This study investigated associations between mother-infant interactions and children's subsequent understanding of mind and emotion. Mothers' tendency to comment on their infants' internal world and their general sensitivity to their infants' internal states were measured through coded play interactions at 10 months. The latter measurement…

We investigated humor as a context for learning about abstraction and disbelief. More specifically, we investigated how parents support humor understanding during book sharing with their toddlers. In Study 1, a corpus analysis revealed that in books aimed at 1- to 2-year-olds, humor is found more often than other forms of doing the wrong thing…

The manual on problem solving was culled from a set of newspaper articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Each brief article typically suggests problem solving strategies and offers sample problems on which to test one's skill. Articles are organized into the categories of input, process, and output. The input section offers ideas about analysis,…

Article explores some of the key notions of the construct "concept" from the psychological and educational literature in order to demonstrate the need for standardization of definition and a more unified front in future investigations involving this important element in the study of cognition. (Author)

The article reviews six conceptions of genius and offers a seventh. Three types of genius (analytic, synthetic, and integrated) are defined. Common to all three is the sustained ability to use analysis and synthesis (i.e., to be both linear and creative in approaching complex problems). (Author/DB)

A training program in analogical reasoning skills stresses processes of encoding, inferring, mapping, and applying. Initial sessions focus on applications to concrete analogy problems while subsequent sessions present more abstract linguistic analogies and consider applications to other school subjects. (CL)

Reasoning and imagining are seen as very different acts of mind. Imagination connotes the counterfactual and the unruly; reasoning connotes a realistic and rule-bound activity. Good reasoning depends crucially on the vigorous exercise of imagination. Good informal reasoning is as difficult, and as dependent on imagination, as mathematical…

We have built a world for ourselves that relies almost exclusively on mental processes. (Author)

Study indicates that for children, but not for adolescents, the number of concepts produced was inversely related to the level of abstractness of the stimuli. (Author/MG)

Reviews and discusses Piaget's recent work on abstract reasoning. Piaget's distinction between empirical and reflective abstraction is presented; his hypotheses are considered to be metaphorical. (Author/DB)

Researchers and educators of the deaf often suggest that deaf children have a particular problem in understanding metaphorical uses of natural language. The paper reports two experiments whose results are incompatible with this view. (Author)

Describes a study which ascertained what influences (if any) general semantics training might have on one's "allness orientation," or the belief that one is in possession of all the facts, with dogmatic insistence on their concrete reality. (HOD)

Studied the effects of familiar and abstract task content on self-directed inductive learning with 2 groups of college students (n=50). As expected, learning outcome was higher in the group performing the concrete task. Discusses reasons for the content effect. (SLD)

Reasoning and learning are closely related, both being the methods of solving problems, learning usually results from the process of reasoning. All inventions, discoveries, art, literature and advances in culture and civilization are based on thinking, reasoning and problem solving capacity of human being. A sound reasoning leads to better…

There now appears to be widespread agreement that early childhood mathematics education (ECME) should be implemented on a wide scale, particularly for disadvantaged children. Yet little is known about the teaching of early mathematics. The goal of this paper is to demystify the process. We analyze one early childhood teacher's work as she attempts…