Mathematical thinking is a complex, multi-faceted process that has been described as messy and difficult but can also show growth and insights into conceptual understanding and knowing. This paper explores the application of Edward de Bono's practical thinking, in particular, the occurrence of porridge words to examine the mathematical thinking of…

In this paper, the application of fuzzy logic in mathematical education is viewed from the perspective of pre- school education. The aim of the paper is to give a brief overview of examples from the literature related to fuzzy logic and to point out the presence of fuzzy linguistic variables in the everyday life of a preschool child, as well as…

Logical reasoning is very important in the child's development, increasing their performance in learning as a whole, improving their concentration and decision-making when solving problems. The introduction of this tool and stimulus from the first years of education is necessary for children to grow up with a broad and more critical view, being…

We are at the beginning of a new era in human history--the cognitive augmentation era. Until now, humans have had to do all of the thinking. The future will make it possible for humans to partner with cognitive systems doing some of the thinking themselves and in many ways thinking that is superior to humans. Together, humans and "cogs"…

This study examined college students' ability to reason about everyday issues. Previous studies are reviewed and it is concluded that issues studied in the past were often not truly "everyday." For this study, 30 students responded to 10 issues, including 4 personal and 4 personally relevant political issues. Students circled one of two positions…

This paper describes a computer model that simulates the way children develop the reasoning skills of transitive inference and the construction of ordered sets. The computer model begins from general operations, such as setting and removing goals, storing and retrieving information, comparing elements to find matches, reading premises, and giving…

This longitudinal study analyzed the relationship between structure and content of socio-moral reasoning. Using a system that defines independently the cognitive organizational and content aspects of socio-moral reasoning, the study examined whether persons at different developmental levels make use of different content categories, and whether the…

This paper shares a cognitive intervention approach to teaching thinking to first-year students in engineering and applied science courses in Singapore. The theoretical underpinnings of the Cognitive Modification Intervention (CMI) are based on Feuerstein's Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability. Embedded in this theory is the Theory of…

In two studies, children participated in route-planning tasks in which they were asked to find the shortest path to retrieve certain items. In Study 1, children participated in two versions of the task (standard versus feedback) differing in the amount of contextual support. Forty-eight children, ages 6, 8, and 10 years, had to help their…

Cognitive development is driven by experience, but is mediated by domain general processes, which include learning, induction, and analogy. The concepts children understand, and the strategies they develop based on that understanding, depend on the complexity of the representation they can construct. Conceptual complexity can be defined in terms…

Bright Start is a preschool program designed to assist caregivers and educators of children ages 2 through 5 years become optimal facilitators of young children's learning through enhancing the quality of their interaction with children and through providing mediated learning experiences. This paper examines the cognitive approach to preschool…

This paper reports on a portion of a 14-year study of the mathematical thinking of a cohort group of students that was based on an identifiable perspective on how mathematical ideas are built. Three videotape episodes are presented so that groups of students working together can be viewed at three points in time: as fourth graders (ages 9-10) and…

Sixty Japanese children ranging in age from 3 years 4 months to 7 years 5 months were individually interviewed with three Piagetian tasks. Children's levels of representation were assessed by asking for a graphic representation of 4 dishes, 6 pencils, 8 small blocks etc. A conservation-of-number task was then given to assess children's level of…

This paper presents three experiments examining competence in the domain of proportional reasoning in several age groups (adult, and children in kindergarten, first, third, and fifth grade). In the three experiments, subjects indicated which of two flower boxes had the greater density of flowers. In experiments 1 and 2, the flowers were presented…

Imagery has a significant role in cognitive development. Reading research has established the fact that good readers image spontaneously and that there is a high interrelationship between overall preference for a story, the amount of text-related imagery in the story, comprehension, and recall. Imagery researchers agree that everyone is capable of…