This study investigates the effect of a professional development program designed to develop prospective mathematics teachers' ability to notice students' proportional reasoning. It examines how those teachers attended to student thinking, how they interpreted it, and how they decided to respond. Sixteen prospective teachers (PSTs) at a state…

In this study, an interactive science learning app on the topic of plate tectonics was developed for tablets to promote argumentative reasoning. The app guided learners through learning stages that required them to propose arguments, identify relevant evidence, acquire background knowledge, and engage in argumentative reasoning in different…

This study aimed to characterise preservice teachers' (PSTs') noticing in a mathematics classroom and its influence on their lesson modification. Written narratives on video-taped lesson observation were analysed qualitatively in two components, attending and reasoning. The findings indicate that PSTs' initial noticing focused on general…

Proofs are attempts to conclusively demonstrate the validity of the claim for all cases indicated within its domain, which implies that proving should involve thoughtful consideration of the domain. This study analyzed the enactment of three general claim tasks, or tasks where the domain of the claim referred to an infinite number of cases, that…

The ability to reason and problem-solve in novel situations, as measured by the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), is highly predictive of both cognitive task performance and real-world outcomes. Here we provide evidence that RAPM performance depends on the ability to reallocate attention in response to self-generated feedback about…

Diagrams are powerful opportunities for grappling with and learning abstract relationships, for example learning the relations between elements in an ecosystem rather than simply memorizing the objects within the system. Further, what is crucial from any diagrammatic learning opportunity is the ability to use this relational knowledge in a new…

Purpose: Cognitive screening tools to identify patients at risk for cognitive deficits are frequently used by clinicians who work with aging populations in hearing health care. Although some studies show improvements in performance on cognitive screening exams when hearing loss intervention is provided in the form of a hearing aid or cochlear…

The relations between the developing mind and developing brain are explored. We outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that the mind comprises four systems of processes (domain-specific, attention and working memory, reasoning, and cognizance) developing in four cycles (episodic, realistic, rule-based, and principle-based…

Argument-based interventions in science education have largely been motivated by the perspective that students lack knowledge of argument. Recent studies, however, suggest that contextual factors influence students' argument quality. The authors hypothesize that a key limiting factor lies in students' abilities to recognize when to employ…

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder that affects thought, language and communication. Considering the language disorders, the aim of this study is to examine the average sentence length of patients with Schizophrenia and compare the results with a control group by using four different language tests. Fifty patients with schizophrenia…

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high-dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF…

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students--physics problem solving--to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module…

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between executive functions and mathematical abilities to determine the contribution of these functions to math performance. In this study, 30 students were selected from among 4th graders of elementary school, in two groups with low achievement in mathematics (poor) and high achievement…

Spatial discontinuity between causes and effects is a feature of many scientific concepts, particularly those in the environmental and ecological sciences. Causes can be spatially separated from their effects by great distances. Action at a distance, the idea that causes and effects can be separated in physical space, is a well-studied concept in…

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of what students notice about symbols and use as they solve unfamiliar algebra problems based on familiar algebra concepts and involving symbolic inscriptions. The researcher conducted a study of students at three levels of algebra exposure: (a) students enrolled in a high school pre-calculus…