Researchers have regarded inductive reasoning as one of the seven primary mental abilities that account for human intelligent behaviours. Researchers have also shown that inductive reasoning ability is one of the best predictors for academic performance. Modelling of inductive reasoning is therefore an important issue for providing adaptivity in…

The author examined the effectiveness of training in symbolic logic for improving students' deductive reasoning. A total of 116 undergraduate students (approximately equal numbers of men and women) enrolled in 1st-year university philosophy courses in symbolic logic participated in 2 studies. In both studies, students completed booklets of…

The purposes of this study were: to compare students' performance on conceptual and algorithmic chemistry problems; to investigate the relationships between learning orientation, formal reasoning, and mental capacity and students' performance on conceptual and algorithmic problems; and to investigate interactions among learning orientation, formal…

We examined the reasoning of children and adolescents in the island of Macao regarding the bases of legitimate authority across social contexts. We asked 101 children in 3rd, 5th, and 7th grades to evaluate the authority of persons issuing commands to children in two events. In one, persons with varying combinations of authority attributes issue a…

In this paper we analyze excerpts of "Paradoxes of the Infinite", the posthumous work of Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), in order to show that Georg Cantor's (1845-1918) approach to the problem of defining actual mathematical infinity is not the most natural. In fact, Bolzano's approach to the paradoxes of infinity is more intuitive, while remaining…

Haiku--the short, often nature-oriented poetry form--is generally intended to engage the reader in a single aesthetic moment. Every word, every syllable, counts, resulting in the reader being drawn quickly and intensely into the poet's unique experience. While legal analysis surely differs from haiku, in both its form and its substance, students…

Previous research (e.g. "Cognition" 64 (1997) 73) suggests that the privileged level for inductive inference in a folk biological conceptual hierarchy does not correspond to the ''basic'' level (i.e. the level at which concepts are both informative and distinct). To further explore inductive inference within conceptual hierarchies, we examine…

Literature suggests that the type of context wherein a task is placed relates to students' performance and solution strategies. In the particular domain of logical thinking, there is the belief that students have less difficulty reasoning in verbal than in logically equivalent symbolic tasks. Thus far, this belief has remained relatively…

In this paper, we demonstrate nondeclarative sequence learning in mice using an animal analog of the human serial reaction time task (SRT) that uses a within-group comparison of behavior in response to a repeating sequence versus a random sequence. Ten female B6CBA mice performed eleven 96-trial sessions containing 24 repetitions of a 4-trial…

The field of youth development is based on a long tradition of youth work practice, a body of research on adolescent development, an increasing understanding of developmental processes, and work in related applied fields like education and child care. Whereas multiple lists have emerged describing what comprises or is needed for youth development,…

Eight experiments were conducted to examine 3- and 3.5-month-old infants' responses to occlusion events. The results revealed two developments, one in infants' knowledge of when objects should and should not be occluded and the other in infants' ability to posit additional objects to make sense of events that would otherwise violate their…

We have concluded that teaching undergraduate students to use spreadsheet software to analyze, interpret, and communicate spreadsheet data through a graph is an information technology exercise in whole brain thinking. In investigating why our students have difficulty constructing proper graphs, we have discovered that graphing requires two…

This is a reply to Mark C. Schug and Richard D. Western's article "The Homeless Social Studies Teacher: How Muzak Progressivism Has Harmed Social Studies Education." The Schug and Western article breaks down into three distinct sections: (1) a quasi-satirical analogy of teaching to tax accounting; (2) a description of the problems of progressive…

In this paper, the author aims to offer an elaboration of simple, yet powerful, mathematical patterns through mathematical games. Mathematical games may serve as colorful instructional tools for teachers and textbooks, and may raise students' motivation and intuition. Patterns are fundamental in mathematics and computer science. In the case of…

The capability approach advocates that interpersonal comparisons be made in the space of functionings and capabilities. However, Amartya Sen has not specified which capabilities should be selected as the relevant ones. This has provoked two types of criticism. The stronger critique is Martha Nussbaum's claim that Sen should endorse one specific…