This paper describes the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME), a cognitive simulation program for studying human analogical processing. SME is based on Gentner's Structure-Mapping theory of analogy, and provides a "tool kit" for constructing matching algorithms consistent with this theory. This flexibility enhances cognitive simulation studies by…

Studied children's transitive inference where representation of premises provided contradictory information depending on position of two elements in a A, B, C series. Eight-year olds did significantly better on the more complex problems than did six-year olds, suggesting the presence of a developmental sequence of algorithms that enable children…

Most of the research on mathematical and scientific thinking has been concerned with uncovering knowledge structures and reasoning processes in people of different levels of competence. How these structures and processes are acquired has only recently become a major concern. Thus, some of the major research on mathematical and scientific thinking…

Compared and contrasted are the concepts intuition and logic. The ideas of conceptual thought and algorithmic thought are discussed in terms of the world as a labyrinth, intuition and time, and the structure of knowledge. (KR)