Sixty Japanese children ranging in age from 3 years 4 months to 7 years 5 months were individually interviewed with three Piagetian tasks. Children's levels of representation were assessed by asking for a graphic representation of 4 dishes, 6 pencils, 8 small blocks etc. A conservation-of-number task was then given to assess children's level of…

This paper presents the results from a paper-and-pencil instrument designed to elicit students' thinking about the rate of change in particular situations. A scoring rubric was designed to classify students' solution strategies to algebra problems. The purpose of the study was to validate the results in different ways. First, the results from this…

A unit on animals was taught to 64 preschool children (44 in an experimental group and 20 in a control group). Children in the experimental group were taught nine major concepts over four levels of abstraction (designated as superordinate, intermediate, subordinate, or particular levels). Each concept was presented by means of an advance organizer…

An important task for literature teachers is to develop students' capacity for abstract thinking so that it can be employed on problems at will and by choice. The first process of abstract thinking is one which enables a person to see a connection between A and B, including processes of cause/effect, making analogies, or making comparisons.…

Deductive reasoning problems were presented to 72 public elementary school students, half of whom were identified as gifted (mean age of 9.6 years) and half of whom were regular education students (mean age of 9.3 years). They were used to test an hypothesis that gifted children who score significantly higher than average on standardized…

Despite the current emphasis on thinking skills and the resulting concentration on lists and taxonomies that do not succeed beyond research contexts, all reflective people know that critical thought relies not on applying mental steps but on simply trying to figure out what might be right or wrong. This depends on one basic cognitive act,…

A long-standing issue in cognitive psychology is the question of content effects upon problem-solving skills, that is, do students' problem-solving abilities generalize across specific subject matter domains? Although Piaget argued that formal reasoning strategies are independent of content, the well-known decalogs of Piaget can be interpreted as…

Arthur Jensen has argued that genetic differences in abstract reasoning ability, not cultural bias in the test item, are the causes of differences in standardized test performance between American Blacks and Whites. He used a study by Frank McGurk to support his argument. McGurk's study used test items judged most cultural or least cultural. These…

This research explored the development of reasoning about persuasion. First-grade, seventh-grade, and undergraduate subjects were individually presented with a hypothetical persuasive situation in which a young child attempts to obtain a toy from various "targets." Pairs of tape-recorded persuasive appeals were randomly presented to each…

Two experiments involving 42 students from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf investigated both the visual and tactile components in the processing of spatial information. Test measures used were the Figures Rotations Test, Group Embedded Figures Test, and Tactile Rotations Test. The study suggested that spatial reasoning is a determining…

The interrelationships among young adults' levels of moral reasoning, their preferred discipline style, and how they reason with children on moral issues was investigated. After initial screening, 25 males and 25 females completed a test on defining issues of moral judgement. Then 20 subjects were classified at the high principled level, and 30 at…

This paper questions evidence for the thesis that causal reasoning of older children is more logical than that of younger ones, and describes two experiments which attempted to determine (1) whether there are true developmental differences in causal reasoning, and (2) what explanations for developmental differences can be supported. In the first…

Two experiments were designed to assess children's ability to understand recursive structures of thinking which include thinking about contiguous people, thinking about action between people, thinking about thinking, and thinking about thinking about thinking. In Experiment I, 32 second, fourth, sixth, and eighth graders were tested on eight tasks…

This paper presents the results of the second class to participate in the fast-paced mathematics program begun by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) at Johns Hopkins University. Fast-paced mathematics classes were established to meet the needs of highly gifted junior high school students. Thirty-three students participated in the…

This paper discusses ways to use worked examples in teaching mathematics. It is argued that neither investigative teaching such as discovery learning nor lecturing and starting from the abstract are helpful as they are based on emotive associations with general labels rather than precise details of pedagogic strategies. (KHR)