This analysis considers several major areas in which cognition research would seem to have pregnant implications for the conscious design of social studies texts and sketches the ways in which the structure of texts might be shaped if research were applied. The first area discussed is matching texts to significant user characterics. There are at…

In response to practical questions about bilingual student needs, this paper addresses three issues. First, it describes a conceptual framework identified as "educational cognitive style" whereby the characteristics of bilingual learners and the modes of understanding of an educational task can be modeled and therefore matched. Second, it…

Theoretical perspectives on depression have suggested that three general orientations (self-critical, dependency, and inefficacy) characterize moods and that a depressed person's cognitive structure is different. College students (N=73) completed questionnaires to explore phenomenological correlates of normal mood states which might have…

It is often assumed that old age is a time of numerous losses, irritants, and stress. Although researchers have examined the interrelationship of stress, health, and happiness in old age, stress is usually operationalized as a response to major life events; however, stress can also be operationalized as a response to the everyday experiences of…

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 third in a series concerning some implications of learners' cognitive style for the development of reading competence, this paper reports on a study that was concerned with the effectiveness and efficiency with which ninth grade field dependent and field independent readers processed prose in silent reading at three difficulty levels. Results…

Although numerous studies have indicated that older persons process visual information more slowly than younger persons, the precise nature of age-associated changes in the processing of visually presented information remains unclear. Older adults (N=18) and college students (N=18) performed a visual search task in which lists of words and…

Depression therapy literature cites the importance of self-concept in formulating therapeutic strategies. Traditional depression measures catalog a client's symptoms, but fail to tap the structure of dysfunctional thoughts and judgments that form the client's self-concept. Vector-product multidimensional scaling was used to develop a measure of…

Students ask "why?" questions in the survey stage of using TICCIT lessons either because (1) they have holistic learning strategies, (2) they are searching for familiar bases upon which to attach new material, or (3) they desire to find out what relevance the lesson has for their future lives. In the design phase of TICCIT, an effort was…

The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS) was developed to measure pervasive negative attitudes of a depressed person towards self, outside world, and future. The DAS follows Beck's construct of cognitive dysfunction. Two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the DAS and the relationship between cognition and affect in 300 normal…

Cognitive development and various educational implications are discussed in terms of Donald Saari's model of the interaction of a learner and the enviroment and the constraints imposed by the inefficiency of the learner's cognitive system. Saari proposed a hierarchical system of cognitive structures such that the relationships between structures…

A study of 130 undergraduate students enrolled in a course on auiovisual techniques sought to determine whether heuristic or algorithmic computer-based problem solving training would be differentially effective for students varying in cognitive complexity as measured by the Educational Set Scale (ESS). The interaction was investigated between one…

This paper discusses a study to determine how people view political power within the Swedish system. The objective was to investigate variations in the way people perceive a common social phenomenon. The sample was composed of 15 subjects chosen randomly from the adult population of Goteborg, Sweden. Subjects were interviewed regarding their…

A causal-comparative study was conducted among 56 educationally disadvantaged children to determine if children who had the benefit of a home-based experience were significantly different from their peers in intellectual ability, self-concept, and cognitive style. Using the cognitive-developmental method of instruction, trained para-professionals…

Noting that one means of better understanding the nature of cultural differences is to elucidate the cognitive differences between members of differing cultures, this paper examines Alexander Luria's sociohistorical theory of functional cognitive systems. The paper first describes Luria's notion of functional systems, the crux of which postulates…