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Meaningful Learning and Retention: Intrapersonal Cognitive VariablesAuthor(s): James J. GallagherSource: Review of Educational Research, Vol. 34, No. 5, Growth, Development, and Learning(Dec., 1964), pp. 499-512Published by: American Educational Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1169662 .

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CHAPTER I

Meaningful Learning and Retention: Intrapersonal Cognitive Variables

JAMES J. GALLAGHER

SINCE AUSUBEL and Fitzgerald wrote their chapter concerning intra-

personal cognitive variables in meaningful learning and retention for the December 1961 issue of the REVIEW, a number of trends seem to have been established which will form the major categories in the present chapter. There has been (a) increased interest in the differentiation of intellectual structure, (b) renewed attention to the emphemeral construct of creativity, (c) additional efforts directed toward the measurement of cognitive style, and (d) concerted attempts to stimulate cognitive growth.

The research has tended to become programmatic, with large research organizations or groups of investigators doing series of studies. The individual worker who carries out isolated research studies appears to be taking a secondary role. This trend toward cooperative research has re- sulted in a highly systematic exploration of concepts and problems as well as a tendency for research reports to appear as books and monographs rather than as single research articles.

Intelligence Tests as Models for Cognitive Structure

Intelligence tests have served in three rather distinct capacities: (a) prediction, (b) classification, and (c) diagnosis. Each of these functions has tended to be limited in its portrait of the intellect. Long-range prediction demands test items that are developmental and consistent from one age level to another. Classification requires a single index from which to make decisions: for example, is an individual mentally retarded or not? On the other hand, diagnosis necessitates a multiple scale of abilities from which to judge individual strengths and weaknesses.

The results of earlier longitudinal studies (Bayley, 1955; Sontag, Baker, and Nelson, 1958) cast doubt on the validity of the concept of constancy of the IQ for a significant percentage of children. There now appear to be not only environmental but also intracognitive variables which sys- tematically influence gains and losses in IQ scores over time.

Kagan and Moss (1962) reported on a longitudinal study of 89 children which has been conducted since 1929 at the Fels Institute. Of particular interest was the relationship of motivational and personality factors to

cognitive growth. They found a high correlation (0.50) for boys between

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(a) measures of childhood fearfulness at ages three to six years and (b) indexes of intellectual mastery in adulthood. A negative correlation of similar magnitude between sets of measures corresponding to athletic mastery at 10-14 years and eventual intellectual competence also suggested that the building of superior cognitive structure in adulthood may depend on certain habits established in childhood.

Those girls who were bold and daring in physical activities during ages 10-14 became intellectually oriented adult women. Those with withdrawal tendencies and a high fear of failure tended to shy away from adult intellectual concerns. However, the generalizability of these results was limited by the special sample, which included individuals with high IQ scores from homes of relatively high socioeconomic status.

These findings tended to reinforce an earlier report by Sontag, Baker, and Nelson (1958) on the differential effect of certain learning and atti- tudinal sets upon the progressive development and eventual maturation of cognitive structure. The tendency to search beyond the traditional IQ test for a greater understanding of intellectual processes has taken a number of different tacks.

Structure of Intellect

A major continuing effort in broadening the concept of intellectual performance has been provided by Guilford (1959) and his research group, who have invested 15 years of research in factor-analytic studies of intellectual behavior. Guilford's Structure of Intellect has formed the basis for a flow of reports on intellectual processes from the University of Southern California. Moreover, a large number of other research studies owe an ancestoral debt to the Guilford paradigm.

According to the Guilford model, there are as many as 120 distinct types of intellectual performance. They are marked off in a three-dimen- sional model which includes operations, products, and content. How use- fully this conceptual model can be applied remains to be demonstrated.

