Highlights findings from cognitive science which suggest new approaches for science and mathematics instruction, addressing role of naive theories and qualitative understanding of situations in problem-solving. Also considers nature of the learner based on the findings. (JN)

Concludes that junior high school students encode movies better than prose, but that college students encode both equally well. (FL)

Describes some of the ways early adolescents respond to reading and thinking tasks and details the development of procedures for observing and analyzing children as they complete such tasks. (FL)

Describes a study using experimental and control classes to test the effect of exercises in creative thinking. The tenth-grade students were able to increase their ability to think creatively. (Author/SA)

Investigated the effects of individual difference variables of field dependence/independence and spatial visualization ability on the performance of college students in three modes. The extent to which four variables account for variability in retention test performance on certain tasks was also viewed. (MP)

Examines characteristics of the mental processes required for writing, compares and contrasts the nature of processing required for other cognitive activities, and reviews recent research on children's writing that reveals the advantages as well as disadvantages of superimposing writing skills over well-developed language skills. (HOD)

Discusses the structure of a problem-based curriculum based on the complexity of the problems that the students must solve, taking into account the level they must attain and their previous experience with problem-based teaching. This approach is compared with the conventional teaching methods. Twenty-two references are listed. (CHC)

The use of modified essay questions (MEQs), developed at the University of Newcastle to assess clinical problem-solving, is reported. Reliability estimates as high as 0.91 were reported. The validity of assessment by MEQ was based on one model of medical problem-solving and another of cognitive skill taxonomies. (Author/MLW)

Judgements about the acceptability of anomalous and non-anomalous sentences were elicted from children between the ages of 2;0 and 5;0. The aim was to see how the children's direct experience might affect their recognition of semantic constraints, and how far their experience would generalize. (Author)

Examined relations between ratings of mother-child interactions in a problem-solving situation at school entry and academic achievement in grades 2, 3, and 4. Data on the child's cognitive and fine-motor ability and mother's education were also collected at school entry. Academic achievement was assessed with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.…

Proposes that formal properties of speech reflect individuals' mental processes during problem solving, focusing on ways native and non-native speakers of English construct narrative. In difficult tasks, speakers cope by externalizing their inner order as private speech, whose content and formal properties reflect cognitive processes. It is argued…

Describes grade-appropriate weekly activities designed to appeal directly to students by giving them open-ended questions. Activities may be worked on individually, in pairs, or in small groups. This particular set of activities focuses on stories from literature involving measurement, earning money, marketing a product, and setting up a…

Explored the extent to which retrospective reports of childhood emotional bonds with parents and current adult attachment orientations predicted the capacity for constructive thinking within a sample of 145 undergraduate students. Both factors significantly predicted constructive thinking scores, thus linking attachment-related experiences to the…

Examined is the relationship between junior high school students' directional reasoning about rates and numerical reasoning on proportion-related word problems. The relationship between the ability to solve context-free fraction exercises and the ability to solve mathematically similar word problems is discussed. (KR)

Described are the general problem-solving strategies and their nature and functions. The importance of integrating different types of general problem-solving strategies with content-specific teaching in mathematics classes is discussed. (KR)