Mathematics is an essential subject in schools, helping develop cognitive skills such as critical analysis, logical reasoning, and problem-solving. However, academic achievement in mathematics often declines, with some students having difficulty understanding mathematical ideas. Many factors influence mathematics achievement, including students'…

Extensive evidence and theory suggest that the development of motor skills during infancy and early childhood initiates a "developmental cascade" for cognitive abilities, such as reading and math. Motor skills are closely connected with the development of spatial cognition, an ability that supports deductive reasoning. Despite the…

Visuospatial thinking is considered crucial for understanding of three-dimensional spatial concepts in STEM disciplines. Despite their importance, little is known about the underlying cognitive processing required to spatially reason and the varied strategies students may employ to solve visuospatial problems. This study seeks to identify and…

Promoting students' ability to engage in discipline-specific practices is a central goal of chemistry education. Yet if instruction is to meaningfully foster such ability, we must first understand students' reasoning during these practices. By characterizing constraints on chemistry students' reasoning, we can design instruction that targets this…

Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is defined by persistent difficulties with language, but a growing body of evidence suggests that it is also associated with domain-general and nonverbal information-processing deficits. However, the interconnections between cognitive functions, both nonverbal and language related, are still unclear.…

First-year architecture students are expected to utilise visuospatial abilities to generate/construct, retain, rotate and manipulate space mentally and physically through physical and digital representations. This study of 57 female and 23 male participants was conducted to investigate first-year architecture students' visuospatial abilities by…

Connection-making among multiple representations is a crucial but difficult competence in STEM learning. Prior research has focused on one type of learning process involved in connection-making: sense-making processes leading to conceptual understanding of connections. Yet, other research suggests that a second type of learning process is…

Standardized, well-established paper-and-pencil tests, which measure spatial abilities or which measure reasoning abilities, have long been found to be predictive of success in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Instructors can use these tests for prediction of success and to inform instruction. A comparative…

Background: Outcomes of static tests provide an indication of what children have learned in the past, up to the moment of testing, and can therefore underestimate the cognitive abilities of atypically developing children, such as children with language difficulties. In contrast, dynamic tests aim to examine children's potential for learning. The…

Connection-making among multiple representations is a crucial but difficult competence in STEM learning. Prior research has focused on one type of learning process involved in connection-making: sense-making processes leading to conceptual understanding of connections. Yet, other research suggests that a second type of learning process is…

It is usually accepted that the binding of what, where, and when is a central component of young children's and animals' nonconceptual episodic abilities. We argue that additionally binding self-in-past (what-where-when-"who") adds a crucial conceptual requirement, and we ask when it becomes possible and what its cognitive correlates…

This literature review explores visualisation within the context of learning in design, engineering and technology education. The investigation first defines visualisation, providing examples of activities that utilise visualisation skills within an applied field. Then exploration of the mental mechanisms of visualisation used to engage with those…

Parents and teachers at seven elementary schools were surveyed to determine their opinions of the importance of Gardner's eight different ways of thinking and learning. Parent and teacher opinions were highest in the four areas of logical-mathematical, intrapersonal, linguistic and interpersonal, which were all rated very important. Next in…

The present study sought to design calculus tasks to determine students' preference for visual or analytic processing as well as examine the role of preferred mode of processing in calculus performance and its relationship to spatial ability and verbal-logical reasoning ability. Data were collected from 150 high school students who were enrolled…

The purpose of this study was to determine the constructs measured by the WISC-IV and the consistency of measurement across large normative and clinical samples. Competing higher order four- and five-factor models were analyzed using the WISC-IV normative sample and clinical subjects. The four-factor solution is the model published with the test…