Thinking about knowledge and knowing ("i.e.", epistemic cognition) is an important part of student learning and has implications for how they apply their knowledge in future courses, careers, and other aspects of their lives. Three classes of models have emerged from research on epistemic cognition: developmental models, dimensional…

This study investigates the progression of students' meaning-making of epigenetic phenomena while discussing multiple visual representations depicted at different levels of biological organization. Semi-structured focus group sessions involving ninth-grade students (aged 15-16) from a Swedish lower secondary school were video recorded. Students'…

Conceptual modeling of databases is a complex cognitive activity, particularly for novice database designers. The current research empirically tests a new pedagogy for this activity. It examines an instructional approach that stresses visualizing gradual transitions between levels of abstraction in different hierarchic levels of a relational…

This article examines the connections between information overload and time pressure, as well as between organizational patterns as they are perceived by school faculty, contingent upon the level of the specific educational framework (elementary-high school) and teachers' roles within the school. The participants were 539 teachers. The main…

To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed…

In this paper I argue my opposition to the consensus which has dominated the literature that young children view shapes as a whole and pay no attention to shape structure and that geometrical thinking can be described through a hierarchical model formed by levels. This consensus is linked to van Hiele's weok by van Hiele-based research. In the…

Hierarchy is one of the most important concepts in the scientific study of language. This dissertation aims to understand why we observe hierarchical structures in speech by investigating the cognitive processes from which they emerge. To that end, the dissertation explores how articulatory, rhythmic, and prosodic patterns of speech interact.…

This article presents an exploratory study aimed at the identification of students' levels of understanding in spherical geometry as van Hiele did for Euclidean geometry. To do this, we developed and implemented a spherical geometry course for student mathematics teachers. Six structured, "task-based interviews" were held with eight student…

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience difficulties in the recall and repetition of verbal information. Archibald and Gathercole (2006) suggested that children with SLI are vulnerable across two separate components of a tripartite model of working memory (Baddeley and Hitch 1974). However, the hierarchical…

This article argues that attempts to identify criteria that mark out higher-order thinking and distinguish it from lower-order thinking are still far from satisfactory. Bloom's cognitive hierarchy is discussed, as are the characteristics of higher-order thinking assembled by Resnick. (IAH)

This study was designed to explore how adults with autism and Asperger syndrome (ASD) would visually process compound figures. They were tested in two tasks, one involving hierarchical global/local stimuli, the other involving face-like or geometrical stimuli where the processing of the inter-elemental spatial relationships was emphasized. Adults…

Presents experiments which compare two theories of memory for routine events, one emphasizing temporal sequence of events, the other focusing on events' hierarchical structure or centrality. Findings suggest that sequence and centrality information may be computed as needed, rather than precompiled. (Author/BK)

Background: The argument put forward in this paper is that we should reorganize the existing framework most often used to describe creativity, which relies on person, process, product, and place. Aim: To that end a new hierarchical model is proposed. This accomplishes several things: It re-organizes the existing categories of research and…

The General Strategies Hypothesis and the Strategy-deficiency Hypothesis are discussed in relation to conclusions made by Symposium participants. A contrast emerges between Borkowski, et. al.'s embrace of the Strategy-deficiency Hypothesis and Turnure's dissatisfaction with it. (LMO)

This paper criticizes the Yeany, Yap, and Padilla paper (1986). Questions the internal consistency about hierarchical relationships of integrated processes and cognitive reasoning concerning procedures used for the generation of subhierarchies, instrumentation used to assess the process skills, and rigor of lexicon. (YP)