The article, "Using Animations in Identifying General Chemistry Students' Misconceptions and Evaluating Their Knowledge Transfer Relating to Particle Position in Physical Changes" (Smith and Villarreal, 2015), reports that a substantial proportion of undergraduate students expressed misconceived ideas regarding the motion of particles in…

Successful learning sometimes requires that the learner abandons or rejects one or more prior concepts, beliefs, or intuitive theories. Such "nonmonotonic changes" are widely believed to have a low probability of occurring spontaneously and to be difficult to promote with instruction. A theory of nonmonotonic cognitive change should explain both…

This article considers the social problem of violence and the alternative of resolution through cooperation and compassion from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. Violence is a social problem, the manifestations of which have a biological basis reflected in the development of aggression and the neural mechanisms that regulate it.…

In this rejoinder, I comment on how going through the activity of participating in this forum and of engaging in dialogue with my commentators makes sense at several levels--most importantly, at the personal and the conceptual--and how these two levels are intricately connected. The link between the personal and conceptual (cognition and…

Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key…

Framing effects are said to occur when equivalent frames lead to different choices. However, the equivalence in question has been incompletely conceptualized. In a new normative analysis of framing effects, we complete the conceptualization by introducing the notion of information equivalence. Information equivalence obtains when no…

Meaning is one of the recent terms which have gained great currency in mathematics education. It is generally used as a correlate of individuals' intentions and considered a central element in contemporary accounts of knowledge formation. One important question that arises in this context is the following: if, in one way or another, knowledge…

In order to bridge the gap between knowing something and applying it, students must truly understand the concept. Elements of understanding include attention, consideration of meanings, and conceptualization. (CL)

Presents a case for the approach to thinking which takes logicality for granted and studies understanding. Argues that description of the qualitatively different ways in which people experience and understand various aspects of reality make up an autonomous field of inquiry, called phenomenography. (NEC)

Discusses the place of infinity in the history and epistemology of mathematics. (Author/MM)

In S. Kanazawa's (see record 2004-12248-010) evolutionary theory of general intelligence (g), g is presented as a species-typical information-processing mechanism. This conceptualization of g departs radically from the accepted conceptualization of g as a source of individual differences that is manifest in the positive manifold. Kanazawa's theory…

Claims that people determine whether something is a member of a given artifact kind by inferring that it was successfully created with the intention that it belong to that kind. Discusses function-based and intentional-historical accounts of artifact concepts. Concludes that a rich set of inferential capacities is needed to constitute a theory of…

Provides a rebuttal to critical comments on the author's earlier article concerning the concept of epistemological rationality. Main disagreements center on the view that the use of terms with evaluative connotations about cognitive functions have a potential for abuse and that one cannot make judgments about the relative efficacy of the…

A prevalent theory about the cognitive aspect of humor is that most humorous stimuli are characterized by incongruity that is first perceived and then resolved. However, the combination of incongruity and resolution is not sufficient for constituting a joke--resolution should be inadequate as well. In other words, resolution is brought about by…

The concept of function is considered as foundational in mathematics. Yet, it proves to be elusive and subtle for students. A generic image that can act as a cognitive root for the concept is the function box. This is not a simple pattern-spotting device, but a concept that embodies the salient features of the idea of function, including process…