The debate defining thinking, critical thinking, and higher-level thinking is expansive. Geersteen (2003) provides an excellent review of this literature and suggests that one way to distinguish between lower- and higher-level thinking is based on the level of abstraction. In this article, the authors focus on analysis and synthesis or…

The development of expertise is seen as a crucial element in higher education, but the nature of expertise has been clouded by assumptions of the centrality of intuition and tacit knowledge. In this paper the authors contend that much knowledge that has been described as tacit can be surfaced for examination through the application of concept…

E. Brandstatter, G. Gigerenzer, and R. Hertwig (2006) showed that the priority heuristic matches or outperforms modifications of expected utility theory in predicting choice in 4 diverse problem sets. M. H. Birnbaum (2008) argued that sets exist in which the opposite is true. The authors agree--but stress that all choice strategies have regions of…

We investigate the interplay between mathematics and physics resources in intermediate mechanics students. In the mechanics course, the selection and application of coordinate systems is a consistent thread. At the University of Maine, students often start the course with a strong preference to use Cartesian coordinates, in accordance with their…

Five variables (strategy use, fluency, accuracy, spatial ability and confidence) that have been linked to gender differences in mathematics were compared as predictors of mathematics competency. Two hundred and forty