Examined whether speech rate is related to the amount recalled and if developmental increases in speech rate allow faster rehearsal with age, and hence, greater recall. Found that the group relationship was clear and replicable but that speech rates of individual children were not good predictors of those children's memory spans; age was found to…

Four experiments investigated children's ability to notice and remember events in which the acquisition of factual information occurs. Results indicated that children tend to report they have known newly learned information for a long time, suggesting that children have some understanding of knowledge acquisition, but not at the level of adults.…

Examined the nature of perceptual classification in children and young adults. Found that most children attend selectively to one stimulus dimension when making perceptual classification judgments. Suggests that this developmental trend does not appear to be a holistic-to-analytic shift but rather a trend toward greater consistency in following a…

The predictions that 48 students with deafness in grades 4-8 made while reading narrative text were analyzed to explore the influence of the children's expectations for text structure and content on reading comprehension. Findings indicated that interacting at a deep level with narrative text was more related to reader characteristics than to…

In a supplement to Sasaki's 1993 study, six of the same participants took different types of second-language proficiency (SLP) tests, a foreign language aptitude battery, and an intelligence test. Results revealed differences in information processing between the high and low SLP groups. (Contains 35 references.) (Author/LB)

Four artistic people of various ages were interviewed concerning their conscious and unconscious thought during creative activity, emotions which precipitated creative activity and intermingled with cognition, and intrinsic motivators and rewards. The interviews supported research regarding the internal forces of creativity. (Author/JDD)

A study of 54 first-year engineering students at an Australian university investigated their critical thinking skills as related to 3 kinds of study strategy: surface strategy; deep strategy; and achieving strategy. Results indicated a negative correlation between critical thinking ability and the achieving study strategy. Implications for…

Research is reported showing that children are lexically conservative in the domain of learning argument omissibility. Two studies (one observational case study, one experimental) show a relationship between the argument frames used in input and those used by child subjects. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/LB)

Argues that individual and group differences in priming performance scores are heavily influenced by overall speed and accuracy, and thus are a flawed reflection of internal activation of semantic priming. Suggests that meaningful comparison of groups on the activation underlying priming difference scores requires removing the effects of overall…

Results from a study involving 32 learning-disabled, 17 gifted, and 14 normally achieving students from grades 4 and 5 support the idea that learning-disabled children's problem-solving performance reflects a weak integration of metacognitive skills with online processing and problem solution. (SLD)

Tested Cooper and Fazio's dissonance model. Subjects made arguments that were consistent or inconsistent with their attitudes and were provided feedback about consequences. Attitude-change effect only occurred when behaviors were both inconsistent and resulted in aversive consequences. Results suggest that cognitive inconsistency may be necessary…

An approach to teaching university-level environmental education that uses structured controversy to challenge and enhance students' conceptions of environmental issues is described. Students are confronted with alternative viewpoints and evidence and engage in peer discussion to formulate their own position, understand other viewpoints, see the…

Describes an exploratory study on the acquisition and use of knowledge representation skills and structures by sixth-graders, supported by a computer-based learning environment. Results indicated that symbolic structures can be taught successfully, and that students using them in the context of instructional tasks perform at the higher band of…

Illustrates the multiple strategies used by second graders to solve a problem with three addends and how their teacher tries to map their thinking into the system of mathematical notation. Describes the American Federation of Teachers' Thinking Mathematics program that the teacher uses. (MKR)

Maintains that young children enjoy talking about art and should be given opportunities to do so. Recommends using Parsons' Aesthetic Development Theory as a flexible framework and guideline for discussion. Includes several transcribed discussions between the teacher and her pupils. (MJP)