A set of studies examined infant categorization of the orientation of visual stimuli by establishing a categorization function for the orientation continuum; attempted to determine a perceptual boundary between "oblique" and "vertical"; and explored the relationship between discrimination abilities and the perceptual boundary.…

The ability of 1- to 3-year-olds to conceptually interrelate objects was studied among eight children each at 12, 18, 24, 30, and 36 months who were given seven free classification tasks containing a scrambled array of eight objects from two classes. Spontaneous manipulations of the subjects were analyzed. (Author/RH)

Discusses T. D. Wilson's research emphasis on situating the investigation of information behavior within the context of the everyday world of work; considers embodied cognition; and presents two approaches to the investigation of classification in context: classification as scaffolding, and classification as infrastructure. (Author/LRW)

Synthesizes MacLaury's vantage theory, Barsalou's frame theory, and the relation between similarity, commonality, and difference. Frame theory elaborates on the structural components of mental representations, while vantage theory elaborates on the processing by which these components are integrated. (Author/VWL)

Four-and-a-half-month-old infants' ("N"=100) category formation and use was studied in a series of five experiments. For each experiment, the test events featured a display composed of a cylinder and a box. Previous research showed that this display is not clearly parsed as a single unit or as two separate units by infants of this age. Immediately…

This article examines whether questions embedded in geography textbooks address three components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking was developed and used to evaluate questions in four high school level geography textbooks. The results…

This case study analyzes five science courses of a United States virtual charter school. Online quizzes and exams are provided by the corporate partner, while local teachers have selected report topics, virtual labs and at-home labs for students to complete. These assessments were coded for their correlation to the cognitive levels of the revised…

While five-month-old infants show orientation-specific sensitivity to changes in the motion and occlusion patterns of human point-light displays, it is not known whether infants are capable of binding a human representation to these displays. Furthermore, it has been suggested that infants do not encode the same physical properties for humans and…

This article describes a quizzing activity that aims to facilitate student cognitive engagement at a variety of Bloom's taxonomy levels and promote reading of course assignments. The quizzing activity described is potentially useful for any course. Because it is based on Bloom's cognitive taxonomy, which is itself designed to address the spectrum…

This article presents an introductory study of early-grade level geography education in terms of human ecology using accepted cognitive process and knowledge dimensions related to learning. The central question addressed is "at what cognitive process and knowledge levels do kindergarten and first-grade teachers teach geography?" A tentative answer…

Virtual reality (VR) technology has demonstrated effectiveness in a variety of technical learning situations, yet little is known about its differential effects on learners with different levels of visual processing skill. This small-scale exploratory study tested VR through quasi-experimental methodology and a theoretical/conceptual framework…

Autism is currently viewed as a spectrum condition that includes strikingly different severity levels; IQ is consistently described as one of the primary aspects of the heterogeneity in autism. To investigate the possibility of more than one distinct subtype of autism based on IQ, both latent class analysis and taxometrics methods were used to…

Briefly analyzes and critiques "The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives" by Benjamin Bloom and others from the perspective of the values and epistemological presuppositions of the critical thinking movement. Suggests that the hierarchical organization of the taxonomy fosters mistaken assumptions about cognitive processes and may hamper…

Assesses children's recall performance using three memory instructions: standard free recall, repetition, and categorical processing. Recall performance was about equal for standard versus repetition and superior when category processing is used, especially with highly representative items. Concludes that at both 7 years and 10 years the…

Behavior of 60 second-grade boys tested on three tasks designed by Piaget and on two cognitive style tasks showed great variability in each child's responses. (WY)