Predicting that when presented with a general context children and adults would produce different specific inferences, a study examined children's and adults' script representations of a common event and the use of representation in comprehension. In the first phase of the study, 23 fourth grade and 48 college students were asked to generate…

The few studies concentrating on adult age changes in discrimination shift behavior have reported that the performance of elderly adults on such tasks is inferior to that of younger adults and, in fact, similar to that of children. To determine whether verbal labeling, which has facilitated the performance of young children, would also reduce age…

Three experiments, in which subjects read passages of variable readability, measured "cognitive capacity usage" (the attention level to reading material) by recording by subjects reaction times in a secondary task (responding to a "click"). The data indicated that the easy texts filled cognitive capacity more completely than the difficult texts,…

This study is an attempt to investigate the usefulness of imagery instructions in learning PA nouns embedded in sentences and conjunction phrases with three different age groups (third grade, sixth grade and college students). In addition, six different item types are employed to convey increasingly dissimilar contexts from study to test trials.…

Students in grades 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and college were timed as they produced the answers to simple addition problems or verified a given problem as true or false. First graders clearly relied on a counting process for their performance, as advanced by the Groen and Parkman "min" (for minimum addend) model. Third grade appears to be a…

An attempt is made to clarify the aims of critical training in academic subjects at the higher education level. Additionally, common motifs of thought in the extensive material of cognitive criticism are considered, and the material itself is synthesized. Attention is also directed to the criteria of essentiality and implications for teaching. Two…

This report describes the work of the Study Methods Group, which uses qualitative research methodologies to determine how Open University students approach learning and why they adopt a particular approach. Research considers student orientation to learning, the relationship of learning outcomes to learning approach, and student development as…

The concept of general education, its specific goals, and its role in the college curriculum are discussed. The goals of general education appear to center around teaching students to think analytically and to synthesize ideas into a general understanding. It is suggested, however, that these objectives tend to get lost in the specifics of…

This presentation focuses on a theory of personality development, conceptual systems theory, as a possible resource for the counselor assisting clients in stress. It describes the results of a factor analysis of four measures of conceptual structure which suggested that the construct of conceptual complexity is different from the construct of…

A study was designed to test the expectation that different individuals have different cognitive styles, which, if true, may be useful in investigating characteristics and psychological impacts of media utilization. Cognitive style refers to an individual's way of acquiring and processing information. Characteristics of the visual type and haptic…

A study was made to determine whether different methods of visual presentations would affect the retention rate of individuals with two distinct types of perception--visual and haptic. The visual type, according to a study by Viktor Lowenfeld in 1957, is marked by the following characteristics: (1) ability to see wholes, break them into visual…

To explore the impact of an introductory sociology course on concepts held by college students, a study was executed on the images of sociology and sociologists, the variation of this image with other variables, the degree and direction of change of these images on completing an introductory course, and variability among students' changes in…

Communication between persons who trust each other differs from that between those who do not. A new conceptualization of trust is offered, drawing from game theory, credibility research, sensitivity/encounter groups, and studies of generalized expectations of trustworthiness, which makes an important distinction between the cognitive state of…

Describes the cognitive pattern of perfectionist thinking and discusses its development. The stages and strategies of group intervention for this pattern are presented. Goals and a general orientation are outlined which include developing self-awareness, recognizing secondary gains, and disrupting the maladaptive cognitive system. (JAC)

Hemispheric processing of visually presented words and pictures was examined in third and seventh graders and college students. Pictorial or symbolic stimuli were presented singly to either the right or left visual hemifield and subjects had to decide whether the first stimulus in a pair matched the second stimulus. (JMB)