This paper reviews research and opinions concerned with the lateralization of brain functions and cognitive development as described by Piaget. Optimal cognitive functioning in humans is a product of the complete development of interhemispheric communication in the brain. Growth spurts in brain development have been found to correlate closely with…

This paper studies the relationship of artificial intelligence (AI) to the study of language and the representation of the underlying knowledge that supports the comprehension process. It develops the view that intelligence is based on the ability to use large amounts of diverse kinds of knowledge in procedural ways, rather than on the possession…

Compared was the relative effectiveness of using games or programed instruction (PI) to transmit information about cognitive similarities between educable mentally retarded (EMR) and nonretarded children to 56 special education teacher trainees. Trainees were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups (game or PI) or to an attitude control…

Much of the important thinking that teachers do occurs during the act of teaching as well as in planning and evaluating. What teachers think about while they are teaching was the basic question addressed in this study. A model was drawn to describe the researchers' concepts of the way a teacher thinks while teaching: the teacher begins with a…

This study was designed to show the effects of three instructional strategies incorporating the use of the cognitive and affective taxonomies on the kinds of questions preservice teachers ask children in reading instruction. The strategies, administered to 120 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in language-arts methods classes, involved 1)…

Six experiments were conducted to determine whether idea checklists increased idea quantity and quality. College students were allowed 10 or 20 minutes or unlimited time to find ideas for product improvement problems. Results indicated that the only checklist which significantly stimulated productivity was composed of just seven general categories…

A review is made of that literature which focuses on the relationship of instructional method, internal cognitive activity and performance measures. This includes literature concerned with the issue of "discovery versus reception learning" and the effects of different instructional methods on retention, delayed retention and transfer tasks. The…

Limited evidence suggests that different kinds of inserted questions may be differentially effective in promoting learning from text. In this experiment one of four groups had inserted knowledge-level questions and a second group, comprehension questions. It was argued here that: (1) in previous adjunct-question research, treatment groups have…

The goal of this project was to develop a sequential program for the development of critical thinking skills that could be extended to all the elementary schools in the school district. The major objectives were: (1) to enhance teachers' ability to think critically, practice in their classrooms teaching strategies to develop pupils' thinking, and…

The central problem that American education poses for society is that the enterprise is appreciably underproductive when judged against standards and requirements of the postindustrial era. This generic problem will not be appreciably ameliorated until the instructional system design (ISD) process is better understood and explicated and then made…

Seventy-two university students were exposed to one of four repetition treatments for one of three different amounts of information presented in a chunked format. Implicit chunk repetition, i.e., the presentation of words not present in the original word list but logically belonging to a previously seen chunk, facilitated acquisition and retention…

A description of some techniques for developing children's creative thinking is presented. The principal technique used was to have children keep a journal of new ideas for five days a week. Thoughts to be written down included thinking about physical phenomena, children's thoughts about interpersonal relationships and themselves, children's…

The author examines the effectiveness of the Inquiry Strategy method which he hypothesizes to be useful in developing an analytical cognitive style. Ninety-two subjects from four, large urban high schools were involved. Forty-two were experimental, having received 2-3 years of Inquiry Strategy exposure in their late elementary or early junior high…

This study investigates the effects of content sequence on student learning. The treatments, a spatial and conceptual instructional sequence each consisting of identical content elements, were administered to students in a two-year college Botany course. Hypotheses tested were that sequence would have an effect on student perceptions of the…

Nothing is of more practical use to a writing teacher than a unified theory of writing. (JH)