The academic standings of provisionally admitted high school graduates and matched controls (regular admissions) at a state university were analyzed after one to three years. The results revealed highly significant differences in favor of the controls. The criterion was academic status at the university. Analysis of covariance controlling the…

Papers presented at the 1980 National Conference on Reasoning, Piaget, and Higher Education are presented which address the implications of Piaget's research on the teaching of reasoning skills in higher education. Contents include the following: "Piaget: An Agenda, Not an Answer for the 80s," by Catherine M. Warrick; "Project…

A set of eight widely used inductive reasoning tests were investigated to determine whether or not they have different factorial structures. The eight inductive tests and three deductive tests, taken from the French Kit of Reference Tests for Cognitive Factors and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, were administered to 157 high school…

Three sections of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Aptitude Test were reviewed before the introduction of the restructured test in October, 1977: research on (1) the GRE-Verbal section; (2) the GRE-Quantitative section; and (3) a planned third section, measuring analytical thinking skills. Research in all three areas focused on test…

This study of Piagetian formal reasoning in seventh grade students reports the relationships between four aspects of the ability to control variables in an experiment and the relationships between those four aspects and other constructs. The four aspects of the ability to control variables identified are: (1) set up a controlled experiment, (2)…

Interview data on the learning experiences and techniques of 90 Swedish teenagers and adults were further analyzed to explore changes in views on learning reported by the subjects themselves, and differences between subjects with respect to age (range 15-73) and formal education (range 6-17 years). Some subjects equated knowledge with discrete…

The effect was investigated of diadic, peer group discussion, and role-playing communication patterns on level of abstraction, length of response, and complexity of sentence structure in the speech of children from low socioeconomic environments in response to a verbal task using 2 levels of abstraction (objects and pictures of objects). Subjects…

A series of five experiments was designed and administered to 679 elementary and junior high school students over a 2-year period to test the relevance of Jean Piaget's concept of conservation to musical learning. Musical tasks consisting of stimulus patterns and systematic variations of these patterns were designed for each experiment, and…

Theoretical and empirical research derived from Piagetian theory is collected on the intellectual development of the elementary school child and his acquisition and utilization of conservation concepts. The articles present diversity of method and motive in the results of replication (validation studies of the description of cognitive growth) and…

Representational competence refers to the individual's capability to respond appropriately to external representations. For example, a child engaged in a grouping task may collect together all like objects even if the group contains varying representations of the object, including (1) the object itself, (2) a three-dimensional likeness of the…

The hypothesized ability of adult native speakers to understand linguistic ambiguity was tested. An approach developed to determine linguistic competence tested the ability of 90 participants in individual interviews to interpret sentences having the potential for multiple interpretations. The hypothesis was not supported by the data. A hierarchy…

In this research monograph, several areas of disparity between child and adult grammar are examined to discover at what ages the child, who is on the border of adult language competence, achieves a certain mastery of complex syntactic structures. Chapters include (1) a discussion of current notions on the nature of the linguistic process and a…

Evidence for suggested basic differences in the abstract reasoning capacity of Negro and Caucasian children includes consistent findings of significantly poorer performance by Negroes on Raven's Progressive Matrices (PM). This study investigated the PM performance of Negro children taught algebra via a discovery method of instruction. It was…

This course in semantics investigates verbal and nonverbal symbols and their denotations, emotional values, and levels of abstraction in an attempt to open channels of communication between the students and those with whom they communicate. Concepts, ideas, and skills included in the course are as follows: (1) that words are tools to help with the…

Conservation performance during childhood to portions of the life span beyond adolescence is examined, with existing data replicated on subjects ranging from the preschool to middle-childhood years. Age differences in performance are studied for the typical Piagetian paired-stimulus equivalence conservation of number, substance, weight, and volume…