Working under the hypothesis that a child's concept of a story and his or her concept of the task of narration used to tap comprehension emerge first in social interaction, a methodology was created for studying the process of development from dependent functioning in social interaction to independent functioning based on L. Vygotsky's theoretical…

A study investigated the theory that the affective dimension of words can have a significant effect on the process of word recognition. Specifically, the study examined whether word potency (the emotional impact of a word), frequency, and certain graphic characteristics affected word recognition in the parafoveal field under very brief exposure…

Reported is a study to investigate the effects of a free-choice program on children's ability to interpret experiments, design simple investigations, and recognize variables that could affect the outcome of observed events. (Author/SA)

Presented are examples of student differences in thought forms derived from interviews of students entering the natural science line and technology line of the integrated upper secondary schools in Sweden. Methods are outlined for the symbolic description, analysis and interpretation of "thought forms," and ways are described in which dialogue…

The differences in performance on a variety of cognitive measures were studied in 67 learning disabled (LD) and normal elementary school children. Younger and older Ss were administered tests of conceptual sorting, central and incidental learning, and selective attention. Teacher ratings of classroom hyperactive behavior were also examined. LD Ss…

Controlling the rate of oral delivery in the second language classroom has been demonstrated as beneficial to the learner, whose information-processing capacity is an important factor in listening comprehension. Rate of information delivery can be controlled by limiting the actual rate of words per unit of time, or by maintaining content…

The notion that life stresses and personality have an interactive role in illness is part of the wisdom of the ages. Most past research has studied either life stresses or personality. A model for understanding health/illness status is presented that includes stressful life events and the resistance resources of personality, social supports,…

This paper describes a model for the adolescent's understanding of the motion of objects, and the application of this model to the design of beginning physics instruction in mechanics. Students' difficulties in learning classical Newtonian mechanics are described and integrated into current cognitive science research. Research findings on physics…

Methods of philosophical psychology can be used to analyze the concept of emotion. Distinctions exist between dispositional and occurrent emotional states. Intensionality is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for an emotion; thus, emotions can be appraised as reasonable (or unreasonable) and the source of intensionality can be…

Three studies tested the theory that long term memory consists of a semantically organized network of concept nodes interconnected by leveled associations or relations, and that when a stimulus is processed, the corresponding concept node is assumed to be temporarily activated and this activation spreads to nearby semantically related nodes. In…

In Experiments 1 and 2 subjects read a series of standard algebra story problems, and were asked to recall each problem. In Experiment 3, subjects were asked to construct problems based on certain situations (such as "train leaving stations"). Results indicated that "relational propositions" (such as "the rate in still…

Researchers in the area of human learning and memory have stressed the need for systematic studies of the factors involved in information processing and their effects on the retention and recall of the information processed. One such important factor may be self-reference. A lecturer may stimulate self-reference in students through…

The development of certain cognitive skills to a certain level may be necessary to acquire beginning reading skills. A review of research on cognitive skill development and beginning reading revealed that only a few studies investigated the need for ascertaining the presence of some cognitive processing abilities before reading instruction is…

This document focuses on research on the relation between children's use and understanding of counting as a symbol system for number and the development of number conservation concepts. An underlying assumption is that a better match between mathematics curricula and the educational needs of children will be facilitated by learning more about the…

Reflecting the interdisciplinary emphasis that reading comprehension has received during the past decade, the articles in this volume deal with both the processes involved in reading and the instructional practices used in teaching it. The six articles devoted to reading processes deal specifically with the following topics: schemata,…