Investigated the ability of cognitive, affective, personality, and demographic variables to predict second language acquisition among college students. Student surveys indicated that all four types of variables correlated with foreign language achievement, with a cognitive variable (academic achievement) and an affective variable (foreign language…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of various cognitive abilities and aspects of math performance with computational estimation skill among third graders. Students (n=315) were assessed on language, nonverbal reasoning, concept formation, processing speed, long-term memory, working memory, inattentive behavior, basic reading…

Age-related changes in mental flexibility, in the form of task switching, were assessed in 292 children (58-156 months old). Task switching was examined with a new task for young children, the Switch Task for Children (STC). The STC consists of two easy, comparable games and does not require reading skills, which makes it suitable for children…

Change in cognitive functioning is an important aspect of human aging and a key outcome in many medical conditions. However, cognitive change can rarely be measured directly, since prior cognitive data do not exist for most people. We examined the criterion validity and one-year stability of the difference between National Adult Reading Test…

Deficits in theory of mind (ToM), evident in most individuals with autism, have been suggested as a core deficit of autism. ToM difficulties in young siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) compared to siblings of typically developing children (SIBS-TD) would place the former within the broad phenotype. We examined ToM's possible associations…

Inagaki and Hatano (2002) have argued that young children initially understand biological phenomena in terms of vitalism, a mode of construal in which "life" or "life-force" is the central causal-explanatory concept. This study investigated the development of vitalistic reasoning in young children's concepts of life, the human body and death.…

A sequential-touching task was used to investigate whether 14-month-old infants can rapidly change how they categorize a set of objects, recognizing new groupings of objects they had previously categorized in a different way. When presented with a collection of objects that could be categorized by shape (balls vs. blocks) or material (soft vs.…

This paper describes the development, implementation, and effects of new approaches to cognitive assessment within an undergraduate engineering course at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The course, ENGR 110, "Introduction to Engineering," was designed to be a problem-based learning environment in which cadets worked in teams to solve…

According to A. R. Luria (1973) the cerebral organization of mental activity can be understood through analyzing how mental activity is altered in different local brain lesions. Recent brain function research has used this approach in locating areas of the brain involved in specific processes. This study recognized the importance of this method…

This 1990 study of 165 undergraduates considered the application of cognitive development theory to social justice education. The table of contents presents the following sections: (1) "Why apply cognitive development theory to social justice education?" (2) "What is cognitive development?" (3) "Setting the background and context for the study";…

The development of a process to assess higher order thinking skills associated with thinking in real world situations raises questions about the domain of assessment, the skills and dispositions to be assessed, and the purpose of the assessment. It is argued that existing critical thinking courses and instruments may be of limited value in…

This report describes an experiment investigating the effects of cognitive style, presentation format, and task content on learning. Cognitive style was described in terms of hemisphericity (i.e., left- or right-brain influence on perception). Presentation format consisted of graphics, text, and a combination of the two. The tasks consisted of…

The facets of teachers' views of mathematics include their personal views, how they view mathematics for their students, how they view the mathematics curriculum, and how they view mathematics teaching. This paper reports a pilot study to examine how elementary school teachers view mathematics both personally and for their students. A coding…

The renewed attention to assessments that attempt to capture complex aspects of educational attainments of students is explored. The definition and impetus for attention of the measurement community to higher order thinking skills are examined. Through a detailed description, a model assessment development process is presented. The process relies…

A new concept, relativistic operations, seems to provide a link between Piagetian theory, information processing theory, logical thought in the new physics, and the nature of adults' problem solving in everyday social situations. Relativistic operations are logical, cognitive operations which can be used as a system to relate, order, and select as…