The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to answer the question, "What is the meaning of the transformative dream for people who do not experience resolution of their problem immediately upon awakening?". Existential-phenomenology from the perspective of a story was used to describe the meaning of the experience for ten individuals, nine women and one man, whose ages ranged from 23 to 48. From transcripts of the interviews, ten individual accounts of the experience were constructed. These accounts included a construction of the structure of each dream story and its relationship to the person’s description of the experience. Significant statements of the experience were also extracted from the transcripts and formulated into twenty common themes which were then woven into a common story. Each person checked and validated the transcript, individual account, common themes, and common story for any omissions or distortions. The study also included responses to a questionnaire given to psychology students, asking them if they had ever had a dream which revealed a solution to a problem. Out of 305 students, 103 (34%) had experienced one of these dreams. Forty-three (42%) knew the answer immediately, 58 (56%) found the answer later, and two were not sure. These results suggest that the prevalence of dreams which reveal solutions to problems could be much higher than expected. The findings support the general contention that these dreams are preceded by a desire for resolution and a search for answers. The dreams were vivid and emotional with the dreamer alert and actively participating in the drama. People experienced a felt sense of change without understanding the meaning of the dream. The dreams were complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end. The findings demonstrate that viewing these dreams within the context of people's lives is essential in order to understand the meaning of the experience. The description is a beginning and can become the basis for future research on dreams which resolve problems.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how purposeful metacognitive instruction affected students’ use of metacognitive skills and their abilities to solve complex chemistry problems. The pilot (n = 18 to 26) and study (n = 21) groups were enrolled in separate Ontario Grade 11 university preparation chemistry classes. A quasi-experimental intervention was implemented, using the pilot study as a control. A Metacognitive Framework that outlined metacognitive skills specific to problem solving in chemistry formed the foundation for the intervention. Pre- and post-test self report questionnaires measuring students’ use of metacognitive skills (MCAI) and the problem solving tasks (i.e., PSTs) were used to measure the impact of the intervention. Data about students’ metacognitive and problem solving processes were also collected for the study group from: (a) think aloud pair problem solving (TAPPS) protocols, (b) an exit interview with the classroom teacher, (c) the students’ lab reports for two design labs, and (d) a survey of students’ use of the Metacognitive Framework. One way repeated measures ANOVA indicated that the pre- and post-test MCAI scores were not significantly different within and between the pilot and study groups. A comparison of the higher and lower achievement subgroups within the study group revealed that over time, the mean scores on the MCAI increased for the higher achievement group and decreased for the lower achievement group. One-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the post-test PST scores were significantly higher than the pre-test scores, and the groups differed significantly from each other with the study group scoring higher on both scores. While the statistical analyses revealed few differences, the teacher’s exit interview, TAPPS protocols, pre- and post-test lab reports, and student survey of the Metacognitive Framework indicated that the intervention supported students’ abilities to solve complex chemistry problems and use metacognitive skills associated with planning, monitoring, and evaluation. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-06 21:09:42.036

This study reexamined ability differences on Luchin's (1942) water-jar test, a problem-solving task based on Gestalt theory. On this task a "set" or method of solution is assumed to be induced through the prior solving of a series of problems which require a common solution pattern. Researchers employing this task have generally discriminated between subjects who appear to have formed a "set" on the initial questions and subjects who do not appear to have formed the set. Subjects regarded as not forming the set have generally not been involved in all the analysis since the effect of the set on solution to subsequent questions cannot be analyzed if the set is not formed. / In a previous study using the water-jar task, some generalizations were made about the thinking processes of gifted and nongifted children without regard to whether or not they formed the set. The present study reexamined the relations among metacognitive knowledge, speed and giftedness taking into account set formation. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis is about "authentic learning": learning from life-like contexts. The construct derived from the social situated approach (Lave & Wenger, 1991), has surprisingly no counterpart in cognitive psychology. The first objective of this thesis is to develop a cognitive formulation of authentic learning from classical cognitive works and recent neuroscience studies findings. The characteristically cognitive feature posited is "n-coding", the encoding of multimodal input (verbal, visual, kinesthetic, social...). To test quasi-experimentally the effectiveness of this cognitive definition, a review of the instructional literature identified Collaborative Group Problem Solving (Heller et al., 1992) as an appropriate candidate for authentic instruction in physics. / The study design was comprised of one control and three treatment conditions varying in degrees of n-coding: (high, medium and low) while controlling for each treatment group's "participatory framework". All students were assessed before and after instruction on the FCI (Hestenes et al., 1992). Confidence levels were measured with each FCI question resulting in four new measures (gain in mean: confidence, right answer confidence, wrong answer confidence and weighted FCI). Procedural problem solving skills were measured through final exam grades. / Two empirical questions are posed. First, does increasing n-coding enhance learning? Second, since cognitive n-coding is unaccountable from the social perspective, does the situated perspective "subsume" the cognitive (Greeno, 1998)? Here, a quasi-experiment was not only used to test interventions but paradigm effectiveness, a methodological first. / Results shows that high and medium n-coding groups were significantly more effective than the situated low n-coding group (p=0.003) showing the effectiveness of increasing n-coding and refuting the claim that social approaches must subsume cognitive ones. No significant difference was found between high and medium n-coding groups (p=0.74) whereas all treatment groups differed from the control (p=0.0497), replicating findings on the effectiveness of non-traditional instruction (Hake, 1998). / Competing cognitive and social perspectives (Schoenfeld, 1999) may be better replaced by cross-paradigm symbioses such as importing authentic learning from situated approach into cognition. A model for reflecting on cross-scale symbioses is developed through the presence of self-similar patterns across scales (from micro-cognitive to macro-social). The fractal is put forward as a metaphor for the field of education and may serve to unify paradigms and yield optimal pictures of learning.

