The concept of symmetry is vital for the study of science and developing spatial and geometric relationships. Yet few studies have been conducted to examine how students learn this concept. This study investigates 757 Year 4 to 10 students' ability to reason about symmetrical relationships. By analysing the semiotic processes through the lens of…

Both additive and proportional reasoning are types of quantitative analogical (QA) reasoning. We investigated the development and nature of primary school children's QA reasoning by offering two missing-value word problems to 3rd to 6th graders. In one problem, ratios between given numbers were integer, in the other ratios were non-integer. These…

This study was conducted at a research-extensive public university in the southeastern United States. It examined the retention and completion of master's degree students across numerous disciplines. Results were derived from a series of descriptive statistics, T-tests, and a series of binary logistic regression models. The findings from binary…

Studies of children's verbal reasoning that are focused on the valid principles of conditional reasoning indicate that young children (1) draw inferences from logically unconnected semantically related statements; (2) arrive at conclusions on the basis of no presented evidence; (3) do not differentiate between definite and indefinite propositions;…

Fifty-six Dutch school children (aged 6-0 to 14-4 years) participated in a study designed to investigate their ability to reason with logical implication. They answered a total of 32 reasoning problems. Before or after each question they were asked a class inclusion question. A high degree of correspondence was found between class inclusion and…

A study investigating developmental differences in the ability to reason with conditional propositions used five variations of Wason's selection task to assess conditional reasoning in 132 eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade adolescents. In addition to examining developmental differences, the study had as an objective to examine the role of semantic…

This study was concerned with distinguishing between two kinds of immature reasoning, both of which lead children to draw the same conclusions from arguments and which, therefore, cannot be distinguished by the usual tests. A total of 20 second-graders and 16 sixth-graders were tested on a logic game in which winning depended on drawing correct…

The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to investigate the effect of movement for several inanimate objects on children's judgments of "aliveness;" and (2) to examine the nature of explanations given by three age groups of children in support of their judgments as to whether animate and inanimate objects were "alive" or…

This study was designed to examine the processes underlying developmental changes in children's (1) use of combinatorial strategy, and (2) comprehension of conjunctive and disjunctive propositional relationships. A total of 108 children from third, sixth and eighth grades participated in this study. Each child was administered three tasks…

Three studies investigating the emergence and early refinement of intelligent self-correction are described. Forty-one children ranging in age from 18 to 30 months served as subjects. Parents taught their children a hide-and-seek game in which the parent hid a toy in natural locations in the home while the child watched. After a 3- or 5-minute…

This study examines the ability of 20 5- and 6-year-old children to determine whether an inference could reliably be made or whether a problem was undecidable. Children were given a random series of 8 decidable and 16 undecidable problems in which they had to determine in which of 2 houses a target character could be found. There were two…

This study looked at preschool and first-grade children's ability to draw script-based and text inferences in comprehension of stories they heard. In two experiments, children were asked to recall brief stories and answer two inference questions: one script inference question requiring them to fill in information about the event that was not…

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.,…

This paper takes the position that theories about individual differences in childhood and theories about cognitive development both would be enhanced if the two lines of research were integrated. The heuristic value of this position is illustrated in the context of analogical reasoning tasks. A general model of analogy solution and potential…

One of the issues facing educators is the increasing number of nontraditional students appearing in the college classroom. Recent conceptualizations of adult reasoning have suggested that there are qualitative differences in reasoning from young to late adulthood. The objective of this study was to examine cognitive differences rather than…