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This article focuses on the author's views on the contributions of cognitive learning theory to an individual's personality. In some respects, the cognitive theory pictures brain processes in simpler terms than does the atomistically inclined S-R theory. But, in some other respects, the cognitive theory conceives of these organized brain processes as achieving much more complexity than is envisaged in anything described by S-R theory. These brain processes are not merely "discriminatory processes." They are not processes which merely pick out or use something which necessarily is present in the afferent neural material. Cognitive learning theory may be characterized in the following way. It believes in Lloyd Morgan's principle to keep one's interpretations as simple as possible. But it interprets that principle in this way as a recommendation that one should get as rich a knowledge of facts as possible, and that one should keep the principles as simple as can possibly be and yet account for those facts. It does not understand Lloyd Morgan's canon as the command, "Keep your principles simple." Especially when one tries to understand personality, one needs to make much more use of this type of learning theory which tries to deal with relatively intangible as well as with relatively tangible factors rather than being content to work with the latter alone.

At the Eleventh Annual Meeting of The Society for Psychophysiological Research, a number of researchers were gathered together to present their views on the relationship between cognitive processes and classical, conditioning. An understanding of human conditioning would require attention to specifically human characteristics, particularly in terms of the ability of the human organism to symbolize his environment, both external and internal, in thought and language.

Recent developments in cognitive psychology, particularly the theory of semantic memory and the theory of processes involved in problem solving, seem likely to provide a basis for strong developments in the theory of learning. These will be based on rigorous representations of cognitive states that are desired as the outcomes of instruction. It seems likely that a distinction between algorithmic knowledge and more general propositional knowledge will be needed in such a theory, and that knowledge of simple procedures will be distinguished from ability to interpret information in a problem, and also from skill in generating subgoals in order to organize problem-solving activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main concern of the present study is the question of the psychological reality of cognitive structures. After a brief outline of Piaget's structural and Bruner's representational theories of cognitive development, Piaget's concept of "internalization" is analyzed and related to the concept of "representation." Cognitive structures are shown to be real exclusively in an actual representation. In that sense, this interpretation approaches a synthesis of Piaget's and Bruner's theories. To account for the construction of representation-bound structures (e.g., operations), microlevel processes taking place in a multimedial feedback system are to be focused. Some empirical support for these considerations will be drawn from the experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because lack of vision is likely to hamper development of articulation and to foster dependence on others, congenitally totally blind children may be expected to show less differentiated cognitive functioning than their sighted peers. This hypothesis was confirmed in a study using a special battery of perceptual and problem-solving tests and clay models of the human figure to assess articulation of body concept. In addition to being inferior in analytical competence, the blind children were strikingly superior to the sighted in capacity for sustained auditory attention and about equivalent in verbal-comprehension ability. The picture in the blind is one unevenness in level of functioning from one cognitive area to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similarities and differences in the views of private or egocentric speech held by Piaget, Vygotsky, G. H. Mead, and Flavell are examined. These views are related to previous findings and to four new studies of the effects of age,IQ, and task difficulty upon private speech in various natural and experimental settings. These studies support the "cognitive development" interpretation common to all the theorists in that mental age and task difficulty were found to be primary and regular determinants of private speech in contrast to such factors as sex, nationality, or chronological as opposed to mental age. The findings also support Vygotsky's belief that private speech has a curvilinear course of development (due to its functioning as a transition from outer speech to thought) as opposed to Piaget's view that it declines monotonically with cognitive and social maturity. 7 types of private speech are defined and evidence is presented suggesting that they form a developmental hierarchy consistent with Mead's view of the transformations of external communication to inner thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of play put forward by Piaget and by psychoanalytic theorists suggest that when a child is anxious he will prefer to play with toys on the basis of their relevance to the source of his anxiety, whereas when a child is not anxious he will prefer to play with toys on the basis of their novelty. This prediction was tested by three studies; one study was observational in design, two studies were experimental. Taken as a whole, the results of these studies indicate that: (I) novelty does not interact appreciably with a child's anxious state to produce changes in toy preferences; and (2) anxiety is an important variable affecting a child's preferences for toys having relevance to the source of this anxiety, but the effect can be an increased or decreased preference, depending on as yet unspecified additional factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the differences in mode of discourse for composition writing themes at the first grade level. Piaget, a child psychologist, developed the Theory of Child Development, which claims that children at this age are better with the descriptive mode versus the argumentative mode. Results showed that children under the descriptive theme required some logical organization and abstraction compared to the writing of argumentative themes. The discussion about the physical description of the school had the expected effects in three of the four sets of ratings, affirming that the children may not be advanced enough to profit from argumentative discussion.

The article discusses the development of a test of Piaget's logical operations. The results of the analysis of the Raven's Test of Logical Operations have shown that it can be used to determine the developmental pattern of logical operations in children across grade levels. The test data can be used to determine if children will have difficulty with specific types of reasoning patterns. This information can provide the instructor with some evidence about how to model a concept for instruction. If the student will have problems with proportional thinking operations, it may be appropriate to remodel the concept by using compensatory operations or logical multiplication operations. Information about the pupil's cognitive capability enhances the teacher's ability to individualize classroom instruction.

The focuses on self-evaluation and the evaluation of choice alternatives. The tendency for a person, when making a decision, to crease the value of the chosen alternative relative to a nonchosen one has been well documented in a number of experiments investigating manifestations of post decisional dissonance. This change in relative value of the alternatives is conceived of as an attempt by the person to minimize the regret ass sociated with having given up desirable features of the non-chosen alternative or having acquired undesirable features of the chosen one this "dissonance effect" is thus seen as the result of instrumental cognitive work which serves to justify the choice. If, however, researchers assume that the person has a positive evaluation of his ability to make the choice, researchers may also conceive of this effect as an affirmation or confirmation of his self-ability estimate. He had a prior and, in most of the research, only a cursory evaluation of the choice alternatives. In choosing, he exercised his ability in the act of weighing the relative value of the alternatives.

This article is based on a symposium on Cognitive Theory and Personality Functioning. As distinguished from the S-R type of system, cognitive theory assumes that the organism is in commerce with its environment through the medium of selective representation. This means that the responses of the organism are not determined directly by proximal stimuli or by specific receptor-effector connections. Rather it is assumed that there is interposed a central process which represents features of the environment through phenomenal organization. This article provides two main propositions to supplement this symposium. The first is that personality functioning may be better understood in terms of cognitive theory, if there is a genetic theory of cognition for human learning development. The second is that an analysis of the cognitive and motivational conditions for incidental memory may also prove profitable for an understanding of the development of personality functioning. The possible role of figure-ground organization in this incidental learning has been indicated. And as a further hypothesis it has been suggested that there may be an important relationship between incidental learning and so-called "generalization." Neither of these propositions has been stated in operational terms.

A comparison of the ability of young children to discriminate visually between different spatial relations in line drawings with their comprehension of the verbal instructions regarding the same relations was carried out. The subjects were 60 children between the ages of 4½ and 7½. The test material consisted of 27 cards. Each card had one or two lines and a circle drawn on it. The lines and the circle were drawn in different spatial relations to one another. The results show that the ability of children to discriminate visually the spatial relations between line drawings improves with increasing age. Similar improvement with age was found in their ability to comprehend verbal material describing the spatial relations of the same line drawings. Comparison between these two abilities indicates, however, that the visual discrimination of spatial relations is easier than the verbal comprehension of the same relations in all the age-groups tested. The results also show that there is no correlation between individual performances in the visual discrimination test and the verbal comprehension test. Some theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]