Light is used ubiquitously across science and engineering to explore, characterise, understand matter, and catalyse processes. Relative to its utility in science and engineering, very little research has been conducted on how students develop an understanding of light-matter interactions, especially at the quantum level, which is necessary to…

Language is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, demanding explanation in a theory of human cognition. However, language presents unique practical challenges for quantitative empirical research, making many linguistic theories difficult to test at naturalistic scales. Artificial neural network language models (LMs) provide a new tool for studying…

This study examined middle and secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge structures, informal inferential reasoning (IIR), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for statistics. Using task-based clinical interviews (Goldin, 1997) and cross-case analysis (Creswell, 2013), a stratified purposeful sample (Patton, 2002) of nine teachers responded to…

Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) is an alternative assessment which can give a clear picture of pupils' learning process and cognitive structures to education stakeholders so that appropriate instructional strategies can be designed to tailored pupils' needs. Coincide with this function, the Ordered Multiple-Choice (OMC) items were…

Older interlocutors are more likely than younger ones to make pragmatic inferences, that is, inferences that go beyond the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence. Here we ask whether pragmatic development is associated with increased activity in brain structures associated with inference-making or in those associated with Theory of Mind. We…

The question of the relationship between gesture production and mental models was explored in three experiments focusing on inference making when learning from reading a scientific text. Participants engaged in one-on-one interviews after reading an illustrated tutorial on the human circulatory system. Participants gestured more frequently when…

A study had been conducted in qualitative design employing phenomenology approach to examine the cognitive basis and the semantic structure of phenomena based reasoning of lower secondary school students in Ambon. The data of the study were collected by using a test. Phenomena stimulus of science was given to the informants in the form of…

Does making an inference lead to better learning than being instructed directly? Two experiments evaluated preschoolers' ability to learn new words, comparing their memory for words learned via inference or instruction. On Inference trials, one familiar and one novel object was presented and children were asked to "Point at the [object name (i.e.,…

Past research has found that the judged likelihood of properties of modified nouns (baby ducks have webbed feet) is reduced relative to unmodified nouns (ducks have webbed feet). Experiments 1-3 replicate the modification effect and demonstrate that this effect is obtained when participants make dichotomous decisions about the truth of such…

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability of an individual to make inferences about what others may be thinking or feeling and to predict what they may do in a given situation based on those inferences. Discussions of ToM focus almost exclusively on inferred cognitive structures and processes and shed little light on the actual behaviors…

This paper explores the role of diagrams and text in middle school students' understanding and visualisation of human body systems. We develop a common framework based on structure and function to assess students' responses across diagram and verbal modes. Visualisation is defined in terms of understanding transformations on structure and relating…

People perceive and conceive of activity in terms of discrete events. Here the authors propose a theory according to which the perception of boundaries between events arises from ongoing perceptual processing and regulates attention and memory. Perceptual systems continuously make predictions about what will happen next. When transient errors in…

Four experiments studied 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of inferential reasoning as a source of knowledge. To assess understanding that knowledge of relevant premises leads to knowledge of the conclusion, children had to judge the knowledge of another person, who was presented to the child as being aware of two premises. (Author/BN)

Three studies focused on: (1) the definition of structure in a specific domain of knowledge; and (2) the relationship between the ways in which knowledge is structured and the ways in which it is used. Evidence suggested that the knowledge of expert children is structured hierarchically into well-defined families and family-groups. (RH)

In this study a distinction is made between routine, semiroutine, and nonroutine problems based on the problem solver's knowledge. Routine problems are solved by applying a known procedure, semiroutine problems require planning that uses functional knowledge, and nonroutine problems require generation of new functional knowledge. Nonroutine…