Development of visual cognition: Transfer effects of the Agam program

The Agam program was designed to foster visual thinking in young children by developing their visual language. This curriculum was implemented in five nursery classes for 2 consecutive school years. Children in these classes were compared with children in classes where the program was not administered. It was hypothesized that the generative nature of the visual language developed in the experimental children would allow the children to extend the language learned to new situations and help them to solve problems in which no prior training was given. Test results confirmed this hypothesis: The effects of training in the Agam program transferred to cognitive domains in which no training was given. Specifically, the findings indicated positive effects on general intelligence and school readiness of children about to enter first grade, with especially pronounced effects in the areas of arithmetic and writing readiness. Other findings revealed an increased visual learning ability in new tasks that developed in the experimental children. Training effects did not transfer to mental rotation and to memory for realistic designs. The program was found to be equally effective for lower-class as for middle-class children. The effect of the program was greater for children who participated in the program for 2 years as compared with those who joined in the second year, indicating a cumulative effect of the program. This latter finding can also be used to refute an alternative explanation of the obtained experimental effects offered by a motivational theory. The findings on cognitive transfer, taken together with previously reported on concept learning and visual skills, point to the educational potential of the approach advocated by the Agam program, that is, systematic long-term instruction in the domain of visual cognition in early childhood.     

Three contributions to the two-valued propositional calculus

Summary Three chapters contain the results independent of each other. In the first chapter I present a set of axioms for the propositional calculus which are shorter than the ones known so far, in the second one I give a method of defining all ternary connectives, in the third one, I prove that the probability of propositional functions is preserved under reversible substitutions. This paper appeard orginally under the title “Trois contributions an calcul des propositions bivalent” inStudia Societatis Scientiarum Torunensis, Toruń, Polonia, Sectio A, vol. I (1948), pp. 3–15.     

Concerning axiomatizability of the quasivariety generated by a finite Heyting or topological Boolean algebra

In classes of algebras such as lattices, groups, and rings, there are finite algebras which individually generate quasivarieties which are not finitely axiomatizable (see [2], [3], [8]). We show here that this kind of algebras also exist in Heyting algebras as well as in topological Boolean algebras. Moreover, we show that the lattice join of two finitely axiomatizable quasivarieties, each generated by a finite Heyting or topological Boolean algebra, respectively, need not be finitely axiomatizable. Finally, we solve problem 4 asked in Rautenberg [10].     

Systemy S4 I S5 Lewisa a spójnik identyczności

Allatum est die 28 Septembris 1970     

O klasach normalnych i nienormalnych na terenie języka potocznego

Problematyka i glówne tezy tej pracy pochodz od pierwszego autora. Udzial drugiego autora sprowadza sie do propozycji utosamienia jeezyka potocznego z formalizmem logiki zda i logiki nazw oraz do pewnych sugestii odnonie systematyzacji materialuAllatum est die 2 Octobris 1965