This paper reviews some literature on the emergence of formal reasoning and reports a study of reasoning performance of 213 middle grade students in relationship to grade level and chronological age. While a number of large-scale studies have indicated that formal reasoning emerges in a regular progression across age ranges and grade levels, few…

While logical reasoning skills are related to success in science, the relationship between thought and formal logic is not clear. Propositional Logic Test (PLT), error patterns of students' interpretations of logical proposition, and developmental patterns of the error type are described. Examined is the relationship between logical reasoning…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the achievement of some abstract concepts in "molecular genetics" and prior knowledge, formal reasoning ability, and sex. The major findings of the study were: (1) prior knowledge had a high significant correlation with the achievement of abstract concepts; (2) the…

The purpose of this study was to examine for the middle grades how students' cognitive reasoning level contributes to the variability of their achievement test performance. While previous investigations have indicated that measures of reasoning development are associated with measures of achievement, few such studies have attempted to control for…