Many cognitive scientists regard language as a rich source of evidence about the human mind. Much research over the past forty years has been driven by the assumption that words reveal underlying concepts. At the same time, cross-linguistic work has shown that languages differ dramatically in how they partition the world by name. To maintain the…

Studies in cognitive science have verified that working memory (where the brain solves problems) can manipulate nearly all elements of knowledge that can be recalled automatically from long-term memory, but only a few elements that have not previously been well memorized. Research in reading comprehension has found that "lecture notes with…

Technological achievements require complex skills for the workplace, along with creativity, communication, and critical thinking. To compete effectively in the global economy, governments must provide their citizens with relevant education and training. To help close the skills gap, international agencies often advise governments of developing…

In this article, Jennifer Groff explores the role of the arts in education through the lens of current research in cognitive neuroscience and the impact of technology in today's digital world. She explains that although arts education has largely used multiple intelligences theory to substantiate its presence in classrooms and schools, this…

The assumption that bodies have little to do with thinking--other than to be the vehicle that gets a mind to a classroom--deeply underpins the traditional model of schooling. Lessons and seminars are designed on the premise that thinking happens best when people are pretty still, their bodies are quiet and undemanding of attention, and they are…

It is now well-established that intrinsic variations in human neural and behavioral activity tend to exhibit scaling laws in their fluctuations and distributions. The meaning of these scaling laws is an ongoing matter of debate between isolable causes versus pervasive causes. A spiking neural network model is presented that self-tunes to critical…

This paper provides a critical examination of the current state and future possibility of formal cognitive theory for insight problem solving and its associated "aha!" experience. Insight problems are contrasted with move problems, which have been formally defined and studied extensively by cognitive psychologists since the pioneering…

This paper discusses the relationship between religion and science education in the light of the cognitive sciences. We challenge the popular view that science and religion are compatible, a view that suggests that learning and understanding evolutionary theory has no effect on students' religious beliefs and vice versa. We develop a cognitive…

The surgical removal of brain tissue for the treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy can be either nonselective, as with an anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL), or selective, as with a selective amygdalohippocampectomy (SAH). Although seizure outcomes are similar with both procedures, cognitive and memory outcomes remain a matter of debate. This study…

Pedagogical considerations should be guided by empirical, brain-based research on the human information processing system. People build and organize knowledge into a network-like system that connects related information. As learning occurs, learners expand the network to accommodate new information. Instructional strategies can be used to maximize…

Observed actions are covertly and involuntarily simulated within the observer's motor system. It has been argued that simulation is involved in processing abstract, gestural paintings, as the artist's movements can be simulated by observing static brushstrokes. Though this argument is grounded in theory, empirical research has yet to examine the…

Historically, cognitive researchers have largely ignored the domain of sport in their quest to understand how the mind works. This neglect is due, in part, to the limitations of the information processing paradigm that dominated cognitive psychology in its formative years. With the emergence of the embodiment approach to cognition, however, sport…

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…

Over the past ten years several learning environments based on novel interaction modalities have been developed. Within this field, Full-body Interaction Learning Environments open promising possibilities given their capacity to involve the users at different levels, such as sensorimotor experience, cognitive aspects and affective factors.…

This article is concerned with how computer science, and more exactly computational complexity theory, can inform cognitive science. In particular, we suggest factors to be taken into account when investigating how people deal with computational hardness. This discussion will address the two upper levels of Marr's Level Theory: the computational…