One potential use of the Guilford schema is to increase basic knowledge of such constructs as problem-solving ability. Merrifield and others (1962) administered a six-hour test battery to 219 Navy air cadets to ascertain whether the structure-of-intellect measures could account for variance obtained on marker tests of problem-solving abilities. Forty-two test scores, including several tests of problem-solving ability and many tests from the structure-of-intellect battery, were placed in a centroid factor analysis which yielded 14 factors. The authors arrived at the following conclusions: (a) there was no evidence for a unitary problem-solving ability, and (b) much of the variance in the problem-solving tests could be accounted for by structure-of-intellect factors. The results suggested that the development of a search model or of an anticipatory schema plays an important role in problem solving.

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Although most of the research of the Guilford group has been concerned with constructing tests to fit the structure-of-intellect model, one recent application attempted to relate structure-of-intellect abilities to such academic areas as algebra and mathematics. Petersen and others (1963) gave 400 ninth grade students in Los Angeles County high schools a battery of 25 tests and carried out a factor analysis of the intercorrelations of these tests as well as of several standardized achievement tests. An attempt was made to forecast whether standardized tests of achievement predicted grades as accurately as, or more accurately than, the relevant construct scores of tests built on the Guilford factors. In mathematics, the scores on Guilford's tests were not able to improve on the degree of prediction realized from scores on standardized achievement tests. An incidental finding was that the number of factors related to a basic mathematics course was 6, compared to 10 demanded in a course of accelerated algebra.

Another consequence of Guilford's conceptualization of the nature of intelligence was a noteworthy study by Getzels and Jackson (1962). From a university-school sample of 449 children in grades 6-12, they chose 28 individuals who had scored in the top 20 percent on IQ tests but not in the top 20 percent on creativity (the high IQ group); these were compared with 24 students who had scored in the top 20 percent of the total sample on creativity tests but not in the top 20 percent on IQ tests (the high creative group).

The results indicated that the authors found two rather different styles of student performance. Even though the high creative students were, on the average, 23 IQ points below the high IQ children, their performance was equal on achievement tests. Among other findings, the high creative group did show more humor and aggressiveness in story telling and did seem to take more intellectual risks than did the high IQ group. The families of children in the high creative group tended to stress values such as openness to experience, whereas the families of children in the high IQ group tended to emphasize having friends who come from a so-called good family, showing good manners, and being studious. The authors concluded that the distinctive patterns of the high creative group reflected intellectual risks and independence, whereas the patterns of performance of high IQ children indicated considerable stress on adaption to proper or conven- tional standards.

This research study received widespread attention and criticism. Almost every aspect of the study was attacked, from the adequacy of sampling procedures and statistical methodology to the use of the term creativity in measures of cognitive activity in the absence of any validation of the tests and scales employed. One example of such criticism was set forth by Thorndike (1963). However, whatever the faults of this research, it had one virtue: several of the findings could be replicated.

Although Torrance (1963) followed the same type of sampling procedures, he extended his study over eight different schools and essentially confirmed Getzels and Jackson's findings on achievement and cognitive

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style. However, in schools that seemed to stress more traditional learning and discipline, the child judged to fall in the high creative classification did not fare so well in achievement as did the child who placed in the high IQ category.

Flescher (1963) did not replicate the findings of Getzels and Jackson. From a sixth grade sample in a New England community, he obtained 110 children who were divided into four groups: (a) the intellectually talented (children who received IQ scores above 130, but failed to place in the top quarter in performance on creativity tests), (b) the creatively talented (children who obtained scores in the top quarter in tests of creative thinking, but earned IQ scores below 130), (c) the twice talented (children who placed in the top quarter in tests of creativity and obtained IQ scores above 130), and (d) the nontalented (who did not fall in the top quarter in the tests of creativity and did not achieve an IQ score as high as 130).

A factor analysis of the intercorrelation of scores on 23 variables, including measures of achievement, IQ tests, a battery of creative thinking tests, and tests of anxiety, revealed that although the intelligence test scores were related to achievement test performance, the tests of creative thinking were related to neither achievement nor anxiety. Some of the divergent thinking subscales did not even relate significantly to each other. These results underline the importance of establishing criteria for determination of the validity of the new flood of creativity tests and of related scales intended to assess divergent thinking.

