Analogical reasoning is a core facet of higher cognition in humans. Creating analogies as we navigate the environment helps us learn. Analogies involve reframing novel encounters using knowledge of familiar, relationally similar contexts stored in memory. When an analogy links a novel encounter with a familiar context, it can aid in problem…

Event-related potentials are used to test the hypothesis that an intuitive misconception persists in the mind even after the acquisition of scientific knowledge. We investigated the temporal dynamics of neural mechanisms in solving a scientific problem involving a common misconception. It showed that the increased P2 component was elicited by the…

Relational reasoning, the ability to detect meaningful patterns, matures through adolescence. The unique contributions of verbal analogical and nonverbal matrix relational reasoning to science and maths are not well understood. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected during science and maths problem-solving, and participants…

Differences exist between engineering and liberal arts students because of their educational backgrounds. Therefore, they solve problems differently. This study examined the brain activation of these two groups of students when they responded to 12 questions of verbal, numerical, or spatial intelligence. A total of 25 engineering and 25 liberal…

In this study, it was aimed to investigate the primary mathematics teacher candidates' perceptions about the equal sign within the scope of neuroscience studies. To reveal their perceptions about the equal sign, three types of addition operations were asked to the participants: a+b=[], []=a+b, a+b=[]+c. Their brain waves were recorded by EEG…

As clinical reasoning is a fundamental competence of physicians for good clinical practices, medical academics have endeavored to teach reasoning skills to undergraduate students. However, our current understanding of student-level clinical reasoning is limited, mainly because of the lack of evaluation tools for this internal cognitive process.…

The general purpose of the study was to promote the research on effects of physical activity on mathematical performance and brain functions, which is of particular interest regarding children's education as well as for all adults. Several studies have identified an influence of cycling on cognitive processes and brain activity. In the present…

Students start to memorize arithmetic facts from early elementary school mathematics activities. Their fluency or lack of fluency with these facts could affect their efforts as they carry out mental calculations as adults. This study investigated participants' levels of brain activation and possible reasons for these levels as they solved…

In the present study, the authors focused on the use of electroencephalography (EEG) data about cognitive workload and sustained attention to predict math problem solving outcomes. EEG data were recorded as students solved a series of easy and difficult math problems. Sequences of attention and cognitive workload estimates derived from the EEG…

In a companion study, eye-movement analyses in the Tower of London task (TOL) revealed independent indicators of functionally separable cognitive processes during problem solving, with processes of building up an internal representation of the problem preceding actual planning processes. These results imply that processes of internalization and…

In spite of having deficits in various areas of social cognition, especially in mindreading, Machiavellian individuals are typically very successful in different tasks, including solving social dilemmas. We assume that a profound examination of neural structures associated with decision-making processes is needed to learn more about…

When subjects are given the balls-and-boxes problem-solving task (Kotovsky & Simon, 1990), they move rapidly towards the goal after an extended exploratory phase, despite having no awareness of how to solve the task. We investigated possible non-conscious learning mechanisms by giving subjects three runs of the task while recording ERPs. Subjects…

Individuals scoring high in fluid intelligence tasks generally perform very efficiently in problem solving tasks and analogical reasoning tasks presumably because they are able to select the task-relevant information very quickly and focus on a limited set of task-relevant cognitive operations. Moreover, individuals with high fluid intelligence…

Subjects performed a rapid feeling-of-knowing task developed by (Reder, L. M., & Ritter, F. (1992). "What determines initial feeling of knowing? Familiarity with question terms, not with the answer." "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," 18, 435-451), while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to identify…

fMRI was used to examine the differential effect of two problem-solving strategies. Participants were trained to use both a pictorial/spatial and a symbolic/algebraic strategy to solve word problems. While these two strategies activated similar cortical regions, a number of differences were noted in the level of activation. These differences…