Formal language hierarchy describes levels of increasing syntactic complexity (adjacent dependencies, nonadjacent nested, nonadjacent crossed) of which the transcription into a hierarchy of cognitive complexity remains under debate. The cognitive foundations of formal language hierarchy have been contradicted by two types of evidence: First,…

Conceptual modeling of databases is a complex cognitive activity, particularly for novice database designers. The current research empirically tests a new pedagogy for this activity. It examines an instructional approach that stresses visualizing gradual transitions between levels of abstraction in different hierarchic levels of a relational…

This article examines the connections between information overload and time pressure, as well as between organizational patterns as they are perceived by school faculty, contingent upon the level of the specific educational framework (elementary-high school) and teachers' roles within the school. The participants were 539 teachers. The main…

Teams of professionals are deemed to be organizations' key drivers for solving complex problems. The team approach enables members to co-construct innovative solutions through engaging in team learning behaviors. However, such behaviors do not naturally occur. Team leadership behavior is often identified as a crucial factor for stimulating team…

The study examined the possible existence of a perceptual hierarchy which is systematically affected by the onset of adventitious visual impairment. Results with 80 persons with partial vision indicated a demarcation of difficulty between the simpler and more complex levels of the hierarchy. (DB)

The facility index of a test item is the percentage of testees choosing the correct response. A common curriculum model presents process and content as two dimensions of the difficulty of an educational task. Wheeler suggested a third dimension: precision. This three-dimensional model is applied to chemistry education. (BW)

The complexity hypothesis suggests that the hierarchical arrangement of learning tasks is related to the complexity of the task. Using a definition of complexity based on an analysis of the rules governing performance on a task, the present study lent support to the hypothesis. (Author/GDC)

The perceptions of a group of 5-6-year olds were tested against two disparate hypotheses, one for nested hierarchies, the other for symbolic representations in language and learning. There is evidence that young children have the foundation for tackling more sophisticated and challenging ideas than is usually recognised. Linguistically, children…

White and Gagne's method (EJ 180 555) for formatively evaluating learning hierarchies does not require participants to be taught the content prior to testing them for their knowledge of the skills in the hierarchy. By simply determining the percentage of students achieving each skill, the researcher obtains approximately the same information.…

The Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities test (ABLA) is a useful tool for choosing appropriate training tasks for persons with developmental disabilities. This test assesses the ease or difficulty with which persons are able to learn six hierarchically positioned discrimination tasks. A visual-visual nonidentity matching prototype task was…

The hierarchical structure of the cognitive domain presented in Benjamin S. Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives does not reflect the actual nature of the learning process. Attempts to apply the classification levels to student learning in mathematics and other subjects place the taxonomy's usefulness in question. (PP)

Describes a study of the mental processes college students use in thinking about speed. Piagetian-type tasks dealing with speed, time, and distance were used in an individual interview format. Males outperformed females on tasks relating to speed, but not on the other tasks. (TW)