Young children have been taught simple sequences of alternating shapes and colors, referred to as "patterning", for the past half century in the hope that their understanding of pre-algebra and their mathematics achievement would be improved. The evidence that such patterning instruction actually improves children's academic achievement…

Investigates whether elementary school children can successfully execute a mental rotation on Marmor's state-comparison task without knowledge of logical sequence relations, whereas such knowledge is required to construct or evaluate external representations of the successive states in a rotation movement. (HOD)

Two experiments investigated the process by which children encode briefly presented spatial positions. First, third, and fifth graders were asked to judge whether a test dot occupied the same position on a card as any one of a number of dots which had been presented tachistoscopically. (JMB)

Studies the relationships among children's aural perception of tonal pattern and children's symbol use in drawing and selection tasks based on tonal information. Shows that ability to use musical symbols in reading and writing tasks is related to aural perception of musical sound, and that these abilities follow a developmental progression. (DSK)

Twenty good spellers and 20 poor spellers at each grade level from two to five participated in a study of morphological and orthographic spelling pattern abstraction. Subjects completed a multiple choice test of nonsense words, a multiple choice test of real words, and a dictation test of nonsense words. Both groups showed developmental trends in…

A study investigated the accuracy and speed of face recognition in 26 children (ages 7-10) with Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Subjects needed an amount of time to recognize the faces that almost equaled the time they needed to recognize abstract patterns that were difficult to distinguish. (Contains references.)…

Studies the effects of distinctive features on incomplete picture recognition for three to four year olds, five to six year olds, and adults. (Author/SS)

The Assessment of Performance Unit recognized the importance of reading and interpreting data but saw them as discrete aspects of "process" science. However, pupil performance on different components of the same data-handling assessment question is often very variable, indicating that these questions carry "hidden" cognitive…

Many problems and activities which can be worked with a calculator are contained in this booklet. The problems include: pattern recognition, combinations of operations, estimation, squares and square roots, rate problems, area, and volume. Chapter topics include: getting to know the calculator, single-step problems, using formulas, and…

Examined the hypothesis that good and poor readers would differ in their ability to order stimuli that can be easily recoded as words and stored in phonetic form, but not in their ability to order nonlinguistic stimuli that do not lend themselves to phonetic recoding in short-term memory. (Author/DB)

The differences between learning disabled (LD) and non-LD children's problem-solving protocols were analyzed during a picture arrangement task. Although the groups of 29 LD and 27 non-LD children were comparable in global mental processing and task performance, LD children had difficulty with representing problems and deleting irrelevant…

This study investigated the effects of combining interactive microcomputer simulations and concrete activities on the development of abstract thinking in elementary school mathematics. Students in grades 2-4 were assessed on tasks involving designs and patterns. (MNS)

An investigation of patterns in magic triangles leads to a number of discoveries concerning the sums of sides and corners. (MP)

Two experiments investigated perceptual primacy of dimensional and similarity relations in stimulus classifications of younger and older subjects. Results support a differential-sensitivity view of perceptual development which asserts that individuals at all ages primarily perceive and use separate relations. (RWB)

Described is a project in a third grade class in which problem-solving skills are developed through activities with patterns. Activities for growing picture patterns, making number tables, and developing open sentences or formulas are discussed and illustrated. (MNS)