Discusses the development of expert system shells and the use of expert systems as instructional tools, and describes a program which required junior high school students using Macintosh computers to create a knowledge base on topics of their choice. Benefits of such student-created expert systems are discussed. (LRW)

Discusses the organization and retrieval of information. Describes the tip-of-the-tongue state during mathematics problem solving. Provides five rules for a deep level of processing of new concepts. (YP)

Describes study of 383 college students in educational psychology classes that was designed to determine how students describe study activities. Completed inventories are compared from three theoretical perspectives: cognitive processes, approaches to learning, and autonomous studying, and factor analyses are explained. (25 references) (LRW)

Argues that little attention is paid to the ways in which social relations of power mediate the process of meaning creation. Suggests that ideology provides a way of contextualizing the communication process within such power relations and that communication is intrinsic to the means by which relations of domination are produced and reproduced.…

Uses a spatial model to examine the relationship between stimulus exposure, cognition, and affect. Notes that this model accounts for cognitive changes that a stimulus may acquire as a result of exposure. Concludes that the spatial model is useful for evaluating the mere exposure effect and that affective change does not require cognitive change.…

Describes an informal assessment procedure that uses think alouds (readers' verbal self-reports about their thinking processes) to obtain information about how they attempt to construct meaning from text. (MG)

Five papers discuss the current and potential contributions of information-processing theory to our understanding of mathematical thinking as those contributions affect the practice of mathematics education. It is concluded that information-processing theories need to be supplemented in various ways to more adequately reflect the complexity of…

Discusses the potential value of feminist poststructuralism to feminist psychologists seeking more satisfactory ways of theorizing gender and subjectivity. Explores the following concepts related to this theoretical perspective: (1) approaches to knowledge; (2) language; (3) discourse; (4) subjectivity; and (5) experience as text. Presents an…

Standardized tests which measure a narrow span of intelligence unfairly penalize students whose strengths don't fall within that range. Three kinds of intelligence (analytical, creative, practical) are discussed. Sternberg's Triarchic Abilities Test, currently being test-piloted, assesses all three aspects of intelligence in contrast to current…

Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) science superitems were examined from the perspectives of Guttman Scaling (deterministic) and Item Response Theory (probabilistic). Differences between the measurement bases for the two approaches, and the results for a small case study, are reported. (Author/MLW)

Examines the instructional effectiveness of abstract diagrams on recall of sequential relations in social science textbooks. Concludes that diagrams assist significantly the recall of sequential relations in a text and decrease significantly the rate of order mistakes. (RS)

Ten children and adolescents with severe mental retardation were assigned in matched pairs to either a lexigram augmentative communication condition (graphic symbols) or a control condition (social stimulation). The three subjects who successfully acquired lexigrams also exhibited changes in attention, intentional communication, and sociability.…

Three papers comment on a paper by Abrahamsen et al (EC 212 728) on concomitants of success in acquiring an augmentative communication system (AAC) by persons with severe mental retardation. Comments focus on design and methodological requirements, principles of AAC, and sequence and process in indirect aspects of communicative gains. (DB)

Examines issues associated with the design of and statistical inferences from embedded experiments which vary the questionnaire content into sample surveys of broad populations. Provides an example of context effects in attitude surveys, a summary, and conclusions. (RT)

Two experiments, with 300 adult women as subjects, studied the effects of laboratory training on the use of the Conjunction Rule, a principle of probability that is often violated. Learning alternative strategies enabled trained subjects to use extensional reasoning rather than intensional heuristics. (SLD)