Educators generally assume that questioning promotes learning and that higher level questions do so better than lower level questions. But there are a number of problems with these assumptions. First, the classification of questions as higher level or lower level is ambiguous. The distinction is confused by such issues as non-controversial…

Advocates and teachers of critical thinking tend to deny that intuition and justification are logical, even though they assume that both processes are rational. However, it can be demonstrated that the relation between intuition and inference, between justification and explanation, is dialectical and complementary, so that there is no mystery as…

Arguing that understanding what lies behind the apparent usability of direct manipulation style interfaces might not only help in building better interfaces, but can also draw attention to possible side effects, this paper uses examples from a prototype data manipulation system to pursue a characterization of direct manipulation interfaces as…

Practical example of need for more in-depth study of debate theory. (CH)

This paper reports two studies designed to investigate the relationship between conceptions of distributive justice and perspective taking in preschool children. Subjects in the first study were 39 white, middle-class 4- and 5-year-old children. They were administered a concrete object form and an abstract picture form of a perceptual role-taking…

The effect of using either abstract or concrete words on verbal problem solving was examined in this study. Twelve undergraduate students in each of two conditions mentally solved identically structured problems by reordering and chaining together previously memorized pairs of words. Subjects who received concrete words both memorized the word…

The increasing abstractness of our language makes it difficult to deal effectively with concrete social problems. (JH)

Analogical models can be powerful aids to reasoning, as when light is explained in terms of water waves; or they can be misleading, as when chemical processes are thought of in terms of life processes such as putrefaction. This paper proposes a structural characterization of good science analogy using a theoretical approach in which complex…

Recognition errors of children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 were examined. Subjects learned words under intentional or incidental instructions and were tested immediately or 48 hours later. Subjects had to choose a target word from among acoustic, conceptual, associative and neutral distractors. The immediate recognition of 2nd-grade subjects was…

To determine if training in argumentation could affect the bases for student evaluation of communication aimed at changing opinions, students from Michigan State University formed an experimental group (those in an argumentation course) and a control group (those in a business letter writing course). The treatments consisted of four varying…

A review of literature drawn from logic, epistemology, learning theory, clinical psychology, childhood development, factor analyses of cognition, and the descriptive literature of scientific method was used to develop definitions of "abstract concept,""abstraction," and related terms. Criteria for categorizing abstract concepts according to their…

The article describes research which attempted to discover whether emotionally disturbed children functioned at Piagetian levels of abstract thought similar to normal children. (CD)

Describes various movement activities through which young children may discover topological relationships which provide a foundation for their growing understanding of space. (CM)

Jean Piaget's theory of genetic epistemology is criticized from a philosophical point of view. (JD)

Discusses problems in finding a place for logic in a model of reasoning and develops a conception of an overall model, one of whose components is strictly logical in nature. A new view of the logical function of "if-then" is proposed, then the logic is developed, and its relation to standard propositional logic is established. Also discusses…