Understanding is discussed with reference to an agent-action-objective model. The formalism developed controls the processes of differentiation and integration underlying understanding. The starting point is a culturally agreed-upon expectancy or prescription that defines a particular form of understanding. Central to an investigation of how…

The effects of compensatory education programs in the United States during the past 20 years are discussed. The author believes the programs have had the least impact on scholastic achievement and intelligence quotient (IQ). The theoretical view of human intelligence and prevailing views of psychologists and educators of the 1960's regarding the…

This technical report describes a generic architecture for building intelligent tutoring systems which is developed around objects that represent the knowledge elements to be taught by the tutor. Each of these knowledge elements, called "bites," inherits both a knowledge organization describing the kind of knowledge represented and…

The relationship between cognitive psychologists and researchers in artificial intelligence carries substantial benefits for both. An ongoing investigation in causal reasoning in medical problem solving systems illustrates this interaction. This paper traces a dialectic of sorts in which three different types of causal resaoning for medical…

A model of natural language generation based on an underlying language-free representation of meaning is described. A computer implementation of this model, called BABEL, has been developed at Stanford University. It is able to produce sentence paraphrases which demonstrate understanding with respect to a given context. Available from Association…

Discusses how one's conception of intelligence and its development profoundly affects the formulation of educational objectives. A mechanistic conception of intelligence leads to the definition of objectives as a collection of fragmented "cognitive skills", while a Piagetian conception attempts to develop children's intelligence as an…

Research based on author's doctoral dissertation, submitted to the Graduate School of the University of California at Los Angeles.

Compared were performances of 12 educable mentally retarded (EMR) and 12 normal children in grade 6 on a perceptual learning task to determine whether individuals with different intelligence levels have different learning abilities. A protable minicomputer was used to present "old letters" (usual lower case letters) and "new letters" (letter-like…

The principal recent models of semantics, conceptual, and lexical memory are explicated and criticized. A description of long-term is developed in terms of these models. (Text is in French.) (DB)

Research on educable retarded children is reviewed to explicate components of and a theory of intelligence. Studies of control processes in memory and problem solving indicate that the ability to generalize is a major component of intelligence. Research on individual differences in components of information processing systems are also discussed.…

Thirty-six visual and auditory tests were given to 113 fifth and sixth grade students. Second-order analysis yielded two well-defined factors representing Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence and two perceptual factors corresponding to General Visualization and General Auditory Function. Perceptual factors were not clearly separated from broad…

Reports results of an experimental study of the impact of instrumental enrichment (IE) on Piagetian operations and a measure of information processing. Instrumental enrichment addresses process deficits which are presumed to underly inadequate skill development in slow learners. Concludes the positive results found on fluid intelligence indicate…

This paper examines reports of empirical research on Feuerstein's "Instrumental Enrichment" (FIE) as a method of teaching thinking skills and asks what can be concluded from these reports with regard to: (1) the nature and statistical reliability observed FIE effects and (2) the "amount" of FIE for effects to appear.…

Discusses research related to identifying early predictors of school success or intelligence. Reports on a study that suggested correlations exist between how babies process information (visual attentiveness) in the first six months of life and the child's performance on intelligence tests in school. (ML)

The dimensionality of the construct of original thinking was studied using measures designed to control for confounding of the construct by fluency and by task ambiguity. The subjects were 315 gifted children in grades 4-6. Original thinking was conceptually distinguished from general intelligence, but evidence for a concept of general originality…