McGuire (1961) provided evidence that should operate as a deterrent to overgeneralization regarding these new cognitive factors and to their influence on educational variables. He gave a battery of 22 cognitive and 22 noncognitive measures to 144 junior high school students drawn from four different Texas communities. McGuire found that factor loadings varied meaningfully from community to community as well as in terms of sex. When scores on the language portion of the California Achievement Tests were used as a criterion, multiple-regression analyses also indicated different patterns of weights between sexes and communities on these factors.

Torrance (1963) reported on the effect of sex roles upon the fluency and flexibility of primary age children. After 259 primary grade students were given a nurse's kit, a fire truck, and a toy dog, they were asked for ideas on how to improve each as a toy. Differences were found in the number of expressive ideas produced by boys and girls depending on whether they saw the toy as feminine or masculine in nature.

Psycholinguistic Models

Freed from the responsibility of using test items that had to correlate highly with the total test score or with a general factor as well as from

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the need to find items that would predict performance over a wide age range, test constructors could concentrate on cognitive areas that might have important diagnostic implications.

McCarthy and Kirk (1961) attempted to provide more adequate diagnostic information on children with learning disorders than has been available. The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) was developed primarily to furnish an improved picture of developmental strengths and weaknesses in deviant children which could provide the bases for up- grading the effectiveness of remedial educational programming. Patterns of performance are obtained along three major dimensions: channels of communication, processing of information, and level of meaningfulness in stimuli.

This test, which was standardized on 700 normal children from two and one-half to nine years of age, is currently being used in a wide variety of research projects in which the patterns of psycholinguistic performance of various deviant groups are being investigated. Moreover, it is being employed to ascertain the trainability of specific psycholinguistic deficits. Nothing seems to direct the flow of research energies so much as a well- constructed measuring instrument!

One application of the ITPA was provided by Bateman (1963), who administered the test to a sample of 131 partially sighted children attending grades 1-4 throughout Illinois. Bateman found that this group produced a distinctive pattern on the ITPA, differing from the norm group on some subtests (visual decoding, motor encoding, auditory vocal association, visual motor sequential, and visual motor association) but not on others (auditory-vocal automatic, vocal encoding, auditory-vocal sequential).

The ITPA subtests with the highest correlation to reading achievement for this group were the nonrepresentational tests, not the tests on visual meaningful material. Furthermore, Bateman concluded that, except in the case of children with severe eye difficulties, poor performance on visual tests was due to central process defects rather than sensory input problems.

Attempts at breadth of coverage of cognitive structure and of associated variables marked the ambitious Project Talent, initiated by Flanagan and others (1962). Almost one-half million students took an extensive battery of more than 50 tests of cognition, attitude, and personality. In addition to familiar standardized tests, measures of originality and ingenuity have now been introduced. It is expected that much information will be generated by the forthcoming analysis of these data and by follow-up studies which have been planned over a 20-year period.

Creativity

An excellent and comprehensive annotated bibliography by Stein and Heinze (1960) offers a helpful starting place for researchers interested in creativity. Since 1960, much effort has been spent on the development of

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measuring instruments that relate to the global concept of creative ability and to the formulation of relationships between these measuring instruments and standardized measures of cognitive abilities.

The question of the degree of relationship between creativity and intelligence constitutes a commentary more on measuring instruments than on basic constructs. Almost anyone would agree that a highly creative person must be intelligent. The low degree of correlation between sets of scores on so-called creativity tests and standardized measures of general intelligence do indicate that there is an area of intellectual performance not touched by traditional measures of ability.

Getzels and Jackson (1962), Holland (1961), and Torrance (1963) have all reported only moderate relationships between scores on intelligence tests and measures of creativity in populations of highly intelligent elemen- tary and secondary school students. In factor-analytic studies such as the one by McGuire and others (1961), the tests of divergent thinking rarely describe the same factors as those found in the verbal or nonverbal scales of well-known measures of general intelligence. This lack of common factors lends substance to the indication that a distinctly different set of tasks has been identified.

