Background: Prior research with adults and children suggests that inhibitory control may have a role to play in learning counterintuitive fractions and decimals that are inconsistent with whole number knowledge. However, there is little research to date with primary school-aged children at the early stages of fraction and decimal instruction that…

In biology education research, it has been common to model cognition in terms of relatively stable knowledge structures (e.g., mental models, alternative frameworks, deeply held misconceptions). For example, John D. Coley and Kimberley D. Tanner recently proposed that many student difficulties in biology stem from underlying cognitive frameworks…

Several studies have demonstrated that affective states influence the number of associations formed between remotely related concepts. Someone in a neutral or negative affective state might draw the association between "cold" and "hot", whereas someone in a positive affective state might spontaneously form the more distant association between…

Thoughtful implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010) presents an opportunity for increased emphasis on the development of mathematical understanding among students. Granted, ascertaining the mathematical understanding of an individual student is highly complex work and often exceedingly difficult.…

Recent studies show that a new strategy called differential-associative processing is effective for learning related concepts; however, our knowledge about differential-associative processing is still limited. Therefore the goals of the present study are to assess the duration of knowledge that is acquired from using differential-associative…

In daily activities, humans must attend and respond to a range of important items and inhibit and not respond to unimportant distractions. Our current understanding of these processes is largely based on perceptually simple stimuli. This study investigates the interaction of conceptual-semantic categorization and inhibitory processing using Event…

Research supported by Grant No. GB-6839 from the National Science Foundation.

This study used a series of analogy problems to test children's associative and conceptual abilities and showed that children with stronger associative abilities do not rely excessively on associative strategies. (MM)

The author describes ways to test for relationships between student achievement and higher cognitive questions asked by the teacher. He details methods for evaluating student responses in terms of answer quality and presents some of his own preliminary research on student response length. Higher cognitive questions, he hypothesizes, elicit and…

This paper describes the mechanism of conceptual development by characterizing it as a cartooning process, which is a neurological mechanism which records a perceptual kind of sketch of the world in our brains. Its unique character, its biological basis, and its consequences for education are discussed. (Author/KC)

Some young children presented with unidimensional and nonverbal conservation tasks were able to give a conservation response if they could answer with a picture instead of orally. (Editor)

Study failed to yield evidence that performance in a systematic-concept task can be significantly facilitated, in comparison with rote-task performance, if more time is allowed for the operation of what Metzger has called systematic concept formation. (Authors)

Author believes that more general semanticists today have lost touch with the possibilities Korzybski opened to human beings, primarily that of liberating the self" from predetermined concepts and conditioned responses which hold mankind back from total freedom and fulfillment. Characterizing most semanticists as cerebral computers sans…