Explicit instruction in thinking skills must be a priority goal of all teachers. In this book, the author presents a framework of the five Rs: Relevancy, Richness, Relatedness, Rigor, and Recursiveness. The framework serves to illuminate instruction in critical and creative thinking skills for K-12 teachers across content areas. Each chapter…

In the summer of 2009, a professional development partnership was established between the Peoria Public School District (PPSD), a local education agency (LEA), and Illinois State University (ISU) to improve geometric and trigonometric knowledge and skill for high school mathematics teachers as part of the Illinois Mathematics and Science…

In 7 experiments, the authors explored whether visual attention (the ability to select relevant visual information) and visual working memory (the ability to retain relevant visual information) share the same content representations. The presence of singleton distractors interfered more strongly with a visual search task when it was accompanied by…

Understanding the relationships between soil, landscape, and hydrology is important for making sustainable land management decisions. In this study, scientific visualization was explored as a means to visually represent the complex spatial and temporal variations in the hydrologic status of soils. Soil hydrology data was collected at seven…

Investigated whether it took more time for first graders to answer a question if they began with a small mental image of the queried object than if they began with a normal-sized image. It was hypothesized that it would take them more time to "see" part of the smaller image. Preliminary results were consistent with this expectation. (Author/JMB)

The latency at which objects could be identified by 126 subjects was compared through line drawings (edge-based) or color photography (surface depiction). The line drawing was identified about as quickly as the photograph; primal access to a mental representation of an object can be modeled from an edge-based description. (SLD)

Teachers can help students increase their memory skills through activities in visualization, memory, and sequencing. (CL)

Discusses the nature and role of visualization in the study of mathematics. Also includes a list of seven broad methods (often referred to as the design spectrum) by which individuals solve problems. (JN)

Among young children, verbalization led to many correct responses on a spatial perspective task (indicating views of an object from different positions), but produced few correct responses in a rotation task (imagining different views of a rotating object). Results suggested that language enhances perspective task performance by allowing feature…

Compared four relaxation treatments for sleep onset insomnia with a waiting-list control. Treatments varied in presence or absence of muscular tension-release instructions and in foci of attention. Results showed all treatment conditions reduced latency of sleep onset and fatigue; visual focusing best reduced the number of nocturnal awakenings.…

A man who lost his sight at age 63 recommends that rehabilitation of newly blinded persons should include development of remembered or created visual experiences through "videation" and explains the need of mental images for blind persons to adapt to their environment. (MC)

Reviews empirical evidence which suggests that level of recall does not determine hypermnesia (increased recall with repeated testing). Discusses the problem of deciding between a levels-of-processing and an imagery hypothesis of hypermnesia. (EKN)

The author partially describes a few of the immanent qualities of dreaming imagery and metaphor. The concept of the ineluctable modality is introduced to illustrate the spontaneous synthesizing of cognitive and noncognitive elements. A short dream excerpt is shared to clarify the pervasive contrapuntallike depth of dreaming imagery. (Author/SJL)