Humans routinely use external thinking tools, like pencil and paper, maps, and calculators, to solve cognitive problems that would have once been solved internally. As many youth face unprecedented exposure to increasingly capable technological aids, there is a growing pressure to understand children's cognitive offloading capacities and…

This study aimed to portray insightful problem solvers. Participants solved classic insight problems and rebuses and completed cognitive and creativity tasks. Grouping the participants based on their success in solving insight problems of different modalities revealed that 95% of the spatial problem solvers succeeded in solving verbal ones…

Objective: Executive Functioning (EF) is a construct that is considered central to cognitive development and has recently garnered attention for its potential role in social functioning. This study investigated the relationship between EF and social skill using both multiple regression and relative weights analyses. Participants: A sample of…

This study examines relationships between mathematical problem-solving performance (in terms of strategies used and accuracy) and the main cognitive domains associated with mathematical learning (i.e. executive functions, verbal comprehension and social perception) of children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD and non-ASD resp.). The…

The longitudinal changes of the average grades in four study semesters before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning are presented in the current study. 11th grade students' (n=586; age M=17.38, SD=0.53) average grades were assessed, as well as their verbal and non-verbal reasoning abilities, and self-evaluations of problem-solving…

This study investigates school-age children's arithmetic operations performance while solving larger-size problems which produces interferences in memory. Complex problems can trigger competing responses in working memory, which are irrelevant to a task goal and increase the likelihood of interference from previously learned problems (De Visscher…

Computational thinking -- the ability to reformulate and solve problems in ways that can be undertaken by computers -- has been heralded as a foundational capability for the 21st Century. However, there are potentially different ways to conceptualise and measure computational thinking, for instance, as generalized problem solving capabilities or…

In 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards tasked science teachers to include more engineering processes in their instruction. Design thinking is one way this has been accomplished over the last decade, but other engineering characteristics might have an influence on how learners thinking through the design process. Using a pretest-posttest,…

Spatial thinking is ubiquitous in design. Design education across all age groups encompasses a range of spatially challenging activities, such as forming and modifying mental representations of ideas, and visualizing the scenarios of design prototypes being used. While extensive research has examined the cognitive processes of spatial thinking and…

The paper describes the results of a study whose main aim was to find the interrelationship between pupils' school grades in Czech language (native), mathematics, and physics and pupils' cognitive predispositions to problem-solving in science and mathematics diagnosed by the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning and the Culture of Problem…

With the rise of wearable technologies, mobile devices and artificial intelligence comes a growing pressure to understand downstream effects of cognitive offloading on children's future thinking and behavior. Here, we explored whether compelling children to use an indiscriminate cognitive offloading strategy affects their subsequent strategy…

Existing research has revealed key factors influencing mathematical flexibility, defined as the capacity to understand, generate, and apply a variety of strategies in solving mathematical problems. However, there is currently a lack of an integrated theoretical framework to systematically consolidate various sources of individual differences in…

Purpose: Despite the fact that research on creativity and cognition have garnered the attention of researchers and practitioners for decades, there is a lack of valid, reliable, and accessible instruments for enhancing and measuring these critical skills. Leveraging research from The LEGO Foundation and in collaboration with BrainPOP and the…

This study investigates when and how awareness of knowledge gaps (AKG) manifests by observing the problem-solving phase of the educational approach known as problem-solving followed by instruction (PS-I). By comprehensively exploring cognitive and metacognitive process of learners during this phase and categorizing students' judgements of…

Spatial thinking permeates much of our lives and is an asset when solving problems involving well-structured visual information or imagining solutions in physical or digital space. However, an estimated three million US school children have spatial talents that go unrecognized because of the tools commonly used for identification of academic…