Mind mapping is a visualization tool used in instruction that can be applied by learners to generate ideas, take notes, organize thinking, and develop concepts. Instruction using mind mapping is becoming increasingly commonly used in education. However, research has produced inconsistent results regarding the effectiveness of mind mapping-based…

Theories of mind are implicitly embedded in educational research. The predominant theory of mind during the latter half of the twentieth century has focused primarily on the individual mind in isolation, context-free problem-solving and mental representations and reasoning, what we refer to as "cognitivism." Over the last two decades, CS…

The human brain is not a passive organ simply waiting to be activated by external stimuli. Instead, we propose that the brain continuously employs memory of past experiences to interpret sensory information and predict the immediately relevant future. The basic elements of this proposal include analogical mapping, associative representations and…

Discusses the concept of mental (or cognitive) maps--the images we construct in our minds to help us understand something--and argues that geographers' literature on mental maps can provide greater understanding of scientific literature's formats, conventions, processes, and formulations. Three classes of perception studies for mental maps are…

A computer program written for the Apple II was designed to teach college students how to map expository information. The program consists of five lessons, the first beginning with a definition and illustration of mapping. In this introductory lesson, students are asked to answer three basic questions when reading expository text: identify the…

Describes the Novice-Expert (Novex) Analysis, a nine-step approach to instructional design aimed at effecting the shift from novice to expert by creating a series of learning activities to enable novices to construct an expert knowledge base. The "Dimensions of Processing Model" diagram illustrates how learning processes influence…

Past research on political socialization has failed to provide clear implications for educational policy or practice. However, reconceptualizing that research using a framework derived from cognitive psychology can reveal relationships between political socialization and education not previously seen. In this reconceptualization, schema or…

New conceptions of learning, analogy, and capacity have fundamentally changed scientists' view of cognitive development. New conceptions of learning help to explain how representations of the world are acquired. New models of analogical reasoning have suggested that logical inferences are often made by mapping a problem into a mental model, or…