Understanding is discussed with reference to an agent-action-objective model. The formalism developed controls the processes of differentiation and integration underlying understanding. The starting point is a culturally agreed-upon expectancy or prescription that defines a particular form of understanding. Central to an investigation of how…

Studies have revealed significant problems in correctly scoring ambiguous verbal responses to test items on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). This study evaluated the effectiveness of an instructional design procedure developed to reduce examiner scoring errors on the WISC-R. Data concerning frequent sources of error…

Performance on the Digit Span (DSP) and Digit Symbol (DSY) subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) have been said to be vulnerable to the effects of anxiety, seating arrangements, and sex of subject. To determine the effects of these variables on anxiety and test performance on the WAIS-R DSP and DSY subtests, 40 male and 40…

This paper reviews work on the representation of knowledge from within psychology and artificial intelligence. The work covers the nature of representation, the distinction between the represented world and the representing world, and significant issues concerned with propositional, analogical, and superpositional representations. Specific topics…

The effects of compensatory education programs in the United States during the past 20 years are discussed. The author believes the programs have had the least impact on scholastic achievement and intelligence quotient (IQ). The theoretical view of human intelligence and prevailing views of psychologists and educators of the 1960's regarding the…

The pattern of correct and incorrect responses on the Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) can be used by teachers to estimate the student's strengths and weaknesses. A scheme for classifying the items was developed to aid teachers and other professionals interested in conducting an informal item analysis with the SIT so it could be added to other…

Karl Bruhn, professor of education at Helsinki University for almost 20 years, in addition to writing a history of education, concentrated particularly on carrying out further investigations with his Helsinki Test which was publicly released in 1953. The use of this test is presented in this posthumous article by Bruhn. The Helsinki Test is a…

A pilot study explored how to teach students to write thoughtfully, and also how to teach computers to recognize and interpret the kinds of thinking that appear in such writings. First, a taxonomy of mental processes was found, next the linguistic expressions (clues) that indicate the processes were hypothesized, and then a professionally-written…

This report presents the Blackboard Instructional Planner, a dynamic instructional planner designed and implemented in the BB1 Blackboard Architecture to teach troubleshooting a complex physical device by first imparting a mental model of the device and its operation. Control in intelligent tutoring systems is defined as selection of pedagogical…

This description of the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME), a flexible, cognitive simulation program for studying analogical processing which is based on Gentner's Structure-Mapping theory of analogy, points out that the SME provides a "tool kit" for constructing matching algorithms consistent with this theory. This report provides: (1) a…

This technical report describes a generic architecture for building intelligent tutoring systems which is developed around objects that represent the knowledge elements to be taught by the tutor. Each of these knowledge elements, called "bites," inherits both a knowledge organization describing the kind of knowledge represented and…

Two kinds of WISC-R short forms, item reduction and subtest reduction, are reviewed in terms of their ability to meet these criteria of adequacy: a significant correlation between the full scale IQ and the short form IQ, a non-significant difference between the full and short form mean IQ, a low percentage of IQ classification changes resulting…

Recent discussions of sex differences in intellectual abilities concur that such cognitive sex differences are statistically reliable yet small. To examine the variables of anxiety, rigidity, and divergent production, and to demonstrate that meaningful interactions involving the sex variable may be revealed when there are no "simple" sex…

The intended end product of the research project described is an "intelligent" multimedia tutoring system for procedural tasks, in particular, the repair of physical objects. This paper presents the data structure that will be used, i.e., a graph with five types of nodes (mental, abstract, motoric or action, visual, and verbal) and two types of…

The relationship between cognitive psychologists and researchers in artificial intelligence carries substantial benefits for both. An ongoing investigation in causal reasoning in medical problem solving systems illustrates this interaction. This paper traces a dialectic of sorts in which three different types of causal resaoning for medical…