Abstracts - Earli

in the people with mental handicapped. The materials used during the working sessions willfacilitate no only the training of these capacities, but also the transmission of that training to socialand labour environments. Finally, the participants of the investigation will develop cognitive taskswith a higher level of quality.The development of critical reading abilities in children aged 9 to 14Lucia Bigozzi, University of Florence - Department of Psychology, ItalyClaudio Vezzani, University of Florence - Department of Psychology, ItalyReading process can be defined as "critical reading" when it arouses in the reader a truthfulnessand dependability judgment about a particular topic. Critical reading can’t be conceived withoutsubject’s thinking processes (Mellor & Patterson, 2001), and so it would be considered as naturalextension of critical thinking (Hughes & Lavery, 2004). Many studies have reported the relevanceof gender differences in reading tasks (Kush & Watkins, 1996; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).Moreover, the developmental aspects of critical thinking have been investigated very rarely inpsychology (Kuhn, 1999). Aim of the present study is to investigate the development of criticalreasoning in a reading task. Our first hypothesis is that critical-valuational competences areimproved with increasing of the age in a non-linear progression. We also expect that there aredifferences between males and females, but that they are not constant at the various agesexamined. Sample was consisted of 1079 pupils, 512 males and 567 females, aged from 9 to 14years old. To measure the critical reading competences, all the participants were asked to performa standardized test (5-VM, Boschi, Aprile & Scibetta, 1995). The relationship between criticalreading abilities, age and gender was verified using Generalized Additive Models (Hastie &Tibshirani, 1990). The results have shown a non-linear increase of critical reading abilities (Chisquare(5)=11.14; p(6)=9.43), while gender did not show statistical significance (Z(1)=-1.23). Theinteraction between gender and age had a significative influence upon the criterion variable(Z(1)=2.10). Females under 10 years old seem to consider the meaning of the text as something tolearn, and it could explain their low critical reasoning abilities. After the age of 13, the motivationand the interest for reading activities is deeper in females than in males.Children’s ability to listen and to learn from their peer’s explanation of a mathematical solutionMiho Kawasaki, Kyoto University, JapanThis study examines elementary school children’s ability to listen and to learn from otherchildren’s solutions of a mathematical problem. The participants were 284 fifth-graders. Theywere asked to solve one mathematical problem which they had not learned yet (pretest), afterwhich they watched two types of VTRs in which other children explained their solutions to theproblem (learning). Then the children were asked to recall and comment on the other children’ssolutions to the same question (questionnaire), and were asked to solve the problem again(posttest). In the first VTR, a child explained an unorthodox solution, and in the second VTR,another child explained an orthodox solution. We analyzed the relationship between what theyrecalled and how they evaluated the orthodox and unorthodox explanations of the solutions andtheir own solutions in the pretest and the posttest. The results show that children who understoodthe orthodox solution in the pretest or the posttest could remember the unorthodox solution andgive negative comments on it. On the other hand, the other children could not remember theunorthodox solution given to them by the student via VTR and gave positive or irrelevantcomments. These results imply that the ability to listen to peer’s explanations might be importantto learn in the classroom, though understanding other’s solutions correctly seems to be very hard– 201 –