The research and development efforts performed by principal investigators under sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research Cognitive and Neural Sciences Division during 1988 are documented. The title, name and affiliation of the principal investigator, project code, contract number, current end date, technical objective, approach, and progress of…

A theory of learning based on recent insights from sociology and semiotics is explicated. Building on the work of Vygotsky, Dewey, Halliday, Barnes, Deely, Eisner, and others, this sociosemiotic model of learning is used as a frame of reference for thinking about the process by which texts are created from sensation. It is argued that the process…

To determine where U.S. citizens receive their political and current events knowledge, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) interviewed people at a Boston shopping mall. This preliminary report, the first in a series to examine the political knowledge gap between the affluent and the economically disadvantaged, examined…

The ninth in a series of studies to improve the strategies that poor reading comprehenders use to study text began as a training study containing three components: strategies to be taught, instructional mode by which they would be taught, and the metacognitive environment for the instruction. After identifying four strategies that merited…

As a result of a program of research about cognitive processes involved in learning to read and write among 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year old-children, this book attempts to get teacher-researchers to think through the implications of recent insights into literacy and literacy learning. The first section examines instructional assumptions; proposes a new…

The five papers in this symposium contribute to a dialog on the aims and methods of computer education, and indicate directions future research must take if necessary information is to be available to make informed decisions about the use of computers in schools. The first two papers address the question of what is required for a student to become…

This paper discusses the relationship between the mediation of task performance by some structure that is not inherent in the task domain itself and the phenomenon of automatization, in which skilled performance becomes effortless or phenomenologically "automatic" after extensive practice. The use of a common simple explicit mediating…

This paper reviews the literature concerning integrative curricula for gifted learning. The goals of such curricula include encouraging students to incorporate innovative ideas into their learning activities, promoting self-actualization, unifying students' educational activities across subject-matter boundaries, and aiding students in organizing…

A study investigated how young children understand natural kind terms by examining how 3- and 4-year-olds rely on category membership to draw inductive inferences about objects. One hundred four children (53 girls and 51 boys) from six preschools in California and Michigan participated in the study. The children were shown 10 sets of pictures of…

This paper posits a cognitive model for understanding and learning physics that is an alternative to the formal deductive system. Recent findings of Fuller, Karplus, Lawson, and others are cited in arguing against using a formal deductive approach to teaching physics. The model demonstrates types of action-oriented knowledge structures as they…

This document characterizes South African education as resulting in large numbers of students who are poorly equipped to meet academic requirements of first-year university courses, especially in science related disciplines. It reports on a study designed to investigate the learning problems of disadvantaged South Africans in an attempt to…

Cognitive style refers to preferences for, or dominant modes of, information processing. Cognitive styles tend to be bipolar and less value-laden than ability or aptitude measures. Conceptualizations of cognitive style differ in the number of styles and the degree of metacognitive control over them which individuals are presumed to have. The Hill…

Thirty four-year-olds and 30 five-year-olds participated in a study of social influences on computer activity. During a first session children were individually pretested for general cognitive level and alphabet and number skills; during a second session they were given individual training on the computer; during third and fourth sessions half of…

Noting that the program is primarily a reading and verbal skills program for adult learners, this paper describes the Academic Remedial Training (ART) Program of the U.S. Navy. The first section of the paper discusses the historical background of the program. The second section describes the reading skills component and the verbal skills component…

A new model of the revision process in written composition, based on the results of thinking aloud protocol studies, is presented in this report. The report begins by discussing earlier observations and theories of revision that establish four points: (1) there are large differences among writers in the amount of revising they do, (2) expert…