Analogical reasoning is a core facet of higher cognition in humans. Creating analogies as we navigate the environment helps us learn. Analogies involve reframing novel encounters using knowledge of familiar, relationally similar contexts stored in memory. When an analogy links a novel encounter with a familiar context, it can aid in problem…

The relations between the developing mind and developing brain are explored. We outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that the mind comprises four systems of processes (domain-specific, attention and working memory, reasoning, and cognizance) developing in four cycles (episodic, realistic, rule-based, and principle-based…

This study examined middle and secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge structures, informal inferential reasoning (IIR), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for statistics. Using task-based clinical interviews (Goldin, 1997) and cross-case analysis (Creswell, 2013), a stratified purposeful sample (Patton, 2002) of nine teachers responded to…

The use of external representations has the potential to facilitate inquiry learning, especially hypothesis generation and reasoning, which typically present difficulties for students. This study describes a novel three-dimensional cognitive mapping (3DCM) approach that supports inquiry learning by allowing learners to combine the information on a…

A perspective is presented on how the representation mapping framework by Hahn and Chater (1998) may be used to characterize reasoning during problem solving in chemistry. To provide examples for testing the framework, an exploratory study was conducted with students and professors from three different courses in the middle of the undergraduate…

Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the "body-specificity hypothesis," people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the…