WRITTEN COMPOSITIONS WERE OBTAINED FROM 48 CHILDREN, FOUR FROM EACH AGE GROUP FROM EIGHT THROUGH 11, ASSIGNED TO THREE IQ GROUPS--RETARDED, NORMAL, AND SUPERIOR. USING SEVERAL OF THE FLESCH CRITERIA (WHICH USE NUMBER OF SYLLABLES, AVERAGE SENTENCE LENGTH, AND NUMBER OF DEFINITE WORDS AS INDICES), COMPOSITIONS WERE SCORED FOR DEFINITENESS OF STYLE.…

This paper is a theoretical discussion of several functions of knowledge systems based on the idea of partial matching, that is, comparison of two or more descriptions by identification of their similarities. Several knowledge system functions are described in terms of partial or best matchings including analogical reasoning, inductive inference,…

Children's use of humor in hospital settings and ways hospital personnel might encourage positive uses of humor are discussed in this paper. Three questions are raised: (1) How is humor viewed in hospitals treating children? (2) How can developmental psychology help us understand children's humor? (3) What implications does an understanding of…

The measurement of a pupil's comprehension development from literal comprehension to evaluation focused on two questions: (1) How do we measure the various types of comprehension? and (2) How should we measure the various types of comprehension? Literal comprehension is presently measured by the recall or memory-type question. However, one should…

A Piagetian type task, The Island Puzzle, was administered to children grades 5 to 12, to science teachers attending a National Science Teachers Association Convention, and to college physics teachers attending a regional meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers. The procedures differed from those of Piaget in that the puzzle was…

It was hypothesized that the acquisition of conservation behavior would be facilitated when stimuli were more concrete than abstract. Eighty white second graders were randomly assigned to four groups and presented with three conservation-of-weight problems. Clay balls and the conservation transformations were either shown, demonstrated, and…

The purpose of this study was to determine if college students could benefit from the use of visual and manipulative aids while studying a mathematical topic. A sample of 33 freshmen were pretested for mathematical ability, divided into ability levels by means of ACT composite scores, and randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups for a…

To determine concept usage performance of the mentally handicapped when confronted with familiar items used in the concept usage tasks, 32 common concepts were presented to 25 educable mentally handicapped and 22 non-retarded subjects. From the responses to this number of referents task, a concept usage task was constructed which required choosing…

The building block theory of language structure, an information processing approach, is applied to the development of a model of the reading process. Specifically, the model is concerned with the amount of time an individual will spend reading and the amount of content he will decode which is determined by a series of cognitive processes involving…

This booklet is one of the National Humanities Faculty publications designed to examine the question of what is taught, and why. This dialogue between Edwin Delattre and Thomas Donovan explores how humans go about reasoning and solving problems according to their collective, reflective intelligence. (Author/MJ)

Describes ways of projecting stereoscopic images of geologic environments for students with difficulty reasoning in three-dimensions. The photographic procedures needed to produce stereo slides are included. (MA)

A modification of Posner's letter-matching paradigm is employed to study the development of abstract visual and name codes for letters in second, fourth, and sixth grade students. (CM)

Cites reasons for the formation and continuance of the Intellectual Development Project ( IDP). The impact of IDP research is described. (CP)

Sixty graduate students sorted stories according to three dimensions for classifying analogies: (1) physical similarity; (2) similarity in goals; and (3) whether the analogy leads to a reformulation of the question. High interrater agreement supports the use of the three dimensions to understand earlier inconsistent results in analogical problem…

Contending that mathematical representation sustains a resemblance to the representational activity preceeding it and that it is this analogical resemblance that makes the developmental sequence of children's representational ability visible as a sequence, this paper explores the application of this notion to an undergraduate class in early…