This article assesses how people reason with categories whose features are related in causal cycles. Whereas models based on causal graphical models (CGMs) have enjoyed success modeling category-based judgments as well as a number of other cognitive phenomena, CGMs are only able to represent causal structures that are acyclic. A number of new…

This research was aimed at profiling student's thinking skills in dealing with Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) questions based on Marzano taxonomy by referring to 13 indicators. This pre-experimental research employed pretest-posttest design. The indicators included were comparison, classification, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning,…

The labels used to describe patterns and relations can influence children's relational reasoning. In this study, 62 preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 4.4 years) solved and described eight pattern abstraction problems (i.e., recreated the relation in a model pattern using novel materials). Some children were exposed to concrete labels (e.g.,…

Development of reasoning is often depicted as involving increasing use of relational similarities and decreasing use of perceptual similarities ("the perceptual-to-relational shift"). We argue that this shift is a special case of a broader developmental trend: increasing sensitivity to the predictive accuracy of different similarity types. To test…

Attempts to ascertain whether class inclusion behavior is enhanced when children are first asked to compare the subclasses appearing in the class inclusion task and whether such an effect could be due to simple comparisons among the vocabulary terms differentiating the questions. Subjects were second, third, and fourth grade children. (BD/BR)

The conversion model of formal reasoning was examined for its ability to predict the decisions made by college students when solving concrete and abstract syllogisms. Results supported the model's contentions that reasoner's decisions reflect natural language processes in the encoding of syllogistic premises, and follow rationally from…

Tasks administered to sixty females 60-120 months of age show that it is possible to test for Piagetian logic by using problems structured in a social context and also suggest that the order of acquisition of logical operations with social stimuli is consistent with the order which has been established with the use of physical stimuli. (Author/CS)

Information about individuals' representations of problems was obtained from studies on reasoning and problem categorization. College students (N=62) participated in a study of the transition from concrete to formal reasoning using the pendulum and chemical yellow tasks. Over a 10-12 week period, 47 students participated in 10 training sessions on…

Studies concerned with the synchronous emergence prediction of Piaget's structures-of-the-whole principle are discussed in conjunction with three groups of concrete-operational skills: (1) transitivity/conservation/class inclusion; (2) double classification/double seriation; and (3) ordinal, cardinal, and natural number concepts. Findings show…

This study investigates the training of inner-city first and second graders in Piagetian classification skills. Twenty boys and 20 girls were pretested for necessary baseline knowledge and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Both groups were given training programs intended to assist the children in developing classification…

Depending on age and the demands of the task, people may use different processing strategies in object categorization. Three-year-olds used a wholistic approach with strong effects of object typicality on three categorization tasks. Older children and adults showed differential effects of typicality, suggesting various strategies including…

WRITTEN TO IMPLEMENT THE PRINCIPLES SET FORTH IN "DESIGN FOR THINKING" (SEE TE 000 457.), THIS BOOK DEALS WITH WORDS AS TOOLS OF THOUGHT AND WITH THE PROBLEM-SOLVING FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE. CHAPTERS ARE ON (1) QUALIFICATION, CLASSIFICATION, AND ABSTRACTION, (2) SIGNS, REPRESENTATIONS, SYMBOLS, AND MATRICES, (3) ANALYSIS (BY CLASSIFICATION,…

Describes the reasoning patterns characteristic of the abstract thinking required for higher levels of school science. Discusses control and exclusion of variables, ratio and proportion, conservation involving models, compensation and equilibrium, correlation, probability, combinatorial thinking, coordination of frames of reference, and…

Piaget's model of children's conceptual learning and development was compared with Klausmeier's Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model in a longitudinal study. The CLD model suggests four successive levels of concept learning: (1) concrete--recognizing an object which has been encountered previously; (2) identity--recognizing a known…