The study aimed to know how does mind-map software assess the representation of learners' knowledge and how brain tester software assess the performance of left, right, auditory, and visual lobes of the brain to represent information. It also aimed to study the differential effectiveness of audio, visual, and audio-visual information to represent…

A variety of practices and specialised representational systems are required to understand, communicate and construct molecular genetics knowledge. This study describes teachers' use of multimodal representations of molecular genetics concepts and how their strategies and choice of resources were interpreted, understood and used by students to…

When faced with excessive detail in an online environment, typical users have difficulty processing all the elements of representation. This in turn creates cognitive overload, which narrows the user's focus to a few select items. In the context of e-learning, we translated this aspect as the learner's demand for a system that facilitates the…

This article notes the convergence of recent thinking in neuroscience and grounded cognition regarding the way we understand mental representation and recollection: ideas are dynamic and multi-modal, actively created at the point of recall. Also, neurophysiologically, re-entrant signalling among cortical circuits allows non-conscious processing to…

The central goal of this study was to examine the extent to which a teaching approach focused on the interaction between macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic levels of chemistry representations could affect high school students' performance in the field of inorganic reactions, as well as to examine how the applied instruction influences…

We present a new software, called Goluca (Godinho, Luengo, and Casas, 2007), based on the technique of Pathfinder Associative Networks (Schvaneveldt, 1989), which produces graphical representations of the cognitive structure of individuals in a given field knowledge. In this case, we studied the strategies used by teachers and its relationship…

Mental models are basic cognitive constructs that are central for understanding phenomena of the world and predicting future events. Our comparison of two analysis approaches, SMD and QFCA, for measuring externalized mental models reveals different levels of abstraction and different perspectives. The advantages of the SMD include possibilities…

This study introduces a learning environment integrating annotations with a dual-slide PowerPoint presentation for classroom learning. Annotation means a kind of additional information to emphasize the explanations for the learning objects. The use of annotations is to support the cognitive process for PowerPoint presentation in a classroom. The…

The interoperability of educational systems, encouraged by the development of specifications, standards and tools related to the Semantic Web is limited to the exchange of information in domain and student models. High system interoperability requires that a common framework be defined that represents the functional essence of educational systems.…

In his 1979 "Human Development" article reprinted in this anniversary issue, James Wertsch presented an approach to genetic analysis of the shifting regulation of problem-solving behavior in early childhood. In my reflections on Wertsch's seminal contribution, I discuss ways that subsequent inquiry built upon ideas he elaborated in the…

Seeks to identify some of the issues associated with the role of models in scientific explanations. Develops a typology of explanations and explores the notion of appropriateness in scientific explanations. Investigates the nature of models and their contribution to explanations. (DDR)

One of the purposes of knowledge generation at the higher education level is the creation of expertise. However, the mental structures that an expert uses to process information are not generally considered. Instead, information alone is presented to the learner and it is hoped that he or she will somehow integrate this information into knowledge…

What kind of influence does the structure of an educational hypermedia system have on the way its users understand its contents and organize the knowledge they acquire through its browsing? In this article, this already much discussed question, situated at the boundary between semiotics and cognitive science, is revisited in the light of results…

This study sought to discover differences in knowledge and knowledge organization between medical students and physicians. A total of 4 fourth-year students who had completed their pre-clinical courses, 4 fifth-year students who had just finished their internship in internal medicine, and 4 internists with an average of 20 years of experience were…

Explores whether exposure to increasingly sophisticated mental models at different points in a chemistry education class showed up in patterns of preference and use of models in interpreting physical properties and phenomena. (Contains 92 references.) (DDR)