Students often perform arithmetic using rigid problem-solving strategies that involve left-to-right-calculations. However, as students progress from arithmetic to algebra, entrenchment in rigid problem-solving strategies can negatively impact performance as students experience varied problem representations that sometimes conflict with the order…

For students to advance beyond arithmetic, they must learn how to attend to the structure of math notation. This process can be challenging due to students' left-to-right computing tendencies. Brackets are used in mathematics to indicate precedence but can also be used as superfluous cues and perceptual grouping mechanisms in instructional…

Art therapy can be particularly successful in addressing the specific needs of individuals struggling with anorexia nervosa (AN) through the use of the creative process. This article provides an understanding of the effect of malnourishment on the brain for individuals with AN and discusses how their unique needs can be met through the application…

Mathematics is the study of structure but students think of math as solving problems according to rules. Students can learn procedures, but they often have trouble knowing when to apply learned procedures, especially to problems unlike those they trained with. In this study, the authors rely on the psychological mechanism of perceptual learning…

Background: The ability to think analogically is central to the process of learning and understanding reality and there is a broad consensus among researchers that we can improve this ability. Immigrants who have emigrated from developing to developed countries tend to experience tremendous challenges in their early years as immigrants. Their…

Everyday environments, even small regions within reach, vary dramatically in terms of material composition. Adapting one's manual behavior to such transitions can be considered to be an important element of skilled action. To investigate the origins of this ability, we presented 8-month-olds (n=24) and 10-month-olds (n=24) hard or soft objects on…

Author analyzed the learning difficulties suffered by those suffering from malnutrition and suggested a preventive program designed to stimulate learning processes. (RK)

The effectiveness of different training and transfer test conditions in promoting perceptual learning in impulsive kindergarten children was investigated. The results provide guidelines for designing effective training methods for improving discrimination learning and problem solving in impulsive children. (Author/SB)

The present study was designed to identify sources of information in the human face and to determine how this information is processed by young children in solving problems. (ST)

This study examined the hypothesis that differences in performance of impulsive and reflective children on the "20 questions" test are due to individual differences in preferred perceptual processing strategy rather than in cognitive maturity of problem-solving strategy. (Author/JMB)

Age and condition (either constancy-relevant or variability-relevant) interact, with the youngest group in the constancy-relevant condition performing most poorly on concept identification tasks. (MH)

This study examines the ability of 20 5- and 6-year-old children to determine whether an inference could reliably be made or whether a problem was undecidable. Children were given a random series of 8 decidable and 16 undecidable problems in which they had to determine in which of 2 houses a target character could be found. There were two…

This article suggests the importance of structure and sequence in designing a program of map reading and interpretation. It focuses upon the use of maps on ever-decreasing scales, from the large scale topographical maps to small atlas maps, and the associated use of oblique aerial photographs. (Editor)

Examines children's word perception demonstrating the role of Piaget's perceptual development formation and individual aptitude differences in problem solving strategies. (MM)