. The…

The processing of incoming psychological information along the network, or schemata, of self-knowledge was studied to determine the convergent and discriminant validity of the patterns of schemata-specific response latencies. Fifty-three female and 52 male university students completed the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI). BPI scales assess…

Reviewed are recent studies of the cognitive development of Chinese children. The discussion identifies: (1) systematic studies of children's cognitive development; (2) studies on the development of thinking; (3) studies of memory development; and (4) studies on the influences of various national cultures and education on the development of…

Analyses of deviant sexual behaviors have most often derived from psychodynamic or behavioral theory. Little systematic research attention has been paid to the role of intervening cognitive variables such as social perception and the causal attribution process. Two studies were conducted to examine differences in cognition between child molesters…

Stanford University's new Symbolic Systems Program is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program focusing on understanding the nature of intelligent behavior. It brings together the disciplines of cognitive psychology, logic, computer science and artificial intelligence, philosophy, and linguistics in a newly emerging field of research concerned…

This report presents two experiments that compared the performance of map experts to that of novices. Subjects (from the areas of geography, educational psychology, and sociology) were 13 university faculty members in experiment one and 12 undergraduate students in experiment two. Following a practice trial, the learning of a logical map and a…

This is the second annual report of the Army Research Institute's (ARI) basic research program. It describes the current focus of the program and the individual research efforts sponsored within each of the four principal thrust areas: ability assessment; instructional technology; cognitive processing limitations; and intelligent systems. In…

A theory of the components of verbal intelligence is developed and tested in this series of experiments. After reviewing alternative theoretical frameworks for understanding verbal intelligence, a componential theory of verbal comprehension is proposed. This theory specifies the information-processing components, context cues, and mediating…

The Discussion Development Group (DDG) at Moray House College of Education, Scotland, is a resource center designed as an open learning system to provide inservice training, consultancy support, and resources on classroom discussion. A case study involving 17 teachers and recently conducted by the DDG explored features of process innovation and…

After observing secondary school students having great difficulty learning geometry in their classes, Dutch educators Pierre van Hiele and Dina van Hiele-Geldof developed a theoretical model involving five levels of thought development in geometry. It is the purpose of this monograph to present English translations of some significant works of the…

To examine the role of elaborations in learning a procedural skill (i.e., using a personal computer) from an instructional text, 88 members of the Carnegie-Mellon University community (students, faculty, and staff members) participated in two experiments. Experimental sessions consisted of a reading period followed by a task performance period in…

This paper presents a general framework for the process of answering questions from memory. The focus is primarily on verification and recognition tasks. Six experiments support the assumptions of the proposed framework. The experiments are designed to address the following categories of inquiry: (1) Can we adjust our strategy preference to mirror…

Focusing on how expert writers in various disciplines convey complex ideas, this paper shows how the techniques used by the mathematician, Clark Kimberling, in various writings can (1) be transferred to other disciplines, (2) show learning taking place, and (3) provide models for students to re-enact learning in all subject areas. The paper…