Reviews "Human Minds: An Exploration" by Margaret Donaldson, which inquires into the diverse uses of minds, their ontogenetic development, and their histories. The two predominant themes in the book are the ontogenetic and historical development of cognition, and development of social-emotional understandings and experiences as well as…

"The Bell Curve"'s racist overtones have caused a furor, but the book's real (equally controversial) thesis is intellectual segregation's economic and political consequences. The authors bemoan this elitist segregation, yet favor industry's use of IQ tests to select workers. By using IQ to measure a person's ultimate worth, they…

Discusses computational studies of learning in artificial neural networks and findings that may provide insights into the learning abilities of the human brain. Describes efforts to test theories about brain information processing, using artificial neural networks. Vignettes include information concerning how a neural network represents…

Examined risk factors of 3-year-old sons in 58 families with alcoholic fathers and 16 families with nonalcoholic fathers. Found that sons of alcoholic fathers were more impulsive than sons of nonalcoholic fathers. No differences between the groups in developmental age, IQ, or behavior problems were found. (MDM)

Reports on the third national conference of the American Library Association's Library and Information Technology Association, which was held September 13-16, 1992, in Denver, Colorado. Program highlights are summarized, including virtual communities, virtual reality, the electronic library, artificial intelligence and expert-systems, navigating…

Scores of 66 elementary students (referred for poor learning progress) on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) were below mean performance on all Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (SB:FE) area scores except memory. The study refutes the assertion that the PPVT-R is an appropriate screening instrument for the SB:FE.…

In four year olds who had been exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) before birth, prenatal exposure was associated with less efficient visual discrimination processing and more errors in short memory scanning. Postnatal exposure was unrelated to cognitive performance. (GLR)

Calculated reliability estimates for the Mexican-American (n=160) and non-Hispanic white (n=1,569) standardization sample at 11 age levels on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children using computed variance components. Results suggest that the test is equally reliable for both non-Hispanic white and Mexican-American children at all age levels.…

A discriminant analysis of characteristics of students with behavioral disorders in three progressively more intensive placements indicated that age at time of diagnosis was the strongest discriminating variable contributing to placement outcomes. Younger, brighter students tended to be mainstreamed, and older students with more externalizing…

Reviews four books: (1) "On Intelligence. . .More or Less: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development" (Stephen J. Ceci); (2) "Knowing Children: Experiments in Conversation and Cognition" (Michael Siegal); (3) "Adolescents and Their Families: Paths of Ego Development" (S. T. Hauser and others); and (4) "Adolescence: An Anthropological…

Present schooling culture reflected in narrowly conceived testing, grouping, and grading programs discourages the kind of sustained, collaborative inquiry that should characterize America's schools. Assessment programs must change to promote instruction systems that encourage student initiative and perseverance to pursue unanswered questions.…

Discusses three approaches to building intelligent systems: artificial intelligence, neural networks, and behavior analysis. BANKET, an object-oriented software system, is explained; a commercial application of BANKET is described; and a collaborative effort between the academic and business communities for the use of BANKET is discussed.…

Discussed is the search for life on other planets similar to Earth based on the Drake equation. Described are search strategies and microwave searches. The reasons why people are searching are also discussed. (KR)

Evaluated measures of infant cognitive development in 208 pairs of twins at 7, 8, and 9 months of age. Results contributed to the growing evidence of stability in intellectual development from infancy. (RH)

Elementary school children's evaluations of peer tutoring were compared with their evaluations of the traditional practice of solitary work on tests to determine their conceptions of fair practices in testing and learning situations. Findings support the conclusion that children's understanding of different types of situations is reflected in…