Resources theory assumes that resource activation is context sensitive, and that an important dimension of context is the question students are answering. The context sensitivity of resource activation has been demonstrated empirically by case studies that show students using different resources to answer questions that are similar in focus. In…

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students--physics problem solving--to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module…

With online education comes large amounts of data that can reveal in ways able to be examined quantitatively only sparingly in the past, the physics problem-solving profiles of students. This project uses fundamental research to analyze physics problem-solving behavior of students enrolled in the Massive Open Online Course 8.MReVx offered on the…

A critical component of scientific reasoning is the consideration of alternative explanations. Recognizing that decades of cognitive psychology research have demonstrated that relative cognitive accessibility, or "what comes to mind," strongly affects how people reason in a given context, we articulate a simple "cognitive…

The Dirac delta function is a standard mathematical tool that appears repeatedly in the undergraduate physics curriculum in multiple topical areas including electrostatics, and quantum mechanics. While Dirac delta functions are often introduced in order to simplify a problem mathematically, students still struggle to manipulate and interpret them.…

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (Sweller 1988, 1998, 2010) provides us a guiding framework for designing instructional materials. CLT differentiates three subtypes of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The three cognitive loads are theorized based on the number of simultaneously processed elements in working memory.…

The present study was conducted to examine the relationship between expertise in movement correction and rate of movement reprogramming within limited time periods, and to clarify the specific cognitive processes regarding superior reprogramming ability in experts. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in baseball experts (n = 7) and…

Although the use of brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is increasingly common in educational research, only a few studies regarding science learning have so far taken advantage of this technology. This paper aims to facilitate the design and implementation of brain imaging studies relating to science…

It has been suggested that human behavior in general and cognitive performance in particular emerge from coordination between multiple temporal scales. In this article, we provide quantitative support for such a theory of interaction-dominant dynamics in human cognition by using wavelet-based multifractal analysis and accompanying multiplicative…

While many researchers in science education have argued that students' epistemological understanding of models and of modelling processes would influence their cognitive processing on a modelling task, there has been little direct evidence for such an effect. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relation between students' epistemological…

The term "conceptual simulation" refers to a type of everyday reasoning strategy commonly called "what if" reasoning. It has been suggested in a number of contexts that this type of reasoning plays an important role in scientific discovery; however, little "direct" evidence exists to support this claim. This article proposes that conceptual…

This research introduces a new naive physics belief, the Galileo bias, whereby people ignore air resistance and falsely believe that all objects fall at the same rate. Survey results revealed that this bias is held by many and is surprisingly strongest for those with formal physics instruction. In 2 experiments, 98 participants dropped ball pairs…

When preschoolers overcome persistent error, subsequent patterns of correct choices may identify how the error had been overcome. Children who no longer misrepresented a ball rolling down a bent tube as though it could only fall vertically, were asked sometimes to approach and sometimes to avoid where the ball landed. All children showed requisite…

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…

Describes a study of the mental processes college students use in thinking about speed. Piagetian-type tasks dealing with speed, time, and distance were used in an individual interview format. Males outperformed females on tasks relating to speed, but not on the other tasks. (TW)