Examines children's understanding of what variables and relations are important in problem structures, and their use of these variables and relations in problem solving. (HOD)

Discusses the process by which individuals come to claim authority and assume responsibility for their moral thoughts, feelings, and actions. Examines links between narrative and moral experience. Suggests that the development of moral authority is enhanced when individuals make the words of others their own. (LB)

Investigates the relationship between class inclusion and reasoning in 56 Dutch Children between 6 and 14 years of age. Concludes that when the children failed to respond correctly to questions about the validity of syllogisms, they did so because they lacked sufficient understanding of the premises. (HOD)

Failure to separate judicial reasoning (the application of rules) from legislative reasoning (the justification of rules) in earlier studies is claimed to invalidate most previous developmental research using moral dilemma interviews. Two studies used a novel method of scoring moral dilemma interviews that separates judicial from legislative…

When a person encounters a problem, the character, form, and content of his or her response provides psychologists with useful and interesting information about processes of challenge and their relationship to intellectual development. In essence, challenge is a developing relationship that is defined on the one hand by objective factors (a person…

Describes four experiments conducted among adults and 3- to 7-year-olds to validate a task analysis that indicates that the equality, group enhancement, and superiority social decisions require a greater information processing load than the altruism, rivalry, and individualism social decisions. (HOD)

Examined judgments of intolerance given by children, adolescents, and adults toward disagreeing others. The evidence suggested that intolerance may be a lower level of reasoning in a social cognitive developmental progression. (Author/DB)

Examined elementary students' evaluations of decision-making procedures in different social contexts. Found that consensus was preferred in peer and family contexts and authority-based procedures were preferred for school curricular decisions. Older children were more likely than younger to consider how children's limited knowledge and competence…

This article presents the concept of knowledge discovery, a process of searching for associations in large volumes of computer data, as an aid to creativity. It then discusses the various techniques in knowledge discovery. Mednick's associative theory of creative thought serves as the theoretical foundation for this research. (Contains…

Two samples, the first consisting of 13 and 16-year-olds and adults, the second consisting of children from kindergarten, second and sixth grades, are interviewed to measure the cognitive processes used to evaluate the credibility of television content. Additional goals include measuring the relationship between the use of these cognitive…

Three studies explored children's adoption of cultural forms of representation. Investigated were (1) children's judgments from students' drawings about the age of the artist; (2) children's preferences for drawings and the extent preferences match teachers'; and (3) differences between drawings children produce for themselves and those they…

This paper presents a reasoning taxonomy to explain reasoning objectives, strategies, and habits available to the advanced thinker. It begins by explaining the first part of the taxonomy, objectives of reasoning, including the need for skilled thinkers to reason with a purpose and to understand how the world works so that they can engage with it.…

The development of understanding of Biblical parables on the part of 28 Swiss subjects of 7 to 50 years of age was studied. It was found that Biblical parables were interpreted through the lens of one's stage of religious judgment in the manner described by Oser's and Gmunder's (1988) model. (BB)

Analyzes childrens' (ages 10-12) narratives to show how the stories contribute to children's ongoing construction of knowledge and identity. Argues that children's use of reported speech drives the referential and evaluative functions of their stories and that their reproduction and framing of others' and their own voices enables them to reflect…

Proposes three framing assumptions for the study of thinking, involving situated cognition, personal and social epistemologies, and conceptual competence. Outlines evidence consistent with these assumptions, and discusses topics in the psychology of thinking in relation to the assumptions. (Author/BJV)