Measures of verbal intelligence and abstract reasoning were taken on a group of 31 college-aged and 32 elderly adults, together with mental-processing rates associated with choice reaction time, primary memory scanning, and lexical decoding. Group means showed that verbal IQ and lexical decoding were intact in the elderly subjects. (Author/LMO)

Outlines leadership capabilities that effective principals can exert to improve the teaching of higher level thinking skills to students. An important initial step is to make the development of student thinking skills a building priority at the school. (MD)

Argues that composition teachers need to know, as opposed to teach, a good deal about basic logic, both formal and informal, specifically about the paradigm of argumentation--including the limitations of formal logic. (EL)

Examines the effects of specific task-related information on undergraduates' studying behaviors and question-answering performance and indicates that specific postreading response criteria significantly improved the question-answering performance of readers.(DF)

Provides guidelines for conducting and interpreting interviews aimed at assessing the cognitive concepts of young children. Discusses the content, task, questions, and format of the interview, listing 16 points of advice for interviewers. Also elaborates on the value and use of structured interviews. (JM)

Argues that much of current science curricula and instructional strategies do not accommodate the thinking and reasoning capabilities of students. Level of capacity for abstract logical reasoning, whether the capacity can be cultivated/enhanced, consequences of mismatched intellectual levels and instructional modes, and what thinking/reasoning…

Focusing on one teacher's categorization of students'"searching" behavior, describes a case study drawn from ethnographic investigations of classrooms in France and offers a model of the interpretative process. (RH)

Determined effects of various methods and formats of administering a Piagetian task on college students' (N=376) performance. Concludes neither method nor format influenced subject performance; and this lack of influence is similar for various combinations of method and format. Importance of this finding and implications for teachers are…

College-level visual arts students and instructors with matched cognitive styles were found to have a more positive interaction than students and instructors with mismatched cognitive styles. There is a need for further investigation of cognitive styles of university visual arts students. (Author/RM)

Third and sixth graders were presented a story on television or radio and were then given a version of Torrance's "Just Suppose" test of divergent thinking. Results indicated that--in terms of ideational fluency, flexibility, and originality--the two media did not have a differential effect on children's creativity. (PD)

Presents a taxonomy that organizes learner activities into the dimensions of mental, social, and physical involvement. Applies the taxonomy or model to speech class activities and reports validity evidence from several research studies. (PD)

Suggests there is a need for a new teaching model which will enable second-language students to integrate the formal, cultural, and informational features of the language on which competency is based. This model should be based on the use of authentic texts which reflect the values of the foreign population. (SED)

Compares Charles Peters's Content Processing Model with another content area reading model and argues that critics have overlooked a substantial flexibility within the models. (HOD)

Presents strategies for helping students develop their metacognitive abilities. Teachers must specifically encourage thinking about thinking. (MD)

Reports on a study of four Australian 11th-grade biology students that used stimulated recall to evaluate student thinking processes.The study confirmed the complexity of the teaching-learning process. (MD)