The article discusses the use of logic in the classroom with educationally handicapped (emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and mentally retarded) children. (DLS)

Pictorial conditional reasoning test items which were varied according to principle of inference and type of content were administered to three groups of educably mentally retarded children. Results revealed that retardates' reasoning strategies were congruent with those reported for younger normals in previous studies. (Author/JKS)

Inference tasks emphasizing the acceptance of lack of closure (ALC), memory, and hypothetico-deductive reasoning were administered to 67 males and 74 females ranging in age from 5 to 12 years. Results suggest that the relationship of ALC to age is mediated by memory development rather than by logical development. (JMB)

Suggests that logical thought and intuitive inspiration may contribute to forming pictures of the future on which to base plans and decisions. Also outlines a method for using intuition in everyday planning. Journal available from World Future Society, Post Office Box 30369, Bethesda Branch, Washington, D.C. 20014. (Author/DB)

Examines the reasons for differences in conclusions about the way conditional sentences are comprehended. (AM)

Discusses creativity, play, and nonconformity in children, including the illusion of thought disorder or abnormality, and aspects of everyday creativity, health, and survival. Describes creative divergence, chaotic amplification, the evolution of information, and primitive cognitive processes. Concludes with a discussion of cognitive styles,…

Examined whether young children can identify breaches of a permission rule and their sensitivity to the implications of such rules. Found that preschool children show considerable facility in reasoning about permission rules and can justify their choices. Results suggest that, when children violate a permission rule, they do so knowingly. (MOK)

Presents and discusses examples that illustrate the nature and scope of elementary and middle school students' reasoning when they are faced with tasks that involve making inferences and predictions from data. Shows that the range in thinking is not so much dependent on age as on the experiences students have in data exploration. (KHR)

Examined college students' logical reasoning ability using the Test of Logical Thinking (TOLT) as a major predictor of science acheivement. Reports an improvement on each of the subscale scores, and a significant correlation with four science subjects on both pre- and post-TOLT scores. (YP)

Children were asked whether someone would get sick from drinking juice placed near a bug. Some preschoolers and most seven- and eight-year olds recognized the need for physical contact with the bug to make the juice noxious, whereas some believed the mere presence of a contaminant made it noxious. Thus, associational contamination sometimes plays…

Investigates difficulties in thinking about interactions between variables and suggests remedial educational means. Reports that expert thinkers demonstrate thinking about interactions at both an operational and metastrategic level. Lay adults, however, encounter substantial difficulties in drawing valid interaction inferences while engaged in an…

Presents an overview of artificial-intelligence-based inductive learning techniques and their use in information science research. Three methods are discussed: the connectionist Hopfield network; the symbolic ID3/ID5R; evolution-based genetic algorithms. The knowledge representations and algorithms of these methods are examined in the context of…

A form of autosuggestibility in which children's answers to memory tests were shifted in the direction of their illogical solutions to reasoning problems was studied in 5 experiments with 396 primary-grade students. A model of how gist intrusion causes autosuggestibility is developed. (SLD)

This article proposes that within the discipline of logic, college students can learn the important elements of persuasive writing. Characteristics of and distinctions between deductive and inductive logic are outlined, and the appropriateness and usefulness of each for different kinds of persuasion are discussed. (MSE)

Notes that Logo, a computer programming language developed for children by Seymour Papert, constitutes a valuable learning environment for promoting higher order thinking skills and promotes development of flexible and creative thinkers. Introduces the concept of Logo microworlds. Stresses cooperative learning and the use of Logo to support…