Spaulding (1963) attempted to relate attributes of teachers and class- room-climate dimensions to a number of variables, including flexibility and originality. He studied 21 classrooms in 10 different schools from the fourth to sixth grade level in a West Coast urban center. In each class- room, he recorded teacher-pupil transactions over one full morning and placed descriptions of activities underlying these transactions into 113 categories. The categories were reduced by factor analysis to 17 com- ponents, which Spaulding then intercorrelated with school achievement and with pupil performance on a variety of tests. Spaulding found two teacher styles to be negatively related to flexibility and originality. In one style, the teacher responded primarily to the social and emotional qualities displayed by the pupils rather than to their cognitive performance. In the second style, the teacher created a formal group-instruction situation, in which teacher control was maintained by shame, ridicule, or admonition.

Although much research has been done on the development of measures of creative thinking, there continued to be several investigations concerned with the nature of the creative person. Barron (1963) reported an intensive study of creative writers based on assessment procedures which combined tests, interviews, and observation during the short period of residence of the writers at the Institute for Personality Assessment at the University of California, Berkeley.

Sixty-six writers were first classified by three writing critics either as highly creative or as representatively successful and then compared on the various measures. Barron found sicker and healthier than usual persons in the highly creative group. Although the highly creative received a high proportion of deviant scores on the scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic 504





Personality Inventory, they also obtained, in comparison with normative groups, higher scores on a measure of the construct of ego strength. This ego strength was also revealed in their superiority in the independence-of- judgment tests and on measures of originality. In all instances, the highly creative writers were further from the norm than were the representative writers. Barron suggested that the greater sensitivity and feeling of the creative person brings not only substantial pain but also an openness to experience that aids creative production. These creative writers were able to use their superior ego strength to cope with the tensions developed by the fact that suppression and repression were not utilized as defense mechanisms by this group.

Using a methodology similar to that in Barron's study, MacKinnon (1961) compared 40 architects, 45 research scientists, and 40 student engineers on measures of art preferences, personality scales, and intelligence tests. Compared with individuals who were judged not to be highly creative in these fields of endeavor, the subjects who were rated highly creative exhibited a greater tendency to show independence of judgment, to take little information on faith, to be more aesthetically sensitive (except in the instance of engineers), to give more expression to the feminine side of their nature, and to be open-minded. Occasionally these persons as students were difficult to work with, since they sought to find their own solutions to problems.

In studying 100 Air Force captains and their relative dispositions toward originality, Barron (1963) found that, although various measures of originality yielded only low degrees of relationship to one another, these relationships were positive and usually statistically significant. In com- paring the 15 highest and 15 lowest captains on composite test scores of originality, he found that originality was associated with traits of independence of judgment, need for personal mastery, rebelliousness, dis- orderliness, exhibitionism, and self-centeredness.

Both analyses of creative thinking and observations of creative persons are well-established methods of investigation into the phenomena of creativity. However, a new methodology has appeared. Newell, Shaw, and Simon (1962) summarized a large body of research on computer programming and problem solving. The authors maintained that creativity is

nothing but problem solving in a difficult and novel situation. The creation of a logic theorist, a computer program that can produce three out of four proofs of theorems from a well-known treatise in higher mathematics, is impressive evidence for their position.

They suggested that not only problem selection but also the process of

evaluating alternate strategies-or narrowing down specific lines of attack on a problem-may be key aspects of creative thinking. The methodology of computer programming to simulate information processing will prob- ably undergo great expansion in the years ahead.

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Cognitive Style Witkin and others (1962) reported an involved series of research

projects on psychological differentiation that showed a marked resemblance to the patterns obtained by Getzels and Jackson. The dimension on which the Witkin group was operating was field dependence versus field independence. Field independence was described as ability to overcome or to ignore perceptual cues in the stimulus field. This characteristic was measured principally by a rod and frame test. The frame represented the background; the rod, the foreground. The children were asked to arrange the rod in certain positions. The children who were categorized as field independent were generally able to do this task successfully. Apparently, they were capable of ignoring the interfering perceptual cues of the frame being placed at various angles. The field-dependent people seemed defi- nitely influenced by the background.

