Teachers' use of everyday cognitive heuristics can lead to biases in information processing and, thus, to unfair assessments of student characteristics. This problem can be addressed by a core aspect of research-based learning, i.e., by making use of principles and methods of empirical research in order to systematically collect information.…

An iterative unpacking strategy consists of sequencing empirically-based theoretical developments so that at each step of theorizing one theory serves as an overarching conceptual framework, in which another theory, either existing or emerging, is embedded in order to elaborate on the chosen element(s) of the overarching theory. The strategy is…

This theoretical paper discusses some conceptual and methodological obstacles that one encounters when analyzing the contextual determination of thinking in psychology. First, we comment upon the various representations of the "cognitive" individual that have been formed over the years--from the epistemic subject to the psychological subject, and…

The assumption that people exert considerable cognitive effort in processing incoming information has been complemented in recent years by the idea that people often perform tasks and make decisions after only minimal information processing. Although both the heuristic and systematic conceptualizations of information processing share the…

A technique for studying how parents think, make decisions, and solve childrearing problems, Computer-Presented Social Interactions (CPSI), is described. Two studies involving CPSI are presented. The first study concerns a common parental cognitive task: causal analysis of an undesired behavior. The task was to diagnose the cause of non-contingent…