In many cultural contexts, judging another as conscious or not has profound practical, legal, and philosophical consequences. However, little research focuses on how our ability to make such judgements arises. Thirty years ago a classic set of studies by Flavell et al. demonstrated that children do not develop a complex understanding of conscious…

According to Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), the highest levels of abstract thinking and self-regulation in preschool development are established in "pretend play using object substitutions." An extensive research literature supports Vygotsky's empirical model of the internalization of self-guiding speech (social speech > private speech…

Comments on Flavell's paper (PS 522 962) presented in the same issue. Stresses some of the positive aspects of preschoolers' conception of thinking, and raises questions about the relatively negative portrait of young child's introspective abilities. Discusses evidence of introspection among preschoolers, and underlines the special, and…

Comments on Flavell's paper in this issue. Examines the paper's findings on three different aspects of children's knowledge about thinking: their ability to differentiate thinking from other activities, their awareness that thinking is always going on in people's minds, and their capacity for introspection into their own thinking. Argues that…

A multidimensional model of the growth of moral reasoning is described that is significantly different from those proposed by Kohlberg and Piaget. A study that tests several aspects of the model on university students is reported. The suggestion that well-developed chains of reasons are a prerequisite for the emergence of metaethical reasoning was…

The relationship of cognitive development to learning science is considered. Views of thinking from both a psychological and a scientific standpoint are compared in order to shed light on current science teaching practice. Metacognition and problem solving are discussed. (Author/MT)

Reports results of 14 studies on children's knowledge about thinking. Suggests that preschoolers appear to know that thinking is an internal mental activity that can refer to real or imaginary objects or events. However, preschoolers are poor at determining when a person is and is not thinking. This shortcoming is considerably less evident in…

Four experiments investigated children's ability to notice and remember events in which the acquisition of factual information occurs. Results indicated that children tend to report they have known newly learned information for a long time, suggesting that children have some understanding of knowledge acquisition, but not at the level of adults.…

A study of the effects of the Instrumental Enrichment cognitive intervention program with 41 severely hearing impaired secondary school students was conducted. Experimental and control groups were compared in regard to general cognitive functioning, problem-solving strategies, reading comprehension, and mathematics. Experimental subjects were…

This bulletin offers guidelines to help parents and teachers improve the thinking skills of gifted children. It stresses the importance of encouraging thinking through the use of evocative questions, distinguishes between and defines critical thinking and creative thinking, and offers suggested questions to prompt either creative/divergent…

Examined 8- and 10-year olds' understanding of the unique features of and potential relations among mental activities. Found a developing tendency to organize mental activities on the degree to which memory was a component of the activity. Results suggest that a constructivist theory of mind develops in later childhood. (AA)

This article describes methods for teaching higher level thinking skills to children. A four-step teaching plan utilizing Beyer's Taxonomy of thinking skills provides a sequential technique for teaching these skills as do increased verbal interaction, skillful questioning, and use of knowledge organizers. The I PLAN strategy can aid decision…

A classroom cognitive intervention model for adolescents and adults who are deaf is described. The model provides mediated learning experiences whereby a person assists the learner in interpreting experience and learning problem-solving strategies. The program, entitled instrumental enrichment (IE), is based on the following principles: IE uses a…

Synthesizes research on reasoning development and studies of teaching in order to present an approach to teaching guided thinking. (SRT)

Cognitive science research offers hope for the development of innovative science teaching strategies that facilitate the development of optimally interconnected procedural and declarative knowledge networks. Improving students' neural networks should improve their abilities to think critically, reason logically, learn more efficiently, and solve…