We compared the performance of 3- and 5-year-old children with that of chimpanzees in two tasks requiring collaboration via complementary roles. In both tasks, children and chimpanzees were able to coordinate two complementary roles with peers and solve the problem cooperatively. This is the first experimental demonstration of the coordination of…

The article provides a review of recent research on human performance on the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and related combinatorial optimization problems. We discuss what combinatorial optimization problems are, why they are important, and why they may be of interest to cognitive scientists. We next describe the main characteristics of human…

Research on human and animal behavior has long emphasized its hierarchical structure--the divisibility of ongoing behavior into discrete tasks, which are comprised of subtask sequences, which in turn are built of simple actions. The hierarchical structure of behavior has also been of enduring interest within neuroscience, where it has been widely…

In this paper it is proposed that the prefrontal lobe participates in two closely related but different executive function abilities: (1) "metacognitive executive functions": problem solving, planning, concept formation, strategy development and implementation, controlling attention, working memory, and the like; that is, executive functions as…

We asked whether honeybees, "Apis mellifera," could solve a transitive inference problem. Individual free-flying bees were conditioned with four overlapping premise pairs of five visual patterns in a multiple discrimination task (A+ vs. B-, B+ vs. C-, C+ vs. D-, D+ vs. E-, where + and - indicate sucrose reward or absence of it,…

This is the second of two papers that propose an expanded and enriched view of arithmetic problem solving by stressing the need to provide learning activities that include problems of varying structures. The first paper included a framework for the enhancement of text-based problems. This second paper proposes a scheme for the development of…

The most popular activities from APA's successful "Activities Handbooks for the Teaching of Psychology" are gathered together and updated in this book of teachers' favorites. The lesson plans, which encourage active learning and involve the whole class, have stood the test of time and proven themselves to be entertaining, effective, and easy to…