Different speakers may pronounce the same sounds very differently, yet listeners have little difficulty perceiving speech accurately. Recent research suggests that listeners adjust their preexisting phonemic categories to accommodate speakers' pronunciations ("perceptual learning"). In some cases, these adjustments appear to reflect general…

The goal of the present study was to examine the contribution of executive function (EF) and social cognition to individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) in preschool children. Sixty 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were administered a battery of EF tasks, two theory of mind tasks, a measure of verbal ability, and an ER task. In addition,…

Children's exposure to mind-related talk has been shown to foster young children's metacognitive understanding and to orient them to the patterns of literate language long before they commence formal literacy instruction at school. In this paper, we report on a longitudinal study of the mind-related talk of 22 mothers when their infants were aged…

Working memory (WM) has been associated with the acquisition of arithmetic skills, however, the components of WM that underlie this acquisition have not been explored. This study explored the contribution of two WM systems (the phonological loop and the central executive) to mathematical performance in young children. The results showed that a…

This article presented some of the research on learning processes and illustrated how different modes of thinking can be applied in teaching some topics in secondary mathematics. (Author/RK)

Two processing abilities used to solve spatial problems are examined: (1) the analog ability of structural visualization; and (2) the non-analog ability of verbal analytic reasoning. The distinction is based on an evaluation of information processing theory and a review of process-oriented studies of individual differences. Criteria are presented…

Recent research in persuasion shows that while message recipients often use little cognitive effort when assessing message validity, they may instead rely on a heuristic processing strategy. This study used a priming-like paradigm to manipulate the reliability that subjects apply to the heuristic "message length implies message strength." Subjects…

This final report reviews the main theoretical and empirical developments concerning components of individual differences in human intelligence. The report is divided into three main sections. The first briefly reviews alternative approaches to understanding the nature of intelligence. The second provides the proposed componential metatheory, a…

This analysis of solutions to the Tower of Hanoi Problem underscores the importance of subject-by-subject analysis of "What is learned" in understanding human behavior in problem-solving situations, and provides a technique for describing subjects' task performance programs in detail. (Author/BJG)

Research on aptitude-instructional treatment interactions has shown that the relation of general ability to learning tends to increase as instruction places increased information processing burdens on learners and to decrease as instruction is designed to reduce the information processing demands on learners. This report summarizes a research…

Behaviors that characterize play with convergent and divergent materials and the effects of play on convergent and divergent problem solving were examined in this study. Seventy-two 3- and 4-year-old children were assigned to one of three conditions: (1) play with convergent materials; (2) play with divergent materials; and (3) non-play control.…

The theoretical and methodological concepts available to and needed by research on aptitudes as cognitive processes are discussed. Contemporary views of cognitive processes are examined in relation to individual difference constructs and the methods used to examine their reliability and validity. Individual difference constructs are discussed in…

Value judgments play a role in evaluation by determining the anticipated behavioral outcomes, what is measured, techniques for measurement, and decision making. Value judgments are usually faced only at the decision-making stage. Methods to analyze values will hopefully be given more emphasis in future evaluation enterprises. Studies using…

This speech reports an experiment on memory and verbal ability. The study notes that in previous research, verbal ability has been found to correlate with sensitivity to order, an important component of intelligence. This relationship may be due largely to the greater word store of high verbal scorers. The author's experimental hypothesis is that…