This speech discusses concrete entities and abstract phenomena--focusing especially on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. The author first explains that, according to Plato and Aristotle, there is a qualitative difference between things classified as concrete and those labeled abstract. She then questions whether there really is a difference…

Forty-four education and 44 dental students were administered a 30-item syllogism test containing five syllogic forms six times repeated in three different content forms--technical dental terms, common dental terms, and content-free (letters). Data were analyzed using a two-factor with repeated measures on one factor design. It was found that…

This study is based on an earlier investigation by Brant and Trabasso, in which it was demonstrated that 4-year-old children could perform transitive inferences when training forced information encoding by involving questions about two comparative dimensions of an object (long and short). The present study was designed to examine the sources of…

One major purpose of this investigation was to determine and compare the effects of three different perceptual situations (screening, neutral, and conflict) on kindergarten and first grade children's ability to use the transitive property of the equivalence relation "same length as" and the two order relations "longer than" and…

The investigation sought to prove that retarded conceptualization behavior of deaf children can be improved by specific compensatory experiences in the manipulation of objects. Twenty-six deaf children of normal intelligence but deficient in language as determined by reading achievement level, ages 10-13 years, were randomly assigned to…

Investigated distribution of spatial visualization scores (Space Relations test of the Differential Aptitude Test) and mathematical problem-solving scores (Mental Arithmetic Problems) obtained by 161 male and 152 female 9th grade students. No significant sex-related differences were found between mean scores of tests of spatial visualization or…

Investigated was the performance over a 12-year span of 427 superior high school students on the Concept Mastery Test (CMT), a measure of verbal ability and abstract reasoning. (CL)

This paper describes six experiments performed to investigate elementary school childrens' understanding of a proportionality concept, the concept of fullness. (CM)

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 author argues that metaphors have a vividness and emotive force, plus the ability to express openness, which makes them a crucial part of the educational process. (Author/RK)

The isolation of the components of intelligent performance and applicability of the componential analysis method to tasks other than analogies are discussed. The article also examines the structure of a componential analysis, the precuing method of task decomposition, and new methods for isolating components in a variety of reasoning tasks.…

Examines preschool children's comprehension of the differing implications of the verbs "think" and "know". Results indicated that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understood the differences between the terms. (JMB)

The WISC, Piagetian logico-mathematical and representational space tasks, the Frostig DTVP and a motor ability test were administered to elementary children at 3 age and arithmetic achievement levels to determine whether specific patterns of cognitive and/or spatial development were related to arithmetic achievement and whether patterns varied…

Evaluation of classification skills of 88 unimpaired children (grades K, 2, 4, and 6) were evaluated using the Iconic-Symbolic test (IS) of the Muma Assessment Program and follow-up interviews. Results found little relationship between the rationales the children reported using and the classification criteria presumed by the IS procedure. (DB)