This paper presents Part I of a two-part study. This first part reviews the literature of transfer of learning as one of the major goals of instruction. Transfer refers to students' ability to apply knowledge and skills in new learning contexts. The literature suggests partially or non-overlapping definitions, and empirical studies on transfer…

People with an intellectual disability have existed across human history, making up a part of all cultures. They represent a small part of the extremely wide variety of people in the human population at any one time. This review essay examines the 11th and latest Definition and Classification Manual published by the American Association on…

This response to Stanovich's (EC 607 092) proposal of a new type of learning disability, dysrationalia, looks at implications for the entire learning disabilities field, especially increasing differences between operational and substantive definitions and the ongoing creation of new types of learning disabilities to overcome perceived definitional…

An international review and comparison of terminology development for cognitive disabilities (intellectual subnormality, mental retardation, mental deficiency, and oligophrenia) identifies cultural differences, social development, level of scientific development, philosophical orientation, prevalence, and social attitudes as factors relating to…

Findings of two experiments support the contention that children and adults are capable of using both hypothetical counter-exemplar reasoning and functionality to make definitional category judgments. Results are discussed in terms of Richards and Goldfarb's (1986) model of episodic memory and are related to other evidence that children possess…

Contrasted four theories of natural language category acquisition by investigating the relation between category intensions and extensions in kindergarten children, second and fifth graders, and college students. Since none of the theories discussed could explain the pattern of results, an exemplar-based model was proposed. (RH)

In a study investigating whether middle school students can identify their own social groups, over 200 sixth- and seventh-graders were asked to name the kinds of groups to which they thought students in their school belonged, and to explain or define the groups. Data indicated that the students seemed to have no trouble in agreeing on certain…

This paper updates the discussion of Francoys Gagne's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), which proposes a clear distinction between these two most basic concepts in the field of gifted education. Under the DMGT model, giftedness is defined as the possession and use of untrained and spontaneously expressed superior natural…

Little is known about how teachers encourage memory activity and strategy use in children. In order to gain such information, 69 teachers of grades K through 6 were observed in five 30-minute periods. A total of 292 strategy suggestions and 15 instances in which the teacher attempted to suppress spontaneous strategy use were observed. Teachers…