Decimal numbers are generally assumed to be a straightforward extension of the base-ten system for whole numbers given their shared place value structure. However, in decimal notation, unlike whole numbers, the same magnitude can be expressed in multiple ways (e.g., 0.8, 0.80, 0.800, etc.). Here, we used a number line task with carefully selected…

Background: One common method of teaching students about diversity, equity, and inclusion is educating them about implicit bias--stereotypes and prejudices that are relatively automatic or unconscious. Research reveals positive impacts of implicit bias education but is limited to organizations and social psychology classrooms. Objective: The…

Purpose: Mental ill health is on the rise amongst undergraduate students and has been investigated using both positivist/quantitative and exploratory/qualitative research methods. However, the lived experiences of mature students who have mental ill health have not been directly investigated. A limited research literature suggests that challenges…

Background: Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are used to assess faculty performance, but prior research has identified sources of bias in the completion and interpretation of SETs. Objective: We investigated how SET ratings and comments about quizzes are interpreted by faculty and undergraduates. Method: Participants made judgments about…

Background: Closing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is essential for achieving social equity and advancing innovation and socioeconomic development, as outlined in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. Despite notable progress, persistent stereotypes continue to restrict women's…

Adults have a vertical attention bias (VAB) that directs their focus toward object tops and scene bottoms. This is consistent with focusing attention on the informative aspects and affordances of the environment, and generally favoring a downward gaze. The smaller size of children, combined with their relatively limited interactions with objects…

Unlike other visual objects which are invariant to the left-right orientation, mirror letters (e.g., b and d) represent different object identities. Previous masked priming lexical decision studies have suggested that the identification of a mirror letter involves suppression of its mirror image counterpart reporting as evidence that a pseudoword…

In the contemporary information-rich academic environments, the superabundance of information sources requires that readers compose balanced referential representations of topics presented in sets of sources that provide divergent standpoints on them. Prior beliefs have been reported to skew the representations that readers build based on such…

This article builds off prior work on news consumption habits and perception of bias in the news by focusing on college students' self-generated definitions of bias, and the strategies they employ to guard against how their personal bias potentially affects what news they choose to believe and consume. Through interviews with undergraduate…

Using a large survey of undergraduate business students, we identify common stereotypes, analyze gender differences in stereotypic thinking, and examine how stereotypes impact a student's choice of major. We document gender differences in stereotypic thinking and find that stereotypes can introduce biases on students' attitudes toward our study's…

The samples of evidence we use to make inferences in everyday and formal settings are often subject to selection biases. Two property induction experiments examined group and individual sensitivity to one type of selection bias: sampling frames - causal constraints that only allow certain types of instances to be sampled. Group data from both…

This study investigates instructor perspectives on undergraduate student mental health in a mid-sized comprehensive university in southwestern Ontario. Through a survey (n = 190) and two focus group discussions (n = 8), instructors reported different perspectives toward student mental health (some inclusive, some tolerant, and some…

The rationale behind the present study consisted of evidence reported to date for Galbraith et al.'s (1999, 2018, 2023) dual-process model of writing, suggesting that not only do writers engage in knowledge transformation, but in the development of new knowledge. An additional aspect of Galbraith et al.'s (2023) work is their proposal and…

Community colleges (CCs) are important American higher education institutions; however, stigmas surrounding CCs might impact the perception of CC students as they transition to a four-year institution. To profile researcher perceptions of transfer students and develop a conceptual model of the perception of CC transfer students by biology,…

To become effective learners, students need to develop good evaluative judgment skills. Unfortunately, numerous studies find that self-evaluation estimates provided by undergraduates often differ significantly from the marks awarded by the tutor. This suggests that students either have a rather poor grasp of the assessment criteria, or they find…