This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable instrument, the Mental Images of Scientists Questionnaire (MISQ), and use the instrument to examine Chinese students' mental images of scientists' characters across school levels, regions, living settings, and gender. The final version of the MISQ consisted of four constructs: scientists' cognitive,…

Mental training has been employed successfully by experienced musicians, but rarely explored with younger learners. Considering its benefits, however, including the use and development of predictive, feedforward processes, identified in neuroscience as being central to playing a musical instrument, this mixed qualitative-quantitative study…

In the core of computational thinking (CT) practices is problem-solving. However, there is little research on connecting CT with problem solving processes. We developed a computer-based assessment on CT that can log students' problem-solving processes and administered it to a group of fifth graders as a pre- and post- measure of a robotics…

Over three decades of research has shown that spatial reasoning and mathematics performance are highly correlated. Spatial visualization, in particular, has been found to predict mathematics performance in primary and middle school children. This research sought to determine the effectiveness of a spatial visualization intervention program on…

The long-term physical activity in specific sport activities can change the quality of mental rotation performance. This study investigates the influence of "Life Kinetik"--a motion program with tasks of cognition and motor coordination--on mental rotation performance of 44 primary school-aged children. While the experimental group…

Individuals with better spatial thinking have increased interest and greater achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). This relationship means that STEM education may benefit from leveraging spatial thinking, but measures of spatial thinking as they relate to specific…

Although the psychological literature has demonstrated that spatial reasoning and mathematics performance are correlated, there is scant research on these relationships in the middle years. The current study examined the commonalities and differences in students' performance on instruments that measured three spatial reasoning constructs and two…

The ability to mentally rotate objects in space has been singled out by cognitive scientists as a central metric of spatial reasoning (see Jansen, Schmelter, Quaiser-Pohl, Neuburger, & Heil, 2013; Shepard & Metzler, 1971 for example). However, this is a particularly undeveloped area of current mathematics curricula, especially in North…

The following manuscript is a review of research surrounding best practices for language and literacy development in children birth to age three. Part 1 of the review begins with the research on language acquisition beginning in utero, continuing through infancy and onto the emergence of speech. The review discusses the importance of language…

The field of education is a vital component of today's society, enriching and facilitating the attainment of new knowledge. Progress continues to be achieved in this area as new methods are envisioned that increase education's value. "Transforming the Future of Learning with Educational Research" brings together diverse perspectives that…

The main purpose of this study is to determine the strategies of using the generalizing patterns of the primary fifth grade students. The practice of this research is conducted on twelve students, which have high, middle and low success levels. Task-based interviews and students journals are used as the tools for data collection. For the analysis…

Attempts to identify specific components of a complex associative task, foreign language vocabulary learning, that might be particularly sensitive to developmental differences in imagery generation ability. Subjects were 95 second grade children enrolled in four schools and 90 sixth grade children enrolled in two of these same schools. (Author/MP)

Matched groups of normal and retarded readers were required to perform same/difference judgments in which the interval between standard and comparison stimuli was either 0, 1, or 6 seconds. (BRT)

To test the comparative efficacy of a visual imagery associative learning strategy in younger and older children, second and sixth grade children were presented a list of paired associates (concrete nouns) either at a faster or slower rate, under either an instruction to generate an interactive image for the pairs or a no strategy, control…

Intellectual realism was investigated by using as a model a cup with the defining feature (the handle) not visible, and a nondefining feature (a painted flower) visible. (Authors/MB)