The efforts of the Mathematical Problem Solving Project, MPSP, to develop a paper-and-pencil instrument which could be used to assess processes used by children in attempting to solve nonroutine mathematical problems is described. A brief review of related literature is given and the development of the first and second instruments described.…

Appendices A - D to the technical report "The Development of a Process Evaluation Instrument" are presented. This instrument was developed as part of the Mathematical Problem Solving Project, MPSP. The appendices are: (1) Interview Problems; (2) First Instrument; (3) Second Instrument; and (4) Student Responses to Second Instrument and…

This study was designed to determine whether children's judgments of another's emotional state are based on egocentric or perspectivistic reasoning processes. A total of 91 children, between the ages of 3 and 10, at three grade levels, were shown a series of photographs containing conflicting situational and expressive cues to the pictured child's…

This study was designed to address two issues: "At what age do children spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy?" and "What effect does the use of the strategy have on their performance?" The subjects, 28 children at each of five grade levels (nursery, kindergarten, first, third, and fifth), were tested in a serial-position recall task.…

Twenty first-graders observed an adult model perform a quantity conservation task. The children were then tested on a series of generalization tasks immediately, after one week, and after three months. The results suggested that the social experience of observation appeared to activate a cognitive restructuring of the children's mental operations.…

Examined was the time response effect of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on the learning task performance of 53 hyperactive children (mean age 10 years). Arthur Retlaw and Associates, Inc., Suite 2080, 1603 Orrington Avenue, Evanston, Illinois 60201. (CL)

Differences between oral and silent reading suggest both must be assessed in order to reveal thought processes. (MKM)

A prose retention study of 12-year-old students indicated that recall is greater for main details than for elaborations. Results are discussed in terms of models of the storage of the story and thematic materials in memory. (Author/DB)

Discusses study which supported the Piagetian theory concerning the cognitive functioning of the concrete operational child. (JM)

Four studies examined the cognitive bases of children's judgments of morality. Over 240 children from preschool to fourth grade were participants. Moral dilemmas consisting of information about a character's motives and the consequences of his actions were devised in such a way that the order, concreteness and imageability of information were…

The article describes the framework of two training workshops intended to help elementary classroom teachers make better use of open-ended questions and activities which foster high-level generalizations. Tables provide a summary of thinking models utilized in gifted education and sample teaching units. Eighteen generalizations for the social…

Written summarization skills were successfully taught to deaf elementary students via an instructional method which emphasized six elements of story structure (setting, initiating event, internal response, action, consequence, and reaction). (JC)

Tested the hypothesis that fourth-graders have a greater tendency than first-graders to represent transformations as ordered series of beginning, middle, and end states. Predominantly constructed states of fourth-graders were components of continuous movements or transformations, whereas those of first-graders related to the experimenters' on the…

Ten normal and ten learning disabled children were asked to provide strategies for hypothetical memory tasks and to evaluate those strategies subsequent to learning of the hypothetical outcomes. The groups did not differ in strategies selected but did differ in how they evaluated the effectiveness of the strategies used. (Author/DB)

Comparison of 30 learning disabled (LD) children, ages 7 to 13, and controls on a computerized test of attentional skills indicated LD subjects committed more omission errors and responded at a slower rate but did not differ from the controls on commission errors, suggesting inefficient allocation of processing resources rather than attentional…