Over the past 10 to 15 years the twin fields of neuroscience and cognitive psychology have exploded. Through a number of new imaging technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans, scientists have been able to look into the living brain in ways never before possible. What they have…

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of…

Much of what gets in the way of learning in elementary, middle, and high schools has to do with lessons missed, skills undeveloped, and experiences in the world that have shaped the early development of the brain. Neuroscience tells people that early experience, even experience in the womb, is the soil in which the young brain grows and that early…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the Bereiter's educational notion and its applicability, conceptually and critically. The method of research was empirical applicability by means of which the essential components of the notion were formulated, criticized and verified, to see if it is applicable. In the study, primarily Bereiter's…

Educational neuroscience promises to incorporate emerging insights from neuroscience into education, and is an exiting renovation of cognitive science in education. But unlike cognitive neuroscience--which aims to explain how the mind is embodied--educational neuroscience necessarily incorporates values that reflect the kind of citizen and the…

Among education researchers, there is a growing consensus that college and career readiness depends on not just academic knowledge and skills but on a wide range of social and developmental competencies, as well--such as the ability to monitor one's own learning, persist at challenging tasks, solve complex problems, set realistic goals, and…

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of…

Observed actions are covertly and involuntarily simulated within the observer's motor system. It has been argued that simulation is involved in processing abstract, gestural paintings, as the artist's movements can be simulated by observing static brushstrokes. Though this argument is grounded in theory, empirical research has yet to examine the…

Despite years of research on effective teaching suggesting that learners must engage actively in the process and that teachers should vary their instructional strategies, direct instruction using lecture continues to dominate in America's college classrooms. The author reviews selected studies focusing on effective instructional practices and…

Historically, cognitive researchers have largely ignored the domain of sport in their quest to understand how the mind works. This neglect is due, in part, to the limitations of the information processing paradigm that dominated cognitive psychology in its formative years. With the emergence of the embodiment approach to cognition, however, sport…

The article provides a review of recent research on human performance on the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and related combinatorial optimization problems. We discuss what combinatorial optimization problems are, why they are important, and why they may be of interest to cognitive scientists. We next describe the main characteristics of human…

Drawing from sources in gesture studies, cognitive science, the anthropology of religion and art/architecture history, this article explores cultural, bodily and cosmological resonances carried (unintentionally) by mathematical graphs on Cartesian coordinates. Concepts of asymmetric bodily spaces, grids, orthogonality, mapping and sacred spaces…

Over the past ten years several learning environments based on novel interaction modalities have been developed. Within this field, Full-body Interaction Learning Environments open promising possibilities given their capacity to involve the users at different levels, such as sensorimotor experience, cognitive aspects and affective factors.…

Recent work has given rise to the view that reward-based decision making is governed by two key controllers: a habit system, which stores stimulus-response associations shaped by past reward, and a goal-oriented system that selects actions based on their anticipated outcomes. The current literature provides a rich body of computational theory…

I argue that creating "interfaces" between the humanities and cognitive sciences would be intellectually stimulating for both groups. More specifically for the humanities: they might gain challenging and rewarding avenues of inquiry, attract more funding, and advance their position in the 21st-century universities and among the general public, if…