The study examined the effectiveness of a program to improve the cognitive skills of 91 hearing impaired college students. Experimental students received systematic cognitive instruction focusing on specific generalizable skills during the experimental period, several times per week, in the contexts of their regular college classes. Instructors of…

Recent research and program development in the areas of metacognition and related teaching and learning strategies is the subject of this issue of the newsletter. The lead article reviews reasons for the current interest in cognition and metacognition, clarifies the concepts of cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, and describes key…

The effect of computer-assisted instruction on spatial problem solving skills was examined in this study. Subjects were fifth grade students from nine classes, who were divided into three treatment groups in a nonrandom fashion: (1) computer-assisted group, which used computer software designed to help students improve spatial problem solving…

This monograph contains reports of research conducted under the Higher Order Thinking Program of Research at the Minnesota Research and Development Center. A report entitled "Studying Expertise in Specific Knowledge Domains" (Ruth G. Thomas) briefly reviews previous findings regarding the general nature of expertise and discusses the…

This study investigated problem solving skills in mechanics problems that required the use of diagrams. These skills were examined in two ways. First, the study examined student problem solving skills using solution scripts from the Western Australian Tertiary Admission Examination in physics. Solution attempts by students in the 1978 and 1979…

A historical review of educational literature concerning measurement of cognitive skills is provided, with reference to test construction. Focus is on assessing abilities beyond recall of information. In light of interest in assessing critical thinking in the California Assessment Program, it must be noted that concern with critical thinking is…

In the research described in this document, the goal was to develop definite theoretical characterizations of understanding in a specific domain of problems. Some performance that provides persuasive evidence of understanding was chosen, and hypotheses about cognitive structures and processes that cause the performance to occur were developed.…

Noting that the media can be powerful instruments in the hands of creative teachers, this paper explores the use of media as instructional tools to promote growth in thinking and language processes (primarily reading and writing). The paper views media form and applies it to the interrelationship of experience, thought, and language. It proposes…

One hundred thirty-nine college students participated in an experiment designed to examine the basis of their abilities to make relative importance distinctions among ideas in a text while reading. Subjects read two texts of 13 paragraphs each. The topics of the two texts were unrelated, but their topic structure was similar. For each of the…

Prompted by current theories in reading suggesting that variation in word knowledge affects the processing of not only individual words but also clauses and sentences, this report explores some different ways in which children's comprehension processes may be affected by variation in word knowledge. The report first examines whether the effects of…

A study investigated the relationship between sixth grade students' reading attitudes and awareness of certain parameters of reading and their performance on a reading comprehension test. Subjects, 100 students scoring between the 5th and the 95th percentiles on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) comprehension section, completed a reading…

To investigate the factors determining why some children succeed at certain intellectual tasks while others of equal or near equal IQ, age, and motivation are unable to master the same task, 145 female and 144 male eighth grade students were administered "An Inventory of Piaget's Developmental Tasks" (IPDT). Labeled as concrete,…

Four tests were chosen for a study that investigated the hypothesis that individual differences in aural comprehension might anticipate individual differences in general information. A composite of eight subtest scores from the Test of General Information (TGI) was used as a measure of students' general knowledge. The Listening section of the…

Optimal-level theories maintain that the quality of affect is a function of a quantitative arousal potential dimension. An alternative view is that the quantitative dimension merely modulates preexisting qualitative properties and is therefore only responsible for changes in the degree of affect. Thus, the quality of affect, whether it is positive…

A study examined the nature of the schematic processes for a story presented in television, text, and radio form and for a story presented to above average and average readers. The story was parsed according to J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson's story grammar. Schematic processing was inferred from the pattern of node memorability for the different…