This study examined verbal and non-verbal features of mother-infant shared book reading in Australia during the first year of life and explored the relationship between these features and infant cognition. Mother-infant dyads were observed in this cross-sectional study reading an unfamiliar book in a laboratory setting when infants were aged 6…

The aim of this study was to develop a novel cognitive procedure for operationalizing how the re-encoding and constraint relaxation, suggested by representational change theory (RCT) (Ohlsson, 1992, 2011), can effect representational change in verbal insight problem solving, thus circumventing the constraints imposed by past experience. Some…

Research on problem solving typically does not address tasks that involve following detailed and/or illustrated step-by-step instructions. Such tasks are not seen as cognitively challenging problems to be solved. In this paper, we challenge this assumption by analyzing verbal protocols collected during an Origami folding task. Participants…

This study investigated the role of strategy instruction and working memory capacity (WMC) on word problem solving accuracy in children with (n = 100) and without (n = 92) math difficulties (MD). Within classrooms, children in Grades 2 and 3 were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: verbal-only strategies (e.g., underlining…

Analogical reasoning--perceiving similarities in different situations and the transfer of such information--facilitates learning and understanding. However, children with learning disabilities (LD) typically demonstrate deficits in such information processing strategies. In this study, we investigated the analogical problem-solving differences…

A total of 308 undergraduates performed 2 word tasks and a gestalt closure task in a study of intuition. Subjects could respond discriminately to coherence they could not identify and were led by this perception to form a hunch or hypothesis. Clues to coherence evidently activate problem-solving networks. (SLD)

Concludes that children scoring high in picture arrangement on the Wechsler have significantly poorer problem solving ability than children with low picture arrangement scores. (RB)

Comparison of cognitive performance of 51 students with hearing loss and 64 hearing students indicated that, at age 10, students with hearing loss performed better on nonverbal tasks and worse on verbal tasks. At age 13, students with hearing loss performed poorly in both verbal and nonverbal tasks. (Author/SW)

Reports on research examining the effect of linguistic presupposition on the solving of three-term series problems. (Author/RM)

Proposes a self-instructional strategy training paradigm designed to explicitly teach that the use of heuristic processes and mediational devices can be employed to compensate for age-associated deficits, such as poor problem solving. Format for the procedure was derived from the developmental research of the Soviet psychologists Vygotsky and…

Reports on research showing that when an event, or a problem, is repeated, the processing of that event is not necessarily repeated. Instead, sometimes the solution is remembered, and this is shown to influence subsequent retention, as well as such tasks as word perception. (AM)

The uses of verbal rules in solving arithmetic problems are presented. Thirty-six problems were used in individual testing of five students who were enrolled in a remedial mathematics course at a community college. Two or three weeks prior to the individual exams, the students had been tested in their class on the material. The study indicated…

Described is the use of story telling as a context to introduce mathematical concepts by providing a model, offering problem-posing situations, stimulating investigation, and illustrating concepts. Examples of appropriate stories are given for the primary and low secondary levels. (MDH)

Since structural dimensions of knowledge and learner contribute to preferred message structure, an understanding of structural relationships can aid in the more effective design of instructional messages. Five studies were conducted to explore these relationships. Knowledge structure was defined as the iconic representation of the body of…