The experiment was carried out primarily with a group of 10-year-old boys who were also given a series of projective tests. In addition, their mothers were interviewed. The over-all characteristics of the field-independent child seemed rather strikingly similar to those of the child who was classified as high creative by Getzels and Jackson (1962). The field- independent child was described as using intellectualization rather than denial and repression as defense mechanisms. He was more self-consistent and more resistant to social group pressures than was the field-dependent child, who seemed highly influenced by the views of others for the development of his self-concept. In addition, field-independent children tended to have mothers who not only encouraged autonomy but also stimulated curiosity early in their lives. One of the limitations of this study was that it was rather biased ethnically; 59 of the 68 boys of the sample came from urban Jewish families. Similar results would have to be replicated with other groups to ensure the stability of the findings.

Goodenough and Karp (1961) found relationships between field independence (as described by Witkin and his associates) and intellectual functioning. They conducted two factor analyses which included the subscales of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and a battery of measures of field independence. One group of 50 children between 11 and 12 years of age and a second group of 30 boys between 9 and 10 years of age were included in two separate factor analyses. In both samples, a factor was found which included the tests of field dependence with three WISC subtests: picture completion, block design, and object assembly. Thus, a possible link between cognitive style and traditional measures of intelligence was provided.

Kagan, Moss, and Sigel (1963) carried out another series of important studies in the field of cognitive style. For establishing a measure of cognitive style, they devised a test instrument that primarily consisted of associated pictures in which a number of different groupings were possible. The type of groupings preferred by the individual led to a consistent style

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that might fall into one of three different categories: (a) analytic-descrip- tive, which indicated an ability to see elements of objective similarity between pictures (e.g., one grouping would be people wearing no shoes); (b) inferential-categorical, which included concepts not based on observa- ble characteristics (e.g., one classification would be a stereotype of pro- fessional people); and (c) relational, which meant some sort of functional relationship (e.g., one illustration would be a mother scolding her daughter).

In their work with children, these investigators were primarily concerned with the contrast of analytic and relational styles. The analytic style seemed to be concerned with ability to differentiate the environment. This style, which also was associated with augmented attention span, seemed to increase in preference with increments in age. The investigators noted that, compared to girls, boys produced a greater proportion of analytic styles and a lower proportion of nonanalytic responses. Through retests of the instrument over a period of a year with a sample of 46 third graders, the researchers found consistency of conceptual style greater for girls than for boys.

The analytic style proposed by Kagan, Moss, and Sigel seems to bear clear resemblance to the field-independent concept of Witkin and others (1962). At the same time, it is obviously not isomorphic with the concepts set forth by Witkin and his associates.

Lee, Kagan, and Rabson (1963) tested 30 grade school boys on their manner of concept acquisition. Fifteen of these boys had previously scored high on analytic cognitive style; 15 had scored low. Stimulus concepts representing analytic and nonanalytic groupings were then paired with nonsense syllables. As expected, the boys who were high on analytic style tended to pair nonsense syllables more efficiently with analytic than with nonanalytic stimulus concepts, whereas those boys who were low in analytic style tended to pair nonsense syllables more effectively with nonanalytic groupings than with analytic arrangements. These results suggested that the acquisition of cognitive structure was dependent on the style of information processing of the individual as well as on the stimulus environment.

Gardner and Long (1962) reported a series of studies in which the relationships of perceptual scanning skills to defense mechanisms and to conceptually distant responses on a free-association test were tested. Sixty women, whose chronological ages varied from 17 to 44 years, were asked to estimate the size of observed stimuli. Electro-oculography was employed to obtain precise measures of visual scanning strategies. The investigators found consistent individual patterns of scanning. The extensive scanners not only gave few distant responses on word-association tests but also, in comparison with less extensive scanners, utilized to a greater degree the defense mechanisms of isolation and projection as measured by the Rorschach test. This study furnished yet another indication of how cognitive styles might influence information processing.

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Verbal Mediation

Another area of research investigation has been concerned with the properties of cognitive structure that enable the organism to absorb new information or to use stored information to solve specific problems.

