Numerous mathematical examples are presented which illustrate and raise questions about students' tendencies to overgeneralize. (BB)

Transferability of skills in learning is discussed, focusing on the notions of cross-disciplinary, generic, core, and transferable skills and their role in the college curriculum. Cross-disciplinary or cross-curricular skills are examined in terms of their relationship to cognitive domains, and transferable skills in relation to social domains.…

Investigated degree to which two shape dimensions were represented categorically by children and adults when learning object names. Found that adults accepted names more often to objects that fell within proposed shape boundaries than to objects that crossed boundaries. Children were just as likely to generalize names to novel objects that fell…

Analyses of sentence combination data from 33 adult learners of English as a Second Language instructed in sentence combination tasks yielded inconclusive results as to whether implicational generalization (IG) is unidirectional to hierarchy levels implicated by the instructed level. The results suggest that IG is clearly not uniformly maximal to…

This paper demonstrates a method for constructing long variables using items that elicit partically correct responses across ages. Long variables may be defined by students at different ages (year levels) attempting common items within a test containing other items considered to be appropriate for each age or year level. A developmental model of…

Research on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development theory was used as a foundation to investigate differences in the learning and transfer ability of 30 students with learning disabilities (LD) and 30 students with matched low achievement (LA), from grades 7 and 8. The two groups were assessed on their problem-solving ability on a balance scale…

In planning educational research, recognition needs to be made of five domains of learning: (1) motor skills, (2) verbal information, (3) intellectual skills, (4) cognitive strategies, and (5) attitudes. In being cognizant of these domains, the researcher is able to distinguish the parts of a content area which are subject to different…

The ADAPT program for freshmen emphasizes building an experiential base in introductory courses before moving to abstract formulations. The goal is to develop thinking processes that are integrated with the student's experiences. Students in the ADAPT program outperformed two comparison groups on a variety of thinking tasks. (Author)

Effects of object training and photograph training on comprehension of category labels by 10 severely mentally retarded children and adolescents were explored. Results indicated that acquisition and transfer did not differ, yet generalization was significantly more accurate with objects than with photographs. Futhermore, generalization was…

The first of two articles, featuring innovations and research on programs for learning disabled students in middle and high schools, reports expected goals and actual outcomes on intervention programs, identifies seven components for inclusion in a comprehensive intervention model, and focuses on the motivation, acquisition (of information), and…

The learning of categories by six severely handicapped students (8 to 18 years old) was measured within the context of manual sign training. As expected, results supported the best example theory of categorization which suggests that some objects are more representative of their category than others. Implications for classroom material selection…

Recent research suggests that humans and other animals have sophisticated abilities to extract both statistical dependencies and rule-based regularities from sequences. Most of this research stresses the flexibility and generality of such processes. Here the authors take up an equally important project, namely, to explore the limits of such…