When literacy is promoted as the solution to all economic, social, and educational ills, illiteracy becomes the "disease" causing these problems. Literacy cannot guarantee employment or personal success, but is powerful enough to transform the world. Children need to see powerful uses of literacy in the school environment. Includes 18 references.…

Argues that the new information-processing paradigm must find suitable ways to link individual-level information processing to the higher-level processes of public communication and social organization. Suggests that social identification theory may offer a useful approach to multilevel research. (MS)

The study of cognitive processing in high IQ and average IQ elementary grade learning disabled and non-learning disabled children found that LD students were poorer in sequential processing and planning compared to NLD students; high IQ LD students lost their IQ advantage to low IQ LDs in sequential scores. (Author/DB)

The study of Down Syndrome (N=16), other mentally retarded, and non retarded subjects (all matched for mental age) found that Down Syndrome subjects showed significantly poorer recall of auditorially presented stimuli than the other two groups (which did not differ). (Author/DB)

Analyzed narrative and logical processes used by children to give meaning and classify empirical objects. Analysis of sociocognitive interaction revealed children change meaning given to objects when they move from an individual situation to a social one. (BAC)

Comparison of cognitive processes in 23 individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) and 23 individuals of comparable mental handicap without Down's syndrome found that older (above 40 years) DS subjects had significantly poorer outcomes. The areas of speech rate, number finding, and expressive attention appeared to show the earliest signs of dementia of…

Comparison of external memory strategies in 31 children (ages 11 and 17) with mild mental retardation and 64 children without mental retardation found no differences between children with mental retardation and their age peers in frequency of use of object-oriented strategies. For all groups, external strategies were used more frequently than…

Reviews theories on discourse and sentential anaphora. Levinson's general, extralinguistic pragmatic theory contrasts with the author's specifically linguistic, cognitive theory. Levinson cannot account for many anaphoric patterns actually found in natural discourse, whereas the author's accessibility theory accounts for both types of problematic…

Examined developmental change in the duration of memory for tone pitch in children and adults. In experiment 1, performance on a two-tone comparison task deteriorated across the intertone interval more quickly in younger than in older subjects. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the developmental difference in pitch memory persistence is unlikely to…

Describes a card game designed to teach the scientific method, inductive thinking, and data analysis strategies. The objective is to guess the rule that differentiates the "legal triplets" (set of three playing cards) from the "illegal" ones. Suggestions are provided for a debriefing session in which the players reflect on…

Toddlers were asked to find a hidden toy based on one hidden in a scale model of the room, after varying periods of delay. Subjects experiencing a longer delay on the first trial performed more poorly than those experiencing the long delay later in the trials. Results indicate the difficulty for children of keeping a symbol-referent relation in…

Describes a test aimed at investigating the rule knowledge stored in foreign-language learners heads and at determining the relationship between rule knowledge and second-language performance. (CK)

Cognitive processes contributing to depression in adolescents were studied in 15 clinically depressed, 15 somewhat depressed, and 15 nondepressed mostly female adolescents ages 13 to 16 years. Lower self-esteem, greater pessimism, more polarized construing, increased isolation, and a more external locus of control characterized the clinically…

Two features of a new horizontal conceptualization of expertise are explored. Polycontextuality refers to the multiple ongoing tasks apparent in expert work, and boundary crossing is considered as a cognitive process that characterizes much expertise. Three case studies, one in a Finnish elementary school, illustrate these concepts. (SLD)

Investigated cognition in children with high, moderate, and low test anxiety under naturalistic test-taking conditions. Children with high test anxiety not only reported more negative self-evaluations and more off-task thoughts but also more on-task and coping thoughts. No "task-facilitating" role for these on-task and coping cognitions…