Hunt (1961) presented a thorough review of the literature on the relationship between intellectual development and motivational constructs. In particular, he suggested that the individual response to novel stimuli (information processing) depends upon the degree of past experience with that type of stimuli. In his theory, a large fund of prior experience encourages a positive approach to novelty, whereas little prior experience tends to result in a negative withdrawal reaction. The several implications of this theoretical position for the cognitive development of educationally disadvantaged children as well as for the types of cognitive styles that are generated in different children remain to be explored.

Kendler ( 1963) reported a series of projects concerned with the role of verbal mediators in their facilitation of learning. The experimental tasks used allowed for a comparison of the performance of animal and human subjects. In a discrimination task, the subject was presented with two pairs of stimulus cards, for which there were two sets of stimulus dimensions-color and size. The cue for correct discrimination was changed, and the ability of the subject to respond to the change was measured. If one assumed that the correct stimulus was white, there could be two types of shifts: (a) a reversal shift, from white to black, which served to change the response but not the cue dimension, and (b) a nonreversal shift, which would make an initially irrelevant cue, such as large or small, the new relevant response. The nonreversal shift appeared to be easier for animals to make than was the reversal shift.

Kendler expected different results from children on the assumption that the nonreversal shift should be more difficult for human beings because both the cue dimension and response must be changed, whereas in the reversal shift condition only the overt response has to be changed, since the verbal mediator (color) would serve to stabilize the cue dimension. There was a further assumption that as children grow older, verbal mediators become more meaningful. The results of the experiments did bear out the assumption that the reversal shift condition was easier for children than was the nonreversal shift. As age increased, there was a gain in preference for the reversal shift condition. In a separate experiment, it was also found that when even four-year-old children were supplied with verbal mediators they could utilize the mediators to improve their performance on such tasks.

In Chapter V of this issue of the REVIEW, Getzels and Elkins furnish additional information concerning the research relative to verbal mediation by Tracy Kendler and her husband. The important work of David Ausubel and his associates concerning the relationship of verbal organizers to subsequent learning is considered at length by McDonald in Chapter III.

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Since McDonald cites most of Ausubel's recent research contributions, bibliographic information is not furnished in this chapter. McDonald also describes the work of Robert Gagn6 and his associates, as do Briggs and Hamilton in Chapter IV.

Modifications of Cognitive Abilities

Results of past research indicated that favorable modifications of intelligence test scores have been associated with (a) reduction of conditions of educational impoverishment, (b) introduction of psychotherapy, and (c) utilization of other methods that were designed to provide a favorable environment for intellectual growth. The remainder of this chapter is concerned with direct efforts that have been made to improve cognitive abilities.

Gallagher (1960) introduced a tutorial program for organically injured children. His goal was to improve their intellectual abilities. The program was based on the results of a prior experiment by Kirk (1958), who had found that organically injured children were less responsive to a stimu- lating nursery school program than were children who were not organically injured. Twenty-one matched pairs of brain-injured mentally retarded children were selected from a population at an institution. In light of an extensive psychoeducational diagnosis of individual patterns of development, members of the experimental group received individual tutoring for one hour a day, while individuals in the control group continued in the usual institutional school program for the two-year period.

At the end of the first year of tutoring, the experimental group gained an average of 5.5 IQ points and showed superior gains in perceptual motor skills, while the control group was losing ground intellectually. However, during the second year of tutoring with the same type of program, the experimental group lost an average of 1.5 IQ points. A further analysis of this phenomenon showed that the gains of the experimental group during the first year were concentrated on test items at or below the six-year level on the Revised Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.

These findings suggest that a re-evaluation of other studies in which gains in IQ scores of preschool subjects were reported might well be undertaken. The determination both of the stage of thinking processes at which the gains took place and of the degree to which they carried over to the next higher stage would be pertinent objectives. In a follow-up investigation of the same students two years after cessation of tutoring, Gallagher (1962) noted that, although a regression in performance of verbal tests occurred, there was not a complete drop to the IQ level which existed before tutoring had begun.

