The effect of cognitive style and learning conditions on the rote verbal learning performance of Mexican American subjects classified as field independent or field dependent was investigated. Field dependent referred to a strong perceptual influence caused by the context or background while field independent referred to an ability to overcome the…

This paper presents a study using a neo-Piagetian theory to analyze the micro-structure underlying Piaget's "control of variables" scheme. Data are presented which support the conclusion that young children are capable of acquiring and utilizing this scheme before they acquire Conservation of Weight, that is, providing (1) that the…

The study reported here was an attempt to systematically manipulate certain factors which might be responsible for the poor communicational performance of lower socioeconomic status children. The major questions raised were: Can differences in task difficulty, perceptual characteristics of the task, and task instructions attenuate or eliminate…

This paper reviews two major advances in preschool evaluation strategy that developed as a result of trying to evaluate Head Start, and proposes another evaluation approach. The first advance in evaluation procedure was to conceive educational objectives in terms of processes rather than products; that is, there was a shift from achievement tests…

This study compared the creative self-direction, creative behavior, and creative activities of preschool children to determine if students and teachers trained in the creative process and in observation techniques can, with reliability, observe the creative potential of young children. Creative abilities of 155 children from four preschool centers…

The effects of conservation activities on children's acquisition of Piaget's conservation concepts were investigated. One hundred and twenty-eight seven-to nine-year-old children in four classrooms were given pre- and post-evaluation measures of conservation ability. The experimental group completed a set of 42 self-directed conservation…

The author finds Katz and Postal's 1964 generative semantic theories concerning the organization of grammar incorrect and proposes an interpretive approach to semantics in which syntactic structures are given interpretations by an autonomous semantic component. The research reported leads the author to describe a generative grammar consisting of…

The articles in this issue focus upon the implications of new research and trends in the psychology of the reading process, reading interests of children, the developmental values of reading, content analysis of children's books, adult reading studies, the adult new reader, and the implications of research for the publishing world. The articles…

The purpose of this study is to develop from naturalistic field observation data a set of concepts and hypotheses related to the teaching of thinking. The study conceptualizes and relates thought processes and instructional strategies by analyzing data collected from classrooms in which the Washington University Elementary Social Science…

This report presents a summary of the research designed to develop a psycholinguistics of comprehension and memory for meaningful written prose paragraphs. The approach departs from most previous ones by seeking to formulate an explicit theory, instead of relying on informal qualitative judgments as to paragraph structure, the scoring of data, and…

Four paradoxes appear in research on learning to read: (1) the ability to name letters is a good predictor of reading readiness, yet letter-naming training does not help children learn how to read; (2) visual discrimination is often better in poor readers than in good readers; (3) learning to read two languages is easier than learning to read one;…

The purpose of this study was to (1) find if spelling approaches could be isolated and classified by the use of the JDR Spelling Checklist (an interview-type questionnaire); (2) determine the incidence of approach--visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or combination--used by students in spelling new words; (3) see if a relationship existed between the…

The Class Activities Questionnaire (CAQ) was used to compare a Canadian high school participating in a research project employing an information retrieval system with another not involved in the project. This paper evaluates the validity of the CAQ as a measurement instrument for this study. The CAQ was administered to 1831 students, 806 Science…

Urban Geography was selected as the discipline for studying the physical structure of a city, as reported in ED 066 350. This second progress report presents a resume of the activities of the team and reflects upon the processes involved in curriculum building and instructional planning: 1) clarifying the nature of students involved, 2) finding…

The problem posed by this study was to determine a method of presenting information that would maximize learning, by taking into account the learner's conceptual tempo, one aspect of his cognitive style. Specifically, this study investigated the possible interaction effects of the learner's impulsive-reflective disposition with the rehearsal part…