The purpose of this study was to survey and examine the history of teaching of the basic addition facts in elementary school mathematics in the United States from colonial times to 1950. This examination is intended to provide insight into the causes of frustrations in teaching the facts in the past and possibly serve to alleviate anxiety in the…

This study tested the following hypotheses: (1) that children would use both verbal-associative and acoustic memory attributes when encoding words in memory, and that the recall of younger children would indicate dominance of the acoustic attribute while the recall of older children would indicate dominance of the verbal-associative attribute; (2)…

The present study was designed to explore the relationship between the theoretical models of cognitive development proposed by L. S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget. One hundred and four subjects aged four to sixteen years were selected. All subjects were in the average range of intelligence, were in the usual school grade for their age, and had no history…

A partial replication of an investigation of the effect of covert reinforcement on a perceptual estimation task is described. The study was extended to include an extinction phase. There were five treatment groups: covert reinforcement, neutral scene reinforcement, noncontingent covert reinforcement, and two control groups. Each subject estimated…

This literature review focuses on determining the psychological variables related to problem solving and presents arguments for self-correcting manipulatives as a media for teaching problem solving. Ten traits are considered: attitude, debilitating anxiety, self-concept, orderliness, set, confidence, impulsive/reflective thinking, concentration…

A quasi-systematic strategy of devising rule sets for problem solving is applied to ruler and compass geometrical constructions. "Lower order" rules consisting of basic skills and "higher order" rules which govern the selection and combination of lower order rules are identified by an analysis of problem types; three types of…

Five premises necessary for the formulation of instructional theory are stated. As a suggested elaboration of the "behavior classification" premise, a two-way (content and behavior) classification scheme for higher order tasks is described. The content dimension includes paired associate, concept, principle, and problem tasks. The…

This study investigated the relationship between Kagan's reflective-impulsive dimensions and three levels of mathematical achievement test performance: computation, concepts, and problem solving. Two hypotheses were formulated: (1) there should be a positive correlation between the index of reflectivity and each of the Metropolitan mathematics…

The purposes of this study were to examine priority of recall of newly learned items (PRNI) from a developmental standpoint and to investigate whether preschool children are capable of using the attentional strategy employed by adults in free recall learning (FRL) of new items. In the first experiment the PRNI effect was examined from a…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the relationship between the acquisition of conservation skills and achievement in mathematics. The conservation skills measured were numbered, mass, area and volume. Mathematics achievement was measured by the Computation, Concepts, Problem-Solving and Total Mathematics scores on the Metropolitan…

Two experiments investigated the impact of immediate knowledge of a correct response (KCR) upon learning in programed instruction. The 356 subjects completed a programed lesson on myocardial infarction taught by means of the PLATO IV computer assisted instructional system. Subjects who received KCR after responding learned significantly more than…

The purpose of this study was to relate Piaget-type tests to Stanford-Binet Mental Age and IQ, to IQ on the California Test of Mental Maturity, and to performance on the Metropolitan Achievement Test. Subjects were 143 children of bright, average, and retarded psychometric abilities; bright and average children were chronologically aged five to…

Recent models of beginning reading processes are described, and the author offers the following summarization: (1) Models at present focus on cognitive aspects of reading; little attempt has been made to incorporate affective aspects into the models. (2) Several different theoretical positions within psychology representing a wide variety of…

A programmed instructional sequence was developed and tested with eleven-year-old subjects. The sequence was based on Piaget's theory of learning as it has to do with the development of the concept of proportionality. One treatment group was presented with correct rules after a series of instructional frames. Another group received the same frames…

The study attempted to trace the relationship between facility with cardinal-ordinal aspects of number; attention to dimensions of number, length, and density; and the presence and absence of number conservation. On the basis of performances on the standard test for number conservation, 25 nonconserving kindergarteners, 34 conserving…