Tisdall (1962) compared the performance of 39 educable retarded children who were attending special classes for the retarded with 32 educable retarded children in the regular grades on measures of verbal originality,

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verbal fluency, verbal flexibility, nonverbal originality, and nonverbal elaboration. These groups had previously been selected on a randomized basis as part of a larger, four-year study that was concerned with the general influences of special class programs. Tisdall found that children of the experimental group who were in the special class programs were superior to the children in the control group on all the verbal tests, but not on the nonverbal instruments. He attributed these results to the considerable freedom allowed retarded children in the special program and to the relative absence of failure that could prove inhibiting to verbal expressiveness.

The concepts of conservation and transitivity have received much attention recently due to their central positions in the theory of cognitive development presented by Piaget. Are these concepts teachable? Do they seem central to the stage of concrete operations?

Smedslund (1961, 1963) gave a qualified yes to this question through a series of experiments. He first presented two experimental training conditions on the concept of conservation to two groups of 16 children each (ages five and one-half to seven years). A third group was used as a control. The members of the first group were able to check their predictions on weight conservation by weighing two objects on a scale. The members of the second group were allowed a similar opportunity on the effects of addition or subtraction: (A>A') or (A<A'). The control group received only a pretest and posttest experience. There was no difference obtained in frequency of acquisition of the conservation concept.

In a later experiment, Smedslund compared three different training methods to determine the relative effectiveness of training for the development of transitivity. Eighty children of ages seven and one-half to nine and one-quarter years were divided into five equal groups-four training groups and one control. The different training conditions were concerned with (a) testing predictions of weight empirically and (b) prearranging the objects by weight in a series of three (A>B>C) before the actual test.

In this experiment, all groups in training were more successful than the control group, but no one training group was superior to another. On the basis of these experiments, it seems that many different experiences can lead children to the development of the concepts of conservation and transitivity.

In a related experiment, Smedslund (1961) suggested that not all methods of acquisition have the same resistance to extinction. He provided false information to a group of youngsters, 13 of whom had acquired the conservation concept normally and 11 of whom had acquired it through the use of the experimental scales in the previous experiment. In order to test the stability of the concept of conservation to the child, he provided false information which contradicted the concept. He found that 6 of the 13 children who had previously acquired the concept naturally resisted the false evidence but that all 11 of the children who had learned the concept experimentally gave up the concept when faced with the contrary 510

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evidence. While these concepts seem teachable, the relative permanence of the learning is still doubtful.

Prospectus

In many respects, the research studies reported in this chapter represent merely the visible part of an iceberg. There remains an impressive body of pertinent research that has not been published or has been published in obscure places. Several manuscripts are just now going to press. Many of the trends noted in the present article will be strengthened or modified in the immediate future by research completed but not yet published. One of the most challenging tasks for researchers is to provide some creative means by which the ever-increasing flood of research literature can reach an eager public in a fraction of the time now necessary.

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BARRON, FRANK. Creativity and Psychological Health. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1963. 292 pp.

BATEMAN, BARBARA D. Reading and Psycholinguistic Processes of Partially Seeing Children. Council for Exceptional Children Research Monograph, Series A, No. 5. Washington, D.C.: the Council, a department of the National Education Association, 1963. 46 pp.

BAYLEY, NANCY. "On the Growth of Intelligence." American Psychologist 10: 805-18; December 1955.

FLANAGAN, JOHN C., and OTIIERS. Design for a Study of American Youth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962. 240 pp.

FLESCHER, IRWIN. "Anxiety and Achievement of Intellectually Gifted and Creatively Gifted Children." Journal of Psychology 56: 251-68; October 1963.

GALLAGIIER, JAMES J. The Tutoring of Brain-Injured Mentally Retarded Children. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1960. 194 pp.

GALLAGIER, JAMES J. "Changes in Verbal and Non-Verbal Ability of Brain-Injured Mentally Retarded Children Following Removal of Special Stimulation." American Journal of Mental Deficiency 66: 774-81; March 1962.

GARDNER, RILEY W., and LONG, ROBERT I. "Control, Defence, and Centration Effect: A Study of Scanning Behaviour." British Journal of Psychology 53: 129-40; May 1962.

