From a social semiotic perspective, image designs in science textbooks are inevitably influenced by the sociocultural context in which the books are produced. The learning environments of Australia and Taiwan vary greatly. Drawing on social semiotics and cognitive science, this study compares classificational images in Australian and Taiwanese…

A classic distinction in perceptual information processing is whether stimuli are composed of separable dimensions, which are highly analyzable, or integral dimensions, which are processed holistically. Previous tests of a set of logical-rule models of classification have shown that separable-dimension stimuli are processed serially if the…

Evidence that learning rule-based (RB) and information-integration (II) category structures can be dissociated across different experimental variables has been used to support the view that such learning is supported by multiple learning systems. Across 4 experiments, we examined the effects of 2 variables, the delay between response and feedback…

Two studies examined whether adults and children could learn to make context-dependent inferences about novel stimuli and the role of awareness of context cues in such learning. Participants were trained to match probes to targets on the basis of shape or color with the relevant dimension shifting according to item context. A selective induction…

It is important for students to develop critical thinking and other higher-order thinking skills during their tertiary studies. Along with the ability to think critically comes the need to develop students' meta-cognitive skills. These abilities work together to enable students to control, monitor, and regulate their own cognitive processes and…

Procedures for responding consistently to plagiarism incidents are neither clear-cut nor easily implemented and yet inequitable treatment is intrinsically unfair. Classifying the seriousness of a plagiarism incident is problematic and penalties recommended for a given incident can vary greatly. This paper describes the development and testing of a…

This paper describes an exercise in determining the cognitive difficulty of the assessment tasks in six computing courses within an Information Technology (IT) degree, importing Bloom's taxonomy from the field of educational psychology as an analytical framework. Three of the six courses comprise a Programming stream and three a Data…

Results show that the drawings attributed to the Aboriginal "artist" produced more positive impressions and were rated more highly on the semantic differential. This research was presented at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Convention, Denver, Colorado, April, 1978. (Author)

Examined whether preschool children focus on a small number of attributes or attend to whole exemplars in learning basic categories for fictitious animals. Found little evidence that children employed rules, but found strong evidence that children encoded exemplars as integrated wholes during category training. Discusses implications for theories…

Reported are two studies of the categorization of adolescents' justifications for the morality of others' actions. To analyze interview data, a new method of scoring moral judgments was developed. Study 1, involving 180 individuals from 12 to 21 years of age, focused on dimensions of reflection and abstraction associated with four categories of…

The cumulative hierarchical assumption of Bloom's Taxonomy was tested by orienting American Australian subjects at four taxonomic levels to the same study material and administering an unexpected memory test. Moderate support was obtained for the cumulative hierarchical assumption, but it is concluded that the evaluation category is misplaced.…

Fifty two- to three-year olds performed paired-associate or control tasks with response items that were related or unrelated. Children in the related task performed more slowly than children in the unrelated task. Findings suggest that children in the related task experienced interference in the acquisition or retrieval of paired-associate items.…

Recent research into students' reasoning about variation refers specifically to notions of distribution that emerge. This paper reports on research where written responses, from tertiary introductory statistics students, were coded according to the level of consideration of variation. A hierarchy of reasoning about distribution is proposed, based…

This study investigated the potential use of a cognitive measure to detect differential effects on children's styles of performance and behavior. A stratified random sample of 96 children across schools, sex and preschool attendance were selected for testing from the five kindergarten classes associated with the Mt. Druitt Early Childhood Project…

Reports on data obtained in Australia on practicing teachers' thinking as they interacted with a professional development interactive multimedia courseware package. Two types of thinking are discussed: (1) cognitive mediating processes related to content; and (2) evaluative thoughts about the instructional design of the courseware, from which a…