In an attempt to determine whether knowledge of teachers' conceptual systems can be used to predict teaching styles in handling information and applying sanctions, the teaching styles of 136 home economics student teachers from three midwestern universities were measured by coding tape-recorded lessons according to Joyce's system, and two…

This paper discusses beginning reading instruction in the light of Piaget's theory, which demands that we think more broadly about the term "where the child is" in terms of his level of thinking, not simply his reading level or reading skill level. Using Piaget's four major developmental stages as the basis, the task of instruction in…

To determine whether children possess representations and concepts of space before they acquire verbal descriptions of these, children's formation of symbolic representations of space and their acquisition of verbal referents for them were observed. It was found for subjects in the study that conceptual representations of space relations were…

Previous research has shown that sequences in which instances from the same category appear successively facilitate performance in concept attainment. This could be due to subjects adopting strategies which involve comparisons of instances from within the same category. However, if subjects were to adopt a strategy involving comparisons of…

The purpose of thinking is to collect information and to make the best possible use of it. Because of the way the mind works to create fixed concept patterns we cannot make the best use of new information unless we have some means for restructuring the old patterns and bringing them up to date. Our traditional methods of thinking teach us how to…

Teaching students to use specific details is perhaps the college writing teacher's most troublesome job. Much time and effort is wasted by marking students' papers with comments such as "specify,""details,""illustrate," or "demonstrate." Significant concrete details should occur to a writer before the generalization does, since the best kind of…

The concern of the experiment is to find out the roles of abstraction and generalization in the learning of mathematical structures. The basic question is whether to generalize before abstracting or vice-versa in order to maximize transfer. The experiment involves four mathematical tasks and a transfer of activity. Experimental procedures are…

The role of reversibility in children's comprehension and memory for sequences of pictures was investigated for children in preschool, kindergarten, and first and second grades. Bidirectionality in the ability to remember and infer antecedents and consequences was assessed. (JMB)

Several observations about the way humans conceive of attributes, changes, and covariation of stimuli are presented as indications for the existence of a conceptual hierarchy of dimensions in which time dominates space, and space dominates every other dimension. (Author)

According to Piaget's (1958) theory of cognitive development, the stage of Formal Operational Thinking, highly abstract, as opposed to concrete, thinking, emerges during the adolescent period. Recent research suggests that "all" adolescents, or even adults, "do not" develop complete formal reasoning. Attempts to integrate…

The author discusses moral behavior and affect, and how they may influence reasoning processes when the individual is no longer dealing with hypothetical issues. (MJB)

This study explored the relationship between college student achievement and two other dimensions: cognitive complexity and the concreteness or abstractness of selected concepts. Although the level of abstractness alone did not influence achievement, the cognitive complexity of the item and the interaction of the two main effects was significant.…

In this study on the interactive effects of advance organizers and reasoning skills, 112 undergraduates read a literature text preceded by either a comparative advance organizer or a placebo introduction. Results suggest that instructional organizers produce neither serious loss nor substantial benefits for many purposes of communication. (BS)

Effects of global cognitive development, sex, and word abstractness on young readers' word recognition were explored. ANOVA results indicated that nouns were recognized more frequently than non-nouns; children with high cognitive development recognized more words than children with lower cognitive development; and females recognized more words…