Investigates the effects of predisposed and distinctiveness-based salience on children's classifications in 96 preschoolers and fifth graders given a classification task designed to reflect a developmental shift from integral to separable perception. (Author/MP)

How strategies affect learning of categories that lack necessary and sufficient attributes is explored. The authors propose that strategy variations induced by instructions affect only the amount of information represented about attributes, not processes operating on representations. An experiment required subjects to classify schematic faces into…

The cumulative hierarchical assumption of Bloom's Taxonomy was tested by orienting American Australian subjects at four taxonomic levels to the same study material and administering an unexpected memory test. Moderate support was obtained for the cumulative hierarchical assumption, but it is concluded that the evaluation category is misplaced.…

Findings suggest memory deficits of educable mentally retarded (EMR) individuals cannot be completely attributed to a production deficiency involving failure to use spontaneously mnemonic strategies consistent with semantic organization. Normal and EMR individuals differ in verbal ability and achievement as well as in using plans to organize…

The hierarchical relationships between behaviors in the cognitive and affective domains that led to teachers' voluntary acceptance of Individually Guided Education were studied, using ordering theory. The results indicated that cognitive skills and attitudes were integrally related and built on each other, leading to mastery of the goal.…

After a brief reminder of the essentials of the Structure-of-Intellect model, this paper points out what this model can tell us about the nature of learning, the imbalances in education and intelligence testing, about procedures for fostering intellectual growth, and about other incidental educational problems. (Author)

In order to study developmental and task-related factors in ability to coordinate two dimensions, a simple multiplicative relations matrix task was presented to 51 children in kindergarten and grades 1 and 2. (MS)

Two experiments studied the impact of the nature of information available at different processing levels on differences in haptic (tactile) and in visual, free classification development. Found that exploration characteristics (involving simultaneous versus independent processing of stimulus dimensions) and presentation of the stimulus dimensions…

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that the importance of linguistic labels for young children's conceptual organization stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input over visual input. Findings indicated that when auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli,…

This review of research discusses how children with autism may acquire equivalence classes after learning to supply a common oral name to each stimulus in a potential class. A proposed methodology for researching referent naming and class formation, analysis of stimulus classes, and generalization is offered. (CR)

Individual differences in children's conceptual strategies at 3 years of age were predicted by aspects of children's behavior and language at 13 and 24 months. Production of pointing gestures at 13 months and nouns and attributive adjectives at 24 months were positively associated with the use of a taxonomic matching strategy at 3 years of age.…

Results from 627 examinees taking a health sciences certification examination suggest that test items written purposefully to assess higher order cognitive skills do not provide evidence of assessing different levels of cognitive processing. Results do not support continuing use of a hierarchical cognitive classification dimension for the test…

Free-recall memory performance of and spontaneous strategy use by 227 field-dependent and field-independent undergraduates were investigated by means of memorized word lists that were high or low in inherent organization and when cognitive strategy instruction was provided or withheld. Results are consistent with current views of field-dependence…

A study of 62 children (ages 7 to 12) with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 62 controls found that behavioral variables established robust, statistically significant differences between groups. Children with ADHD also scored worse on 31 out of 61 neuropsychological variables, but obtained better scores on WISC-R Comprehension…

Discusses multiple representations and multimedia learning environments; describes a functional taxonomy of MERs (multiple external representations); and considers how MERs are used to support cognitive processes in learning and problem solving with computers. (Contains 41 references.) (Author/LRW)