Current educational reform trends, particularly those for social studies instruction, have tended toward a fact-laden curriculum which constrains students' development and application of ideas and higher-level thinking. Concepts as well as facts must be included if schooling is to encourage students' understanding of themselves as well as society.…

This paper describes the rule-assessment approach to cognitive development. The basic question that motivated the rule-assessment approach is how people's existing knowledge influences their ability to learn. Research using the rule-assessment approach is summarized in terms of eight conclusions, each illustrated with empirical examples.…

The efficacy of teaching higher level cognitive skills to the trainable mentally retarded is questioned as research has yet to show that the skills learned can be generalized by this population to the classroom or other settings. (Author/PHR)

The paper reviews research in the area of cognition, specifically cognitive controls (information processing habits which tend to function across a variety of content areas). The review addresses information on three research questions: (1) What cognitive factors can reliably measure and describe the differences in levels of academic achievement…

The article reviews the educational trend toward a cognitive behavioral intervention approach in special education. One reason for the trend is the evidence that other treatments, especially behavior modification, were not generalizable or durable. (PHR)

Research evidence relative to three intervention strategies (medication, behavior modification, and cognitive training) was examined to determine the intervention effects on handicapped students' performance in personal/social, psychological processing, and educational skills domains. (PHR)

Although numerous research studies have shown that viewing educational television results in significant gains in preschool and school-age children's academic knowledge or skills, there is less consistent evidence regarding transfer of learning, the application of knowledge or skills learned in one context to a new problem or situation. This paper…

This study investigated the effects of K. J. Klauer's (1989) inductive reasoning training program of teaching children. Effects of training and the range of transfer of the training were assessed. The subjects were 34 third-grade Dutch children of average ability, matched on age, sex, and IQ. Children from the training condition (N=17) received…

Reviews selected research on children's early formation of categories. Finds sophistication in how children group objects and think about those groupings. Notes findings related to type of grouping (thematic or taxonomic), multiple classifications, overgeneralization, the role of background knowledge on classification abilities, the…

The research literature on children's production of elaborations in associative learning tasks is reviewed, especially with respect to the questions of when children can produce elaborations under instruction, when they transfer elaborative strategy usage from one situation to another, and when they produce elaborative strategies spontaneously.…

Examines operations of generalization, identification, discrimination, and synthesis in mathematical concept development from early childhood to late adolescence according to Vygotsky's theory of development. (MDH)