Relational reasoning, or the ability to identify meaningful patterns within streams of information, has emerged as an important factor in a variety of complex tasks. One factor that has received relatively little research attention, however, is how relational reasoning may be influenced by the representational systems (i.e., verbal or nonverbal)…

This project was concerned with the topic of elaborative activity and learning efficiency. "Elaboration" is regarded as an hypothetical process, internal to the learner, which consists of conceiving an event that can serve as a common semantic referent for elements that are initially disparate. The objective of the project was to examine…

This paper reports on an investigation of children's ability to accept contrary-to-fact premises as though they were factual and to reason accordingly. A variety of questions requiring this skill were presented in semi-structured interview form to 10 to 12 subjects from each of six age groups ranging from 5 to 9 years, and to a control group of…