Identifying patterns in the world requires noticing not only unusual occurrences, but also unusual absences. We examined how people learn from absences, manipulating the extent to which an absence is expected. People can make two types of inferences from the absence of an event: either the event is possible but has not yet occurred, or the event…

Fifth graders interpreted the book "Doll Bones" by Holly Black through visual representations from the beginning to the end of the book. Each visual representation was analyzed to determine how students responded. Most frequently, they moved to inferential ways of understanding. Students often visually interpreted emotional plot elements…

Statistical inference simply means to draw a conclusion based on information that comes from data. Error bars are the most commonly used tool for data analysis and inference in chemical engineering data studies. This work demonstrates, using common types of data collection studies, the importance of specifying the statistical model for sound…

A tension has been identified between the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning, and it is generally agreed that this tension has still not been adequately resolved. In this paper, we offer an alternative to the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning: the metaphor of mastering. Our claim is that the mastering metaphor,…

One of the major debates concerning the nature of inferential reasoning is between counterexample-based strategies such as mental model theory and statistical strategies underlying probabilistic models. The dual-strategy model, proposed by Verschueren, Schaeken, & d'Ydewalle (2005a, 2005b), which suggests that people might have access to both…

The combined usage of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and process tracing (PT) in set-theoretic multi-method research (MMR) holds great potential for reaching valid inferences. Established views of case selection after QCA hold that studying negative cases provides lessons about the causes of an outcome in a limited set of circumstances. In…

This article is a critical commentary on inferentialism in mathematics education. In the first part, I comment on some of the major shortcomings that inferentialists see in the theoretical underpinnings of representationalist, empiricist, and socioconstructivist mathematics education theories. I discuss in particular the criticism that…

Ontologies are emerging as best representation techniques for knowledge based context domains. The continuing need for interoperation, collaboration and effective information retrieval has lead to the creation of semantic web with the help of tools and reasoners which manages personalized information. The future of semantic web lies in an ontology…

The number of articles showing dissatisfaction with the null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) framework has been progressively increasing over the years. Alternatives to NHST have been proposed and the Bayesian approach seems to have achieved the highest amount of visibility. In this last part of the special issue, a few alternative…

While the use of inferential statistics is a nearly universal practice in the social sciences, there are instances where its application is unnecessary and potentially misleading. This is true for a portion of research using administrative data in educational research in the United States. Surveying all research articles using administrative data…

The analysis of variance (ANOVA) F test is a commonly used method to test the mean equality among two or more populations. A critical assumption of ANOVA is homogeneity of variance (HOV), that is, the compared groups have equal variances. Although it is encouraged to test HOV as part of the regular ANOVA procedure, the efficacy of the initial HOV…

The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those…

Although preschoolers have strong expectations about the pedagogical nature of pointing gestures (Csibra & Gergely, 2006), more recent work has shown that preschoolers prefer to use informants' spoken language, not their pointing gestures, to make judgments about their reliability (Palmquist & Jaswal, 2015). Here, we explored children's…

Big data analytics are prevalent in fields like business, engineering, public health, and the physical sciences, but social scientists are slower than their peers in other fields in adopting this new methodology. One major reason for this is that traditional statistical procedures are typically not suitable for the analysis of large and complex…

Learners' ability to infer unknown words' meanings (lexical inferencing) plays a key role in word knowledge development for second language (L2) learners. It has recently been acknowledged that learners' sensitivity to word-internal structures (morphological awareness) makes an important contribution to L2 lexical inferencing. However, it remains…