Designed to gain a more thorough understanding of the cognitive processes involved and apply this knowledge in defining improved teaching strategies, this study of contour interpretation (referred to as "position fixing") required 12 subjects to locate their position on a map after being transported, blindfolded, to test sites where…

Teachers' views of education, their students, and their disciplines were assessed based on interviews with 20 faculty members from a small liberal arts college. The interviews were content analyzed, and the relationships between epistemological beliefs, course objectives, and views of student difficulties (e.g., skill deficiencies, personality)…

Recent literature which proposes a more active therapeutic stance with Afro-American clients is consistent with general trends in clinical theory. Therapists are beginning to appreciate the usefulness of the concept of the "self." Rychlak (1979) notes that a humanistic approach in psychology emphasizes the importance of an introspective…

The conceptual view of independent study that is developed in this paper is based on discussions of four key ideas: (1) independent study is concerned with both learning and teaching; (2) independent study is concerned with the capacity of learners to be self-directing; (3) independent study systems are both internal and external to educational…

This study examined the relationship between the ability to think critically and the academic performance of undergraduate students. Male (N=107) and female (N=130) undergraduates completed a consent form, demographic sheet, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA), which consists of five subtests (Inference, Recognition of…

The role of affect in counseling has been examined from several orientations. The depth of processing model views the efficiency of information processing as a function of the extent to which the information is processed. The notion of cognitive processing capacity states that processing information at deeper levels engages more of one's limited…

Abstracts and abstractors' critiques are presented for six studies dealing with concept formation and misconceptions and for five studies dealing with cognitive development. The first six studies investigated: children's naive conceptions of the human body; students' understanding (or misunderstanding) of states of matter and density changes; the…

A study examined in detail the initial encoding of worked-out examples of mechanics problems by "good" and "poor" students, and their subsequent reliance on examples during problem solving. The subjects, three males and five females, were selected from responses to a university campus advertisement. Six of them were working…

A study investigated the learning styles of remedial students and the implications for computer-assisted instruction. The subjects were 31 sixth-grade Chapter 1 students from a middle school in Idaho who did not have learning disabilities nor were candidates for special education. The subjects were given the Reading Style Inventory (RSI). Results…

Eighty high school students enrolled in social studies classrooms participated in a study exploring the hypothesis that field dependence-independence is a perceptual dimension of cognitive style influencing text structure variables and the quality of free recall. Based on results of a test of field dependence/independence, 10 subjects served in…

An approach to developing materials and activities based on learners' individual needs begins with administration of the Learning Style Inventory, an instrument that identifies 32 factors related to student learning in four stimuli groups: environmental, emotional, sociological, and physical. With the printout of each student's learning style…

Teachers cannot afford to ignore the research findings on right and left brain functions. Basically, three things have been discovered: (1) each hemisphere of the brain processes information differently; (2) in some people, the hemispheres work well together, in others they are in a constant state of disagreement; and (3) each hemisphere is…

An irrelevant auditory probe procedure was employed to evoke brain event-related potentials (ERPs) in 56 right-handed Caucasian males while they learned concepts presented to them in study booklets. A mastery test was administered to assess concept acquisition. Subjects were divided into two groups according to whether or not their achievement…

The final report describes a project investigating the utility of dynamic assessment in measuring the cognitive functioning and learning characteristics of children with specific learning disabilities. Subjects were 229 fourth and fifth grade children with 75 of these diagnosed as children with specific learning disabilities. Measures of cognitive…

After examining several definitions of learning styles, this guide helps reading teachers identify the areas in which they need to adapt their practices in adjusting to differences in their students' learning styles. A 34-item Teacher Inventory of Adaptations for Learning Styles in Reading Classes checklist is provided in the guide. (MS)