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)

Features five activities to nurture "number sense," promote practice in mental calculations, and promote student self-confidence in mathmatical operations. These are "hands-off" exercises that are preparatory to calculator and computer use for math. (ET)

Three experiments using university students explored what constitutes an event and what determines its boundaries. Results supported the hypothesis that sequences of stimuli repeating in different contexts are cut out to become cognitive entities ("things" with a beginning and an end) in their own right. Results suggest that the…

Pragmatic and semantic problem solving are examined as processes that enhance acquisition of mathematical knowledge. It is suggested that development of mathematical cognition involves restructuring and that math teachers can help restructure children's knowledge systems by providing them with situations in which semantic and pragmatic problem…

This article describes a problem-solving strategy unit to be used as a supplement to the regular mathematics curriculum at the primary level. Specific teaching steps and examples are given for three developmental stages of thinking: (1) concrete, (2) representational, and (3) abstract. (DB)

A mapping procedure based on the SOLO Taxonomy developmental model was used to classify the problem-solving strategies of students (n=34) in grades K-2. Only one multiplication problem was used to isolate three components of the problem-solving procedure. (MDH)

Twenty-four sixth-grade children participated in clinical interviews on ratio and proportion before receiving instruction in the domain. Student thinking was analyzed in terms of mathematical components critical to proportional reasoning. Two components, relative thinking and unitizing, were consistently related to higher levels of sophistication…

Four experiments were conducted to explore issues in the development and modification of both moral choices and judgments of achievement using concepts and data from a social judgment perspective. In the first experiment, college students functioning at different reasoning levels indicated on a 20-point scale their strength of belief that an…

This study describes the relationship of two cognitive variables, logical thinking and disembedding ability, to learners' abilities to make conceptual shifts from less acceptable to more acceptable conceptual understandings of a physical phenomenon. The difference in the logical thinking and disembedding ability of students who exhibited different…

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…

This research study was conducted to investigate the interactions of specific student aptitudes with their ability to solve chemistry problems of varying structure and information. Fourteen classroom quizzes were validated and a number of in-task variables were identified for analysis. These variables included: the nature of information given…

During socialization, individuals begin to understand increasingly broader and more abstract units of personal and social reality. Subjects (N=97) ranging in age from 13 to late middle age completed a linguistic task in which they could impose higher order conceptions on lower order descriptions by identifying different level similarities within…

Recent efforts have been made to develop more age-appropriate intelligence measures for the elderly to determine the nature of age differences and changes in adult cognitive development. Spatial and reasoning performances of young, young-old and old-old individuals were compared on traditional versus familiar and presumably more meaningful…

The achievement of bilingualism appears to have positive consequences for the bilingual child, enhancing universal aspects of cognitive functioning available to all normal children. However, little is yet known about the interaction between educational treatment and the input factors the bilingual child brings to the situation. Focusing on the…

Recent research projects have indicated that a majority of adolescent and adult students have not reached a formal level of cognitive functioning and must therefore be taught rhetorical modes such as comparison and classification. A study was constructed to investigate the cognitive skills development of average college freshmen and to test…