THIS WORKBOOK WAS DEVELOPED IN A CURRICULUM PROJECT, DESCRIBED IN VT 004 454, TO HELP YOUNG PEOPLE LEARN BASIC PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS OF MECHANICS AND TECHNOLOGY BY MEANS OF A SERIES OF APTITUDE TRAINING EXERCISES. IT IS THE LAST OF FOUR BOOKS WHICH PRESENT 30 EXERCISES DESIGNED FOR 30 CLASS PERIODS. THE EXERCISES ARE SIMILAR TO APTITUDE TEST…

Civil liberties are rights enjoyed by individuals guaranteeing them protection from the arbitrary or discriminatory acts of government. Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory of moral reasoning and studies of behavioral/abstract attitudinal measures provide a rationale for examining moral reasoning processes, intelligence, and selected…

This paper discusses the theoretical problem of matching and abstraction of concepts as the processes occur in human minds, and the structures used to represent these processes for use in automated, knowledge based systems. A basic premise of the paper is that hierarchies play a crucial role in structuring knowledge and in solving problems. Data…

Although college catalogs contain expressions of devotion to the cause of developing in students a capacity for and commitment to critical thought, there are philosophical, scientific and practical problems surrounding this aim. To measure student values and differences in intellectual dispositions, the Center designed a research instrument, the…

This research is concerned with human problem-solving behavior that involves inductive reasoning or concept formation when that behavior is being assisted by certain computer and display aids (called symbol manipulation functions). Human subjects use a variety of systematic operations when they are solving such problems. In order to analyze…

In earlier research the writer was constrained by the variables which were continuously appearing in both experimental class teaching experiences and various psychological experiments to distinguish four levels of cognitive sophistication in so far as mathematical material was concerned between the ages of 7 years and 17 years. In current research…

The purpose of this research was to assess the validity of recent claims that experimenter-provided pictures facilitate young children's oral prose learning. The major question of interest was whether the pictures do nothing more than prompt the child to process the just presented information one more time, Three experiments were designed to test…

Investigated, within a Piagetian framework, was the degree of abstract preferences exhibited by five different grade levels of science students as they completed eighteen problem solving tasks. Three hundred twenty-nine randomly selected students from five grade levels, ranging from eighth grade to college seniors, were given the Shipley Test of…

Experiment I was designed to demonstrate that young children fail to abstract the positive cue as the relevant stimulus event in a restricted concept-learning task. Sixteen kindergarten and 16 fourth grade subjects were trained to criterion on a Kendler-type task, whereupon each subject was presented a pair of new instances which contrasted only…

This paper reviews literature on subcultural differences in language development to find out what the literature suggests about the nature of a language program for lower class 4-year-olds. The following conclusions are reached: (1) differences in syntactic and phonological competence are not important barriers to communication for the lower class…

To compare the effects of hypothesis testing strategy training and paired associate training on the verbal abstraction performance of mentally handicapped adolescents, 50 male educable mentally handicapped in residence at a state school were tested. Subjects receiving strategy-oriented training learned to test out associates against nouns that…

This study is the fourth in a series of studies that have attempted to examine the relationship between two separate aptitude factors--associative memory and reasoning--to various performance criteria in a hierarchical learning task utilizing computer-assisted instruction. Two clear effects seem to emerge from the data. During learning, the…

This study was concerned with children's ability to conserve spatial relationships among objects in different arrangements, in the presence of projected changes in the observer's visual field. The objectives were: (1) to determine the effects of varying types of arrangement and number of objects in the arrangement on perspective ability…

After opening with a 13-page review of the literature, the document's main emphasis is on the three experiments included in this report. The specific rationale, procedures, and results of the three studies comprise the major portion of the document. The general purpose of Experiment 1 was to ascertain the effects of prior relevant subject matter…

Although studies of verbal abstracting with the cultural-familial mentally retarded have demonstrated a deficit in the ability, the deficit may not be indicative of a basic cognitive deficit; rather, it may be due to a lack of experience with language of a higher conceptual nature. Several training strategies have been followed to overcome the…