Students who are deaf or hard of hearing are increasingly being educated in regular education classrooms along with their typical hearing peers. Establishing educational environments that address their unique needs is essential for their success. Response to intervention (RtI), as it is being implemented in the United States, provides a framework…

Two studies were conducted to identify individual differences in the effect of instruction on strategies used to solve figural/numerical analogies. The first study assessed students' use of an appropriate rule for solving analogies and the stimulus attributes they incorporated. In Study 2, verbal protocols of selected subjects were analyzed.…

This study found that 43 school-age deaf and hard-of-hearing students did not perform as well as a matched group of hearing students on problem-solving tasks. As they got older, both groups made incremental gains in problem-solving ability, and the gap between groups narrowed. (Author/JDD)

This study with 56 students (mean age 15 years) with mental retardation and 53 nonretarded students (matched for mental age) found that students with mental retardation were more likely to rely on all kinds of external cues (task-relevant, incidental, or misleading) in problem solving, especially when the preceding task had been difficult.…

Three experiments explored the development of formal logical reasoning between Grades 4 and 12 and the role of semantic content in the solution of Wason's (1966) selection task problems. Results suggest that formal logical reasoning is not generally present during the fourth or sixth grades and that formal logical competence becomes available in…

Reanalysis of the data from a 1984 study on making and breaking problem-solving mental sets with 50 children found that gifted subjects who failed to initially form the set made the most errors of any group and were least likely to recognize their own errors. Results suggest that motivational reasons may underly this inferior performance by some…

The article examines the nature of performance deficits in exceptional learners as they relate to the ability to perform complex cognitive tasks. (PHR)

This comparison of the performance of 40 congenitally blind children (ages 9-19) with and without retrolental fibroplasia on cognitive and spatial tasks found no significant differences. Findings suggest that early environmental experiences are responsible for successful performance, and that mental and spatial problem solving may depend on…

Examined the influence of intelligence level on the performance of children (N=121), aged 9-14, on the Halstead Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery. Results indicated a significant influence of IQ on level of performance on six of 14 measures. Tests of problem-solving abilities, language skills, and auditory perceptual analysis were most…

Teachers from 34 states and Canada responded to a request to describe teaching practices that give students minor or major decision making responsibilities. Different structures used by teachers to provide students opportunities to practice decision making across the school years from first grade to high school are described in this report.…

The ways in which principals use performance appraisal data for personal professional development, the characteristics of those who use such information, and the features of performance appraisal systems and decision contexts that are predictors of appraisal use were studied through a series of interviews at four sites (two with high appraisal…

This paper discusses the central thesis that new research on estimation and mental computation will benefit from more focused attention on the situations in which they are used. In the first section of the paper, a brief discussion of cognitive theory, with special attention to the emerging notion of situated cognition is presented. Three sources…

This report favors a systems-oriented evaluation for improving minority student achievement, an inclusive approach, which may require funds to be (at least temporarily) withdrawn from other research activities. When financial resources are limited, such an evaluation may focus on a relatively limited range of related evaluation issues. In…

This paper presents an instructional model for thinking skills and discusses implementing the model. Based on a unitary theory of human cognition and some basic assumptions about the conditions for successfully intervening in public education, the model can be implemented at any grade level within any instructional framework. Currently used models…

This report highlights four research studies related to the Enrichment Triad Model, which encourages problem finding and problem solving in gifted students. The first study, "Academic Underachievement among the Gifted: Reversing School Failure" by Linda J. Emerick, identified six factors which influenced the reversal of the…