The rate at which individuals acquire new cognitive skills may vary quite substantially, some acquiring a new skill more rapidly and efficiently than others. It has been shown through the analysis of think aloud protocols that learning performance on a map learning task, for instance, is associated with the use of certain learning procedures. In the domain of mathematical problem solving, it has also been shown that performance is associated with strategic as opposed to tactical decision making. Previous research on learning and problem solving has tended to focus on tactical processes, ignoring the role of strategic processes in learning and problem solving. There is clearly a need to examine the role of strategic processes in learning and to determine whether they might be an important source of individual differences in learning performance. A related question concerns teaching thinking skills. If it is possible to determine those learning procedures that differentiate good from poor learners, is it then possible to teach the effective procedures to a group of novice students in order to enhance the rate of skill acquisition? Results from the experiments reported here show that novices differ, and that learning performance is related to the use of certain learning procedures, as revealed by subjects' think aloud protocols. A follow-up study showed that novices taught to use the procedures differentiating good from poor learners performed at a higher level than two control groups of novices. A coding scheme was developed to explicitly examine learning at macroscopic and microscopic levels, and to contrast tactical with strategic processes. Discriminant function analysis was used to examine differences between good and poor learners. It was shown that good learners more frequently use executive processes in learning episodes. A study of the same subjects learning to use statistical packages on a microcomputer corroborate these findings. Thus, results extend those obtained from the first study. A study of the knowledge structures possessed by novices was complicated by differences in levels of statistical knowledge. Multidimensional scaling techniques revealed differences between novices with three statistical courses behind them, but not among those with only two statistical courses behind them. Among those novices with three statistical courses behind them, faster learners' knowledge structures more closely resembled those of experienced users of statistical packages than did those of slower learners.

Object play is widely considered a primary medium through which children develop cognitive skills. In an attempt to examine the relative importance of different types of play experience and selected play components on children's subsequent approach to problem solving, 31 four-year-olds (19 boys, 12 girls) were matched on sex and PPVT-R raw score, and were then assigned to one of the three treatment groups. Seven triplets (5 male, 2 female) and five pairs (2 male, 3 female) of children were formed. Children in each group were exposed to a different type of experience relative to task-relevant materials (active play, passive observation of play, and no involvement) and subsequently given a lure-retrieval task. The solution to this task involved the joining of the two longest sticks with a block to produce a tool to retrieve a lure. Subjects were compared on their problem-solving performance as measured by solution time and specific object play components obtained in Cheyne and Rubin's (1983) study were replicated in this study. Examination of additional components in play indicated that problem solution was enhanced not only by frequent use of long double-stick construction, but also by double-stick constructions with any stick length. Problem-solving performance of the three groups of children were not significantly different. However, a Treatment x Sex interaction was noted among children in the active and passive groups; passive girls spent more time and tended to require more assistance to task solution than active girls, active boys, and passive boys. Factors which may have contributed to this finding are discussed.

This experiment was designed to compare the before and after ratings of solutions generated by individuals using two problem solving scaffolds, brainstorming and the hierarchical technique. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions which varied by type of scaffold (procedures to guide thinking), type of tool used to assist solution generation (random word list or thesaurus), and type of technology utilized (computer versus paper and pencil). Using a personal problem, participants generated solutions on paper until they could no longer add to their list. Then participants were taught to use a scaffold, either brainstorming or the hierarchical technique , and allowed to continue generating solutions either on paper or on a computer with one of two tools to stimulate ideas, a random word list or a thesaurus.Results indicated that participants trained on brainstorming generated solutions that were more original than participants trained on the hierarchical technique. The mean number of solutions generated was highest when participants used the computer recording tool paired with a thesaurus. Finally, participants rated solutions higher on practicality when they used a random word list instead of a thesaurus. / Department of Psychological Science

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.