Using a mixed methods approach, we explore a relationship between students' graph reasoning and graph selection via a fully online assessment. Our population includes 673 students enrolled in college algebra, an introductory undergraduate mathematics course, across four U.S. postsecondary institutions. The assessment is accessible on computers,…

Conflicting explanations and unrelated information in science classrooms increase cognitive load and decrease efficiency in learning. This reduced efficiency ultimately limits one's ability to solve reasoning problems in the science. In reasoning, it is the ability of students to sift through and identify critical pieces of information that is of…

We propose two contrasting types of student decision-making based on social and cognitive psychology models of separate mental processes for problem solving. Informal decision-making uses intuitive reasoning and is subject to cognitive biases, whereas formal decision-making uses effortful, logical reasoning. We explored indicators of students'…

Aim/Purpose: To identify and rectify the learning difficulties of online learners. Background: The major cause of learners' failure and non-acquisition of knowledge relates to their weaknesses in certain areas necessary for optimal learning. We focus on e-learning because, within this environment, the learner is mostly affected by these…

Normative adult age-related decrements are well documented for many diverse forms of effortful cognitive processing. However, it is currently unclear whether each of these decrements reflects a distinct and independent developmental phenomenon, or, in part, a more global phenomenon. A number of studies have recently been published that show…

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different…

While many researchers in science education have argued that students' epistemological understanding of models and of modelling processes would influence their cognitive processing on a modelling task, there has been little direct evidence for such an effect. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relation between students' epistemological…

The four dominant theories of reasoning from conditionals are translated into formal models: The theory of mental models (Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2002). Conditionals: a theory of meaning, pragmatics, and inference. "Psychological Review," 109, 646-678), the suppositional theory (Evans, J. S. B. T., & Over, D. E. (2004). "If."…

This paper is structured in two sections. The first examines views of mathematical abstraction in two broad categories: empiricist and dialectical accounts. It documents the difficulties involved in and explores the potentialities of both accounts. Then it outlines a recent model which takes a dialectical materialist approach to abstraction in…

An intelligence model of processes and content of thought is proposed. Processes include remembering, evaluating, generating, and transforming, while content is self, forms, ideas, and persons, determining levels of complexity for learning. The TETRA model is compared with J.P. Guilford's aptitude structure of intellect. Theory implications for…

Several observations about the way humans conceive of attributes, changes, and covariation of stimuli are presented as indications for the existence of a conceptual hierarchy of dimensions in which time dominates space, and space dominates every other dimension. (Author)

Two models for teaching people to think, the Deweyan problem-solving model and the traditional discipline-oriented model, are described and evaluated. (GW)

The building block theory of language structure, an information processing approach, is applied to the development of a model of the reading process. Specifically, the model is concerned with the amount of time an individual will spend reading and the amount of content he will decode which is determined by a series of cognitive processes involving…

Presents a model used to help students of instructional technology conceptualize the range of instructional designs they might utilize and which could be used to classify existing materials for easy reference. (CHC)

A curriculum model in logic is proposed for learning disabled students based on reasoning and content needs. A diagnostic test with probes yields a profile of the child's reasoning ability and pinpoints areas of strengths and weaknesses. Three levels of instruction are provided: thematic concrete, specific concrete, and abstract. (CL)