One approach to increasing our understanding of the rating process is to examine behavioral components of decision-making. Although observable rater behavior during appraisal is still removed from the actual contents of internal processing, these behavioral indices may provide important clues toward identifying determinants of rating success. To…

The Cognitive Project at Passaic County College (New Jersey) was designed to develop a curriculum that would give educationally underprepared, nontraditional students an opportunity to actively experience ways of acquiring, solidifying, and using knowledge while acquiring the basic skills necessary for college work. Student explorations were…

Part of the Concepts in Science Project at the University of Surrey is to explore the complex structure and organization of ideas and meaning that children bring with them to their science lessons. To examine these ideas and meanings, a distinction is made between children's intuitive understanding of their world (children's science) and the…

A study was conducted to determine the degree of relationship between eye movement patterns and cognitive mapping as determined by the Cognitive Style Mapping Instrument (CSMI). It was hypothesized that a high correlation exists between a predominance of visual and auditory eye movement patterns and the visual and auditory cognitive mapping styles…

This investigation of cognitive effort begins with a review of cognitive principles relating to memory and graphic encoding of information. The cognitive framework described allows explanation of improved memory due to reparsing of graphic representations. It also provides the basis for optimizing graphical material design to insure best retention…

Past research indicates poor agreement about strategies people use to assess covariation between events. This research investigates method of assessment as one possible source of this low consensus. A set of problems was developed in such a way that different judgment rules would produce different decisions about the relationships between events.…

Four strategies used in judgment patterns were explored. Problem sets in which each solution strategy produces a unique solution pattern are depicted. Several experiments had been conducted using rules in this way with subjects from grade 4 through college. Problems were set in the context of concrete events which could be related, and subjects…

Findings from five related studies carried out in Tasmania, Australia in 1979-80 are summarized. The first study attempted to determine the memory capacity of a cross-sectional population of children aged 4-7, while the second study was designed to portray differences on a variety of mathematically related developmental tasks for the same…

In recent research, two qualitatively different classes of mental operations have been identified. The performance of one type of cognitive task requires attention, in the sense of mental effort, for its execution, while the second type can be performed automatically, independent of attentional control. Further research has shown that automatic…

Current pscyhometric assessments, which are based on test score predictors providing information only on products of performance, fail to account for satisfactory amounts of variance in academic achievement or other criterion measures of interest. To corroborate and extend previous work on information processing measures, by examining the…

Studies suggesting appropriate literature for children at various stages of social and intellectual development can offer only a general picture of children's changing response to literature. While smaller children appear to prefer shorter stories in simple language, for example, they readily accept the unfamiliar place names or nonsense words of…

The primary task in solving a physics problem is to select ways of viewing the problem in terms of physical systems whose behavior is described by physical laws. The physical systems are, in general, only approximate models of the real-world systems. As models of real-world systems are made more accurate, the equations involved quickly become…

The study investigated whether (1) instruction providing for experimental manipulation by students was superior to instruction in which teachers perform the manipulations and children observe, and (2) spatial ability was related to mode of instruction. Participating in the 8-week study were 141 students aged 12-15 in seven intact eighth-grade…

Although sex differences in research have received considerable attention, few researchers have examined the bias, social context, and process of that research. In analyzing sex differences in academic achievement over the past 10 years, three areas (mathematics, spatial ability, and verbal ability) would appear to establish consistent sex…

A study investigated previous research findings that children demonstrate certain confusions about print conventions, and that above average readers perform better on measures that assess knowledge of print conventions than do poorer readers. In addition, the study measured the contribution of intelligence to both print awareness and reading…