In describing how people generalize from observed samples of data to novel cases, theories of inductive inference have emphasized the learner's reliance on the contents of the sample. More recently, a growing body of literature suggests that different assumptions about how a data sample was generated can lead the learner to draw qualitatively…

Similarity is one of the most important relations humans perceive, arguably subserving category learning and categorization, generalization and discrimination, judgment and decision making, and other cognitive functions. Researchers have proposed a wide range of representations and metrics that could be at play in similarity judgment, yet have not…

In judgment and categorization, the task is to infer the criterion value of an object based on cues. The cognitive mechanisms underlying such inferences are often distinguished in terms of whether they rely on an abstracted cue-criterion rule or on retrieving exemplars. The use of cue-based and exemplar-based strategies (and the associated…

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision…

Young children are able to categorize animals on the basis of unobservable features such as shared biological properties (e.g., bones). For the most part, children learn about these properties through explicit verbalizations from others. The present study examined how such input impacts children's learning about the properties of categories. In a…

Readers of the Roman script must "unlearn" some forms of mirror generalization when processing printed stimuli (i.e., herb and herd are different words). Here we examine whether the suppression of mirror generalization is a process that affects all letters or whether it mostly affects reversible letters (i.e., b/d). Three masked priming lexical…

People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person's perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self…

Examines whether problem solving, decision making, and other thinking skills depend more on deep expertise in a specialty or on reflective awareness and general strategies. General and specialized knowledge function in close partnership. The partnership's nature and implications for educational practice are explored. (Author/BJV)

This document was written for junior and senior high school students to help them learn to cope more effectively with their problems. It is intended as a quide for helping adolescents explore and solve problems through constructive critical thinking. Ten steps in the process of constructive critical thinking are presented with personal and social…

The Philosophy for Children Program was introduced to a class of deaf fifth graders as an instructional approach for reasoning skills. The program is intended to develop analytic skills required for intellectual functioning (including concept development, generalization, inference making, question formulation, and analogies). The program's major…

This investigation compares overt judgments about tenable hypotheses to choices in a concept identification task, as a function of stimulus similarity on successive trials. Two mathematical models are tested: (a) A 1-element local consistency version of Restle's concept identification model and (b) the same model with two additional passive states…

This paper demonstrates how a diagram of a Safeway supermarket can be the vehicle for a language lesson based on Lawrence's cognitive categories (classification, definition, spatial order, chronological order, generalizations and specifics, and cause and effect). A wide variety of decision-making activities based on this diagram are described.…