This study aims to understand the dynamics and impact of emotional presence in a collaborative learning environment and its effects on the learning process and outcomes. Emotional presence, defined as the experience of emotion arising from cognitive appraisals in learner-environment interactions, encompasses four dimensions: interest-curiosity,…

Children are active learners: they learn not only from the information people offer and the evidence they happen to observe, but by actively seeking information. However, children's information search strategies are typically less efficient than those of adults. In two studies, we isolate potential sources of developmental change in how children…

Research into Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) in Higher Education has largely focused on the positive effects of PASS on student motivation, retention and engagement. Less attention has been given to the cognitive, affective and professional development of the PASS Student Mentors through their engagement with students and academic staff. At…

Previous research has demonstrated that visual properties of objects can affect shape-based categorization in a novel-name extension task; however, we still do not know how a relationship between visual properties of objects affects judgments in a novel-name extension task. We examined effects of increased visual similarity among the target and…

Based on their scores on a proficiency test, the 894 participants in this study were grouped into three experimental groups (EG) and three control groups (CG). They attempted an argumentative writing task and the Cornell Critical Thinking Test, Form Z (CCTT-Form Z) as the pre-test. While CG participants received no treatment or placebo, EG…

We investigate the hypothesis that our conceptual systems provide two formally distinct ways of representing categories by investigating the manner in which lexical nominals (e.g., "tree," "picnic table") and phrasal nominals (e.g., "black bird," "birds that like rice") are interpreted. Four experiments found that lexical nominals may be mapped…

The effects of associative strength and gist relations on rates of children's and adults' true and false memories were examined in three experiments. Children aged 5-11 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott false memory task using DRM and category lists in two experiments and in the third, children…

In the literature, learners' cognitive development is mainly discussed with respect to changes in learners' content-dependent knowledge (conceptual change or growth). Additional dimensions of time and complexity may also be taken into account to describe cognitive processes in at least three dimensions. We discuss these three dimensions of…