Reflection-impulsivity and short-term memory in emotionally disturbed children

Cognitive processing in specifically language-impaired children

Eighteen language-impaired children and 25 non-language-impaired children were evaluated to investigate the relationship between language ability and selected aspects of the five-component problem-solving process defined by Kagan and Kogan (1970). Non-impaired children performed better than language-impaired children on nearly all components of the problem-solving process. Language-impaired children had particular difficulties in the areas of coding and hypothesis generation. In fact, coding ability was inversely related to the number of errors made in hypothesis evaluation. Coding ability was also positively correlated with language ability. The exact causal relationship between coding ability, language ability, and error-making in hypothesis evaluation is unclear; however, improving coding skills through training may increase automaticity and lead to improved performance in the higher levels of the problem-solving process.

What ever happened to the norms for the Matching Familiar Figures Test?

The Matching Familiar Figures Test is used almost exclusively to assess cognitive tempo, e.g., impulsive-reflective, etc., in subjects. Although norms for this test were published by Salkind in 1978, a comprehensive review of the literature on cognitive tempo covering 1979 through 1984 showed only 8% of the reviewed studies used the norms. The problems associated with the failure to use norms, most notably, the inability to generalize findings from one sample to another, are covered.