An experiment on children's perception of urban distance is described, focusing on the study's methodology and analyses. Suggests that the methodology/analyses could be used by sixth-formers providing a means by which sixth-formers can develop their own examinations of urban distance perception. (JN)

Researchers studied the effect of interpolating extraneous information on students' ability to process cognitive information concerning their prior performances on the McCloy block test. The extraneous information was given in the interval between their last test and their next attempt to perform it. Results are discussed. (Author/PP)

Four instructional designs to teach pelvic examinations to second-year medical students were compared: traditional sequence, and practice in premotor, postmotor, and combined premotor and postmotor skill development. Mental practice produced better performance on the abilities to list the examination sequence and record findings. (Author/MSE)

After reviewing technological and social changes in society and drawing on the work of Teilhard de Chardin and other philosophers, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration executive challenges educators to show humans the way to a better integration of intellect and intuition and greater unanimity on ethical priorities. (MLF)

Dental instructors are encouraged to use questioning techniques more frequently in clinical and preclinical courses, to stimulate independent thinking. The characteristics of questioning, types of questions, reluctance to use the techniques, strategies with various student types, and strategies for awkward situations are discussed. (MSE)

Describes an instructional procedure based on the findings of schema research and illustrating the truth that the more students know about a subject, the better they can comprehend what they read about that subject. (FL)

Finds evidence that the reading of content area materials is done less effectively than is the reading of basal readers or trade books, particularly at the lower grade levels. (FL)

Examined is the effectiveness of three imagery learning strategies (copy, relational, and hierarchical) for acquiring different outcomes when individuals received visual instructional information varying in visual stimulus complexity. The hierarchical strategy was generally more effective in processing the different levels of information than the…

Individual differences in digit span, susceptibility to proactive interference, and various aptitude/achievement test scores were investigated in two experiments with college students. Results indicated that digit span was strongly correlated with aptitude/achievement scores, but did not indicate that susceptibility to proactive interference…

This study replicated Daneman and Carpenter's finding that the reading span test, as a measure of working memory storage and process functions, is predictive of performance on standard reading comprehension tests. It showed that reading span is related to the ability to draw inferences from, integrate, and encode text information. (Author/PN)

This study was conducted to determine the cognitive demand made by an eighth-grade science textbook. Reasoning patterns and science concepts were listed and compared. Concrete reasoning was required more often than formal reasoning, but some points of difficulty for students who are not formal reasoners were noted. (MNS)

Three developments over the past 15 years--our understanding of cognition, new techniques in technical psychometrics, and the computer explosion--form the basis for a proposal for new intelligence tests. These developments are reviewed, and both leaps and steps in intellectual assessment are proposed. (Author/RD)

Reaction time and movement time were negatively and moderately-to-strongly correlated with Ravens matrices performance and with reading comprehension and performance on the California Test of Basic Skills for 20 ninth-grade girls. Weaker relationships were found for mathematics and English grades, although the direction was consistently negative.…

In two six-month longitudinal studies of intellectually advanced preschool children, letter naming time and background digit span were moderately good predictors of concurrent reading achievement, while no other standard cognitive indices, including mental age, were associated with reading achievement. Both memory span and retrieval were related…

Reports on research that reviewed 142 current middle and secondary school content materials to discover the organizational patterns used in each. Concludes that four such patterns are commonly used: enumeration, relationship, persuasive, and problem solving. Discusses each pattern and how it affects comprehension. (FL)