In a recently published study, Sloutsky and Fisher [Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A.V. (2004a). When development and learning decrease memory: Evidence against category-based induction in children. "Psychological Science", 15, 553-558; Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004b). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model.…

Reciprocal determinism is a central premise of Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory. Studies of the relationship between self-beliefs and performance tend to draw on this or related theories and usually endorse the notion of reciprocal determinism at a substantive-theoretical level. However, attempts to model this postulated mutual influence…

The article reviews the seven passages of the creative process--framing, probing, exploring, revealing, affirming, reframing, and realizing. Seven steps toward identifying ways to unblock the barriers to creative ability and creative release are outlined. (SW)

One of the central claims associated with the parallel distributed processing approach popularized by D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland and the PDP Research Group is that knowledge is coded in a distributed fashion. Localist representations within this perspective are widely rejected. It is important to note, however, that connectionist networks…

This study reviews theories supporting the construction of student knowledge and found they rely upon theoretical operations with few pragmatic applications. A new paradigm of learning needs to emerge which focuses on how students actually construct their own knowledge, based on reconstructing current/past knowledge or experience, and their…

This literature review focuses on the confirmed, suspected, and speculative effects of violent and non-violent video game exposure on negative and positive outcomes. Negative outcomes include aggressive feelings, aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior, physiological arousal, and desensitization, whereas positive outcomes include various types of…

This article discusses problem solving and how science educators can integrate problem solving into their instruction. The Search, Solve, Create, and Share (SSCS) model was developed based on the findings of problem solving research. (YP)

The present study compared the representational drawings of children with autism, children with Down syndrome and typically developing children. Participants were asked to draw a series of objects and their depictions were scored for the incidence of intellectual realism. The tasks sought evidence of conceptual as opposed to episodic influences on…

There are a large number of studies demonstrating that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) involves different subcomponents, but there is no agreement on the identity of these dimensions. The present study attempts to combine different theoretical accounts by measuring VSWM. A battery composed of 13 tests was used to assess working memory and, in…

Age-related differences in cognitive processes were used to understand age-related declines in creativity. According to the Geneplore model (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992), there are two phases of creativity--generating an idea and exploring the implications of the idea--each with different underlying cognitive processes. These two phases are…

Previous research suggests that by 4 months of age infants use the eye gaze of adults to guide their attention and facilitate processing of environmental information. Here we address the question of how infants process the relation between another person and an external object. We applied an ERP paradigm to investigate the neural processes…

Studying short-term dynamic processes and change mechanisms in interaction yields important knowledge that contributes to understanding long-term social development of children. In order to get a grip on this short-term dynamics of interaction processes, the authors made a dynamic systems model of dyadic interaction of children during one play…

In this commentary, assumptions about the nature and development of children's false memories as described in a recent article by C. J. Brainerd, V. F. Reyna, and S. J. Ceci (2008) are reviewed. Specifically, questions are raised about what drives the development of false memories in fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). Recent studies that challenge a core…

Theoretical concepts of culture shock and adaptation are reviewed, as applied to the pedagogical adaptation of student sojourners in an unfamiliar culture. The historical development of "traditional" theories of culture shock led to the emergence of contemporary theoretical approaches, such as "culture learning", "stress and coping" and "social…

Open-ended tasks are rarely used to investigate cognition in autism. No known studies have directly examined whether increased attention to the perceptual level of speech in autism might contribute to a reduced tendency to process language meaningfully. The present study investigated linguistic versus perceptual speech processing preferences.…