Cosmology presents students with ideas that stimulate their curiosity and brings together various concepts from STEM that call on a variety of reasoning types across multiple representational modes, involving subtleties of spacetime relations, a variety of models and evidence requiring multiple lines of high precision observations. This study…

The labels used to describe patterns and relations can influence children's relational reasoning. In this study, 62 preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 4.4 years) solved and described eight pattern abstraction problems (i.e., recreated the relation in a model pattern using novel materials). Some children were exposed to concrete labels (e.g.,…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate pre-service teachers' perceptions of the criteria used to classify animals. In this regard, it was also aimed at exploring conceptual structures and reasoning patterns shaping the pre-service teachers' perceptions. The participants of the present study were 324 pre-service teachers attending science…

We examined whether inductive reasoning development is better characterized by accounts assuming an early category bias versus an early perceptual bias. We trained 264 children aged 3 to 9 years to categorize novel insects using a rule that directly pitted category membership against appearance. This was followed by an induction task with…

Categorization in well-known natural concepts is studied using a special version of the Varying Abstraction Framework (Vanpaemel, W., & Storms, G. (2006). A varying abstraction framework for categorization. Manuscript submitted for publication; Vanpaemel, W., Storms, G., & Ons, B. (2005). A varying abstraction model for categorization. In B. Bara,…

We applied a mixed-method research design to investigate the patterns of reasoning used by novice undergraduate chemistry students to classify chemical substances as elements, compounds, or mixtures based on their particulate representations. We were interested in the identification of the representational features that students use to build a…

Evaluation of classification skills of 88 unimpaired children (grades K, 2, 4, and 6) were evaluated using the Iconic-Symbolic test (IS) of the Muma Assessment Program and follow-up interviews. Results found little relationship between the rationales the children reported using and the classification criteria presumed by the IS procedure. (DB)

Author notes that semantics, originally designed as non-Aristotelian discipline, has become anti-Aristotelian. He outlines six significant areas in which almost no difference can be found between Greek philosopher's ideas and those of modern semanticists; for example: words are symbols, not things; meanings lie within persons, not words. (PD)

This paper examines the nature of concepts and conceptual processes and the manner of their formation. It argues that a process of successive abstraction and systematization is central to the evolution of conceptual structures. Classificatory processes are discussed and three levels of abstraction outlined. (Author/SJL)

Several observations about the way humans conceive of attributes, changes, and covariation of stimuli are presented as indications for the existence of a conceptual hierarchy of dimensions in which time dominates space, and space dominates every other dimension. (Author)

A unit on animals was taught to 64 preschool children (44 in an experimental group and 20 in a control group). Children in the experimental group were taught nine major concepts over four levels of abstraction (designated as superordinate, intermediate, subordinate, or particular levels). Each concept was presented by means of an advance organizer…

The task consisted of categorizing a set of slides depicting concepts of freedom, nonfreedom, justice, and nonjustice. The results of the analysis indicated that abstract thinkers performed significantly better than did concrete thinkers and that performance increased as a function of grade level. (Author/BJG)

The purposes of this experiment were: (1) to examine the development of categorical representations by comparing the performance of children of various ages to adults, and (2) to compare the internal representations of basic level and superordinate categories. Subjects were 48 children (in second, fourth and sixth grades) and 16 adults. The…

Examines the differences between concrete and abstract concepts and their implications for instructional design and teaching. How specific concepts are stored in and retrieved from memory is described, analogies are discussed as an instructional tool in abstract concept learning, and a possible instructional strategy for teaching abstract concepts…

This paper examines the cognitive process of concept development in preschool children, based on recent psychological research. Rather than attempting an exhaustive review of the more than 7000 articles written on children's concepts of categories, the paper highlights and illustrates four key themes that emerge from recent research: first,…