Thirteen to fifteen year-old students from Denmark, Sweden, Italy, United States, Austria, Germany, and Great Britain were the subjects on this study of formal thought processes. Socioeconomic status, sex, and school organization provided additional categorization upon which the subjects were divided. Chi square analysis revealed some differences.…

Children's understanding of Euclidian space was investigated using three Piaget-type tasks to examine the ability of children to quantitatively locate a point in one, two, and three dimensions. Among the findings were that a disagreement exists between Piaget's data and the results of this study. (BT)

Describes steps involved in the construction of a 15-item test to measure formal reasoning in junior and senior high school students. From analysis, the author concludes that the test has face, convergent, and factorial validities. (CP)

A pretest-posttest research design was used with 104 first-grade children to determine if discrimination and classifactory activities would affect transition from preoperational to concrete stages. Findings showed the experimental group exhibited significantly greater transition than did the control group. (CP)

Investigates the extent of understanding of the logic of hypothesis testing by high school students, and whether this understanding is related to scholastic achievement or ability as measured by standardized tests. (Author/GA)

Extends P. E. Jonson's studies of physics learning by analyzing, on the basis of a 12-student control group, 24 high-school students' word associations, aptitude scores, and achievement results during instruction. Indicated a positive relationship between problem-solving ability and meaningful concept formation. (CC)

Examines conditions for the acquisition of the proportionality concept and attempts to improve the ability of remedial college students in an urban university to solve proportions. Specifically, the study was designed: (1) to observe the acquisition of the proportionality concept through training on the operations of group-structured tasks, and…

Reports on the administration of a biology cognitive preference test to 177 science-oriented high school students. Subjects were asked to rank responses or "extension statements" to items according to their preference. It was found that the high-ability students as a group had a very high preference for questioning and low preference for recall.…

Investigates whether the formal schemata and propositional logic are acquired gradually across age during adolescence, in agreement with Piaget's logical analysis of the structure of formal thought, or acquired in wholesale spurts, thus disagreeing with Piaget's theory. (GA)

Investigates the attainment of abstract and concrete concepts and the use of pseudoexamples to move concrete thinkers to abstract levels in secondary school chemistry classes. Findings reveal abstract students achieve significantly higher means on both concrete and abstract concept attainment and that pseudo examples have no effect on the ability…

Seventh-grade students enrolled in two average classes were pretested, randomly assigned to two training groups--an active group in which physical materials were employed and a verbal group in which standard textbook procedures were employed--immediately posttested and posttested one month later. The active group showed greater achievement and…

Two years after the end of a two-year intervention program set within the context of science learning intended to promote formal operational thinking, achievement of students (n=234) was tested by their results on British National examinations taken at age 16. Male experimental subjects achieved an average of 40 percent more grades of C or above…

Provides a review of research on scientific reasoning in persons between ages 14 and 18. For the application, the ability to separate variables or use the concept of "all other things being equal" is termed scientific reasoning. Over 50 studies are referenced. (CP)

Four types of proportionality problems were administered to: (1) secondary school students who were enrolled in Project Physics, and (2) students not enrolled in physics. Both samples were randomly selected. Groups were not found to differ significantly in problem solving ability but both revealed that the ability to solve certain problems was…

Debates as to the appropriateness of using the Karplus Islands Puzzle as an instrument to assess formal-operational thought. (CP)