Preschool children can navigate by simple geometric maps of the environment, but the nature of the geometric relations they use in map reading remains unclear. Here, children were tested specifically on their sensitivity to angle. Forty-eight children (age 47:15-53:30 months) were presented with fragments of geometric maps, in which angle sections…

There is considerable interest in the cultivation of student graphic literacy among educators and researchers, especially in the sciences. Previous research, however, has shown that many students manifest difficulties in using diagrammatic representations. One explanation that has been proposed to account for these difficulties is that certain…

Successful analogical reasoning requires an analogue in a source domain to have high degrees of structural and surface similarity with a learning task in a target domain. It also requires learners to have sufficient source- and target-domain knowledge. We review the literature and speculate that "less" might create "more"; in…

A study had been conducted in qualitative design employing phenomenology approach to examine the cognitive basis and the semantic structure of phenomena based reasoning of lower secondary school students in Ambon. The data of the study were collected by using a test. Phenomena stimulus of science was given to the informants in the form of…

This mixed-methods study analyzed adolescents' evaluation of the trustworthiness of different kinds of evidence and their reasons for why they trusted (or did not trust) them. Specifically, we analyzed adolescents' rankings of seven kinds of evidence in the abstract and in the context of a settled historical event (school desegregation) and…

Geometry is one of the branches of mathematics that we use in many areas of our daily life, perhaps without noticing. For this reason, individuals are geometric thinkers not only in geometry classes; but also in different areas of life. In that case, it is necessary for the individual to acquire geometric habits of mind. The purpose of this study…

Serious video games (SVGs) are increasingly used as supplementary teaching tools for mathematics education. Several studies report their positive impact on student learning. However, these impacts are variable, and the success of the tools cannot be generalized or extended to all settings or disciplines without an in-depth look at the games…

This chapter uses moral psychology to illustrate why exemplar methods are essential for building a valid, complete understanding of key domains of human development. Social psychological, economic, and biological-evolutionary paradigms for studying morality rely on samples drawn from the general population. This research reveals a bleak picture of…

Suor et al. (2017) present a compelling new evolutionary framework that offers an alternative interpretation of the well-established findings of cognitive deficits in children raised in harsh early environments. They argue that such findings do not convey a complete picture of those children's cognitive development, because children's cognition…

This study examined the effects of a 12-week physical activity intervention on the motor skill proficiency and executive function of 22 boys (aged 9.08 ± 1.75 years) with autism spectrum disorder. In Phase I of the 12 weeks, 11 boys with autism spectrum disorder (Group A) received the intervention, whereas the other 11 boys with autism spectrum…

Student engagement in learning science is both a desirable goal and a long-standing teacher challenge. Moving beyond engagement understood as transient topic interest, we argue that cognitive engagement entails sustained interaction in the processes of how knowledge claims are generated, judged, and shared in this subject. In this paper, we…

The moral reasoning development of college freshmen was investigated over the course of a semester. Participants were tested at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester and were either in a course that required active engagement in critical thinking (e.g. perspective-taking, reflection) about social and political issues or in a…

Using meta-analytic techniques, we examined systematically the evidence linking friendship to academically related outcomes, asking: To what extent is friendship related to academic performance and to academically related cognitive skills? Based on 22 studies that yielded 81 effect sizes and 28 independent samples, we examined relations between…

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…

Research indicates that understanding levels of abstraction (LOA) and being able to move between the levels is essential to programming success. For K-5 contexts we rename the LOA levels: problem, design, code and running the code. In our qualitative exploratory study, we interviewed five K-5 teachers on their uses of LOA, particularly the design…