One way to improve composition skills and to raise the level of interest in composition is by incorporating language philosophy into the composition process. That is, a teacher might use language games as a way of teaching writing. Such games include giving orders, describing an object, reporting an event, telling a joke, asking, thanking,…

This essay identifies and reviews the major and easily recognizable characteristics of a library discourse and proposes models describing the actual, possible, and necessary modes of library communication. The transmittal of orderly thoughts or information in a library situation differs from a conventional communication pattern. Three unique…

The relationship of performance in mathematics to syntactical language factors obtained from speech samples was investigated with 95 senior high school geometry students. Statistical procedures included correlation analysis and stepwise regression. The findings indicated that certain syntactical measures indicating logical thought processes…

The ordering of difficulty of logic principles and the age of acquisition for each were examined with 160 gifted children (20 each from ages 4 to 11). Five principles of class logic were explored: three orders of enthymemes, i.e., missing conclusion, missing minor premise, and missing major premise; and two additional third order enthymemes, i.e.,…

EARLY FORMS OF NUMERICAL REASONING WERE INVESTIGATED BY EXAMINING THE ROLE OF A SET OF VARIABLES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSERVATION OF NUMBER. CONSERVATION OF NUMBER WAS DEFINED AS THE RECOGNITION THAT THE NUMBER OF OBJECTS CONSTITUTES AN AGGREGATE WHICH IS NOT CHANGED MERELY BY REARRANGING THEM. EXPERIMENT ONE WAS CONDUCTED WITH CHILDREN FROM…

This paper is a theoretical discussion of several functions of knowledge systems based on the idea of partial matching, that is, comparison of two or more descriptions by identification of their similarities. Several knowledge system functions are described in terms of partial or best matchings including analogical reasoning, inductive inference,…

The development of the ability to identify unstated assumptions in arguments should begin in the kindergarten and elementary school if a high level of proficiency is eventually to be reached in sizing up assertions. A clear thinker needs to make sure that propositions are clear by making unstated assumptions explicit. Since children commonly use…

A workable theory of instruction appears to depend upon the development of measurement instruments, which operationally define concepts such as transfer, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, to make possible empirical investigation of the relationships of methods of instruction and learner variables to the attainment of different types of…

Investigated were the inferences that children draw from science tests and their relation to the intuitive, concrete and formal levels of thinking and mental development postulated by Piaget. It was found that the older the pupil is, both chronologically and mentally, or the higher his grade placement, the more frequently he uses the formal level…

This paper presents a system for describing and categorizing various theories of language and thinking. Within this system, theories are described in terms of their position on three basic issues: (1) the direction of dependency between language and cognition, (2) the necessity of that dependency, and (3) the level of specificity at which the…

The use of decision tables--which are a means of linking decision rules for actions to specific sets of prior conditions--in information systems design and development is described. Procedures for preparing decision tables are presented together with examples of their application in the context of library acquisitions. A bibliography is also…

Increased interest in the problems associated with lower socio-economic urban schools has suggested possible differences between urban and suburban teachers. A Study was therefore undertaken to contrast the philosophic orientation, logical consistency, and teaching attitudes of elementary and secondary school teachers in two St. Louis school…

Conditional logic, as interpreted in this paper, means deductive logic characterized by "if-then" statements. This study sought to investigate the knowledge of conditional logic possessed by primary children and to test their readiness to learn such concepts. Ninety students were designated the experimental group and participated in a…

Conservation of a property is the ability to recognize that the property in question hasn't altered, even though other properties have been varied. It is Piaget's view, confirmed by empirical evidence that children are not able to conserve length until age 7 or 8. Recent concern over confounding variables led to the present study in which the…

This paper reviewed (a) conceptualization, (b) research, and (c) theories of inductive reasoning and, in turn, proposed both a behaviorally-oriented definition and matching process model. The overall conclusion was that, in spite of the pervasiveness and importance of induction as a knowledge generation process, research and theoretical activities…