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)…

Clinical reasoning requires thoughtful consideration of a variety of factors that contribute to the conceptualization of a case such as the reason for referral, school information, home environment, assessment outcomes, and behavioural observations made during assessments. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with insight into the…

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are increasingly expected to master content in the general education curriculum, making the need for effective instructional supports more important than ever before. Science is a part of the curriculum that can be particularly challenging to students with LD because of the diverse demands it places on…

This article constitutes a re-reading of and an attempt to rehabilitate Basil Bernstein, both of which are important in light of the interpretation of Bernstein as a proponent of the verbal deficit view, and the general discrediting of his work on social class differences in the British educational system, as related to what he later called…

Analogical reasoning--perceiving similarities in different situations and the transfer of such information--facilitates learning and understanding. However, children with learning disabilities (LD) typically demonstrate deficits in such information processing strategies. In this study, we investigated the analogical problem-solving differences…

Since the publication of [Gelman, R., & Gallistel, C. R. (1978). "The child's understanding of number." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] seminal work on the development of verbal counting as a representation of number, the nature of the ontogenetic sources of the verbal counting principles has been intensely debated. The present…

This study sought (1) to discover ways to teach kindergarten children to listen to a rule that defines a concept and then to apply it, and (2) to learn if rule-learning is facilitated when the pupil is required to verbalize the rule while using it. The task used in the study (1) involves deductive reasoning, (2) requires rule utilization rather…

Argues that the child's learning experience should include nondiscursive experiences in addition to verbal learning. (Author/RB)

Protocols of people attempting to solve syllogistic problems and explaining how they reached their conclusions were examined. Two main groups of subjects were identified. One group represented the relationship between classes in a spatial manner supplemented by verbal representation. The other group used a primarily verbal representation. A…

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…

FACTOR ANALYSIS WAS CONDUCTED ON SEVERAL COGNITIVE ABILITIES IN AN EFFORT TO RELATE THESE ABILITIES TO TASKS OF CONCEPT ATTAINMENT AND INFORMATION PROCESSING. THE ABILITIES UNDER CONSIDERATION WERE DESCRIBED AS GENERAL REASONING, VERBAL COMPREHENSION, INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, SPATIAL SCANNING, PERCEPTUAL SPEED, ROTE MEMORY, AND SPAN MEMORY. ABILITY…

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…

A study examined the ability of 16 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4 to draw inferences based on the content of a narrative passage and to recognize inferences as derived from, rather than given by, text. An inference task, developed to assess the ability to make and recognize appropriate inferences, consisted of four orally presented…

The effect of special instruction in certain reading skills involved in solving verbal problems was compared with the effect of supervised practice in solving verbal problems on the improvement of verbal problem-solving ability of 179 fourth graders. The sample from six classes in three public elementary schools in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, was…

A two-year study randomly assigned children (K-grade 2) with advanced mathematical skills (n=276) to two groups, an intervention group reflecting a constructivist approach or a control. Boys gained more than girls on quantitative and visual-spatial measures in the control, whereas the intervention group made greater gains in quantitative measures…