GETZELS, JACOB W., and JACKSON, PIIILIP W. Creativity and Intelligence: Explorations with Gifted Students. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962. 293 pp.

GOODENOUGH, DONALD R., and KARP, STEPHEN A. "Field Dependence and Intellectual Functioning." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 63: 241-46; September 1961.

GUILFORD, J. P. "Three Faces of Intellect." American Psychologist 14: 469-79; August 1959.

HOLLAND, JOHN L. "Creative and Academic Performance Among Talented Adoles- cents." Journal of Educational Psychology 52: 136-47; June 1961.

HUNT, J. McV. Intelligence and Experience. New York: Ronald Press Co., 1961. 416 pp.

KAGAN, JEROME, and Moss, HOWARD A. Birth to Maturity: A Study in Psychological Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962. 381 pp.

KAGAN, JEROME; Moss, HOWARD A.; and SIGEL, IRVING E. "Psychological Significance of Styles of Conceptualization." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 28: 73-112; No. 2, 1963.

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December 1964




KENDLER, TRACY S. "Development of Mediating Responses in Children." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 28: 33-48; No. 2, 1963.

KIRK, SAMIEL A. Early Education of the Mentally Retarded: An Experimental Study. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958. 216 pp.

LEE, LEE C.; KAGAN, JEROME; and RABSON, ALICE. "Influence of a Preference for Analytic Categorization upon Concept Acquisition." Child Development 34: 433-42; June 1963.

MCCARTHY, JAMES J., and KIRK, SAMUEL A. Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

McGUIRE, CARSON. "Sex Role and Community Variability in Test Performances." Journal of Educational Psychology 52: 61-73; April 1961.

McGUIRE, CARSON, and OTHERS. "Dimensions of Talented Behavior." Educational and Psychological Measurement 21: 3-38; Spring 1961.

MACKINNON, DONALD W. "Fostering Creativity in Students of Engineering." Journal of Engineering Education 52: 129-42; December 1961.

MERRIFIELD, P. R., and OTHERS. "The Role of Intellectual Factors in Problem Solving." Psychological Monographs: Vol. 76, No. 10 (Whole No. 529), 1962. 21 pp.

NEWELL, ALLEN; SHAW, J. C.; and SIMON, HERBERT A. "The Processes of Creative Thinking." Contemporary Approaches to Creative Thinking. (Edited by Howard E. Gruber, Glenn Terrell, and Michael Wertheimer.) New York: Atherton Press, 1962. Chapter 3, pp. 63-119.

PETERSEN, H., and OTHERS. Determination of "Structure-of-Intellect" Abilities In- volved in Ninth-Grade Algebra and General Mathematics. Reports from the Psycho- logical Laboratory, No. 31. Los Angeles: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 1963. 40 pp.

SMEDSLUND, JAN. "The Acquisition of Conservation by Substance and Weight in Children." Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 2: 71-87; 1961.

SMEDSLUND, JAN. "Patterns of Experience and the Acquisition of Concrete Transi- tivity of Weight in Eight-Year-Old Children." Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 4: 251-56; 1963.

SONTAG, LESTER W.; BAKER, CHARLES T.; and NELSON, VIRGINIA L. "Mental Growth and Personality Development: A Longitudinal Survey." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 23: 1-143; No. 2, 1958.

SPAULDING, ROBERT L. "What Teacher Attributes Bring Out the Best in Gifted Children?" Gifted Child Quarterly 7: 150-56; Winter 1963.

STEIN, MORRIS I., and HEINZE, SHIRLEY J. Creativity and the Individual. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960. 428 pp.

THORNDIKE, ROBERT L. "The Measurement of Creativity." Teachers College Record 64: 422-24; February 1963.

TISDALL, WILLIAM J. "Productive Thinking in Retarded Children." Exceptional Chil- dren 29: 36-41; September 1962.

TORRANCE, E. PAUL. Education and the Creative Potential. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963. 167 pp.

WITKIN, H. A., and OTHERS. Psychological Differentiation: Studies of Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962. 418 pp.

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