Explores children's understanding of a variety of interpersonal events, focusing mainly on the question of whether, and in what way, their conceptions of these events were heterogeneous or undifferentiated. (HOD)

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)

Describes the development of the Environmental Issues Attitude Defensibility Inventory (EIADI), an instrument for assessing the amount of information a person uses in making a value judgement. Also presented is evidence regarding the EIADI's reliability and validity as well as suggestions for its application. (WB)

Analyzed whether feelings have a disproportionate impact on the way people perceive and remember unusual, atypical people. The results of four experiments suggest that mood has a significantly greater influence on judgments when the targets do not fit a prototypical pattern, thus requiring more lengthy, extensive processing. (RJM)

Examined the impact of information activation on individuals in different mood states. Results of two experiments suggest that happy mood supports judgmental inferences based on general knowledge structures, whereas sad mood facilitates the conservation of information. Findings support assertions that affective states influence the style of…

Research on self-concept has usually focused on neutral or positive personality characteristics. To determine if negative beliefs about the self have schematic properities, 55 college students, assigned to one of four groups (shy schematics, shy aschematics, independent schematics, independent aschematics), based on a prescreening self-rating on…

Covers an experimental study designed to test the prevalence of specific judgemental rules in human information processing. See CS 703 555 for availability. (MH)

This research project studied the relationship between teachers' thinking and action, specifically, teachers' implicit theories in the subfield of evaluation. Particular focus was upon the way teachers generate their theories about teaching, the structure and content of such theories, and their influence on decisions and intructional practices.…

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)

Report offers several working definitions of the process of critical thinking, then describes several ERIC documents dealing with ways of teaching critical thinking in general on the secondary level, and finally points to some aspects of learning about literature and language that involve critical thinking skills. (Author)

A large sample of 11-year-olds were observed on a perceptual maze task. Three ability level groups were formed and compared as to overall response paths and specific binary decision configurations. Explanations for observed qualitative differences and discussion of the viability of the experimental approach adopted are presented. (Author/RD)

Similarity plays a central role in cognitive theories. Research has demonstrated that the similarity of a pair increases with its commonalities and decreases with its differences. These common and distinctive elements can take the form of parts of objects, relations between parts of properties of whole objects. Previous work has been unable to…

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…