The authors outline a cognitive and computational account of causal learning in children. They propose that children use specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate "causal map" of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously…

This study compared the learning and study strategies college students used in a course with the learning and study strategies their professors believe to be most important for success in the course. The learning strategies investigated here derive from an extensive body of cognitive research that indicates different ways in which students learn…

The development of immersive learning technologies in the form of virtual reality and advanced computer applications has meant that realistic creations of simulated environments are now possible. Such simulations have been used to great effect in training in the military, air force, and in medical training. But how realistic do problems need to be…

Research findings show the difficulties younger students have in working with graphs. Higher mental operations are necessary for a skilled interpretation of abstract representations. We suggest connecting a concrete representation of the modeled problem with the related graph. The idea is to illustrate essential mental operations externally. This…

"Thinking Connections" is a thinking strategy program that teaches critical and creative thinking within the context of the regular curriculum. The main focus is helping students think to learn. Other results of this program are to develop positive attitudes, the ability to think an activity through to its conclusion, and to understand…

This study identified 10 savants with developmental disabilities and an exceptional ability to calculate calendar dates. These "calendar calculators" were asked to demonstrate their abilities, and their strategies were analyzed. The study found that the ability to calculate dates into the past or future varied widely among these…

In this discussion on differences between white and black students in academic achievement, it is pointed out that apparent differences in scholastic ability may actually be differences in ways of thinking and relating to schooling which arise more from cultural background than from innate cognitive ability. It is suggested that disparities that…

Soar, an architecture for problem solving and learning based on heuristic search and chunking, has been applied to a variety of tasks during the development of the Soar project, the goal of which is to build a system capable of general intelligent behavior. The hypothesis being tested in this aspect of Soar research is that chunking, a simple…

Two instructional design alternatives are described and discussed: (1) the supplantation model of Ausburn and Ausburn (1978), where learning strategies are built into the instructional materials; and (2) a generative design model, where strategies are "built" into the learner. These contrasting models are proposed as representing the…

This discussion of the contributions that cognitive psychology can make to the next generation of instructional design methods begins by comparing behaviorally-based and cognitively-based instructional design systems. Some possible improvements in instructional design are then presented, and it is argued that cognition, or student thought…

One of the major trends occurring in the area of task analysis methodology is the development of better methods to analyze cognitive tasks, including new methodologies for analyzing the ways in which knowledge should be structured within a student's head to facilitate given types of performance. The most important trend is the integration of task…

This book describes strategies, techniques, and principles that teachers can use to improve students' thinking skills. The strategies can generally be adaptated for any grade level or subject area. Chapters provide information on: (1) a rationale for the teaching of thinking; (2) thinking and thinking skills; (3) selecting and defining thinking…

Uses the Socratic method as a point of departure and suggests steps that teachers can take to teach students how to formulate their own questions for better comprehension ability. (JK)

Ten normal and ten learning disabled children were asked to provide strategies for hypothetical memory tasks and to evaluate those strategies subsequent to learning of the hypothetical outcomes. The groups did not differ in strategies selected but did differ in how they evaluated the effectiveness of the strategies used. (Author/DB)

Introspective experiences that nine University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) faculty members (aged 29-52 years) have when acquiring cognitive skills without awareness were studied as they acquired nonconscious knowledge about a pattern of stimuli. Nonconsciously acquired knowledge was automatically used to facilitate performance, without conscious…