Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences about mental states. Thus far, little research has examined ToM development in middle childhood. Importantly, recent studies have distinguished between making inferences about beliefs (cognitive ToM) and emotions (affective ToM). ToM has also been associated with executive functioning,…

It is surprising that there are inconsistent findings of transitive inference (TI) in young infants given that non-linguistic species succeed on TI tests. To conclusively test for TI in infants, we developed a task within the social domain, with which infants are known to show sophistication. We familiarized 10- to 13-month-olds (M = 11.53 months)…

The authors propose an integrative theoretical model of reading called the direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER) that builds on and extends several prominent theoretical models of reading. According to DIER, the following skills and knowledge are involved in reading comprehension: word reading, listening comprehension, text reading…

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether systematic instruction of informational texts can enhance kindergarteners' cognitive involvement in text discussion and comprehension skills. The sample consisted of 15 children aged 5-6 years old in a kindergarten classroom located in a rural area in Rethymno, Crete. A four-phase…

The learned predictiveness effect or LPE is the finding that when people learn that certain cues are reliable predictors of an outcome in an initial stage of training (phase 1), they exhibit a learning bias in favor of these cues in a subsequent training involving new outcomes (phase 2) despite all cues being equally reliable in phase 2. In…

This paper describes the importance of developing students' reasoning about samples and sampling variability as a foundation for statistical thinking. Research on expert-novice thinking as well as statistical thinking is reviewed and compared. A case is made that statistical thinking is a type of expert thinking, and as such, research…

Choosing specific implementational details is one of the most important aspects of creating and evaluating a model. In order to properly model cognitive processes, choices for these details must be made based on empirical research. Unfortunately, modelers are often forced to make decisions in the absence of relevant data. My work investigates the…

Students' graph comprehension may be affected by the background of the students who are the readers or interpreters of the graph, their knowledge of the context in which the graph is set, and the inferential processes required by the graph operation. This research study investigated these aspects of graph comprehension for 152 first year…

The primary purpose is the implementation of the interdisciplinary approach to understanding and the construction of integrative models of understanding literary texts. The interdisciplinary methodological paradigm of studying text understanding, based on the principles of various sciences facilitating the identification of the text understanding…

Investigating the processes underlying test performance is a major source of data supporting the explanation inference in the validity argument (Chappelle, 2021). One way of modeling the cognitive processes underlying test performance is by constructing a Q-matrix, which is essentially about summarizing the attributes explaining test-takers'…

Despite the critical role of emotions in multicultural teacher education, no attempt has been made to develop an instrument including affect as a dimension in measuring cultural competence for preservice teachers. To bridge this gap, the present three-study research used three distinct samples of 456 preservice teachers to develop and estimate the…

In our everyday life, we often need to anticipate the potential occurrence of events and their consequences. In this context, the way we represent contingencies can determine our ability to adapt to the environment. However, it is not clear how agents encode and organize available knowledge about the future to react to possible states of the…

Much of our real-life decision making is bounded by uncertain information, limitations in cognitive resources, and a lack of time to allocate to the decision process. It is thought that humans overcome these limitations through "satisficing," fast but "good-enough" heuristic decision making that prioritizes some sources of…

Inferences about student knowledge, skills, and attributes based on digital activity still largely come from whether students ultimately get a correct result or not. However, the ability to collect activity stream data as individuals interact with digital environments provides information about students' processes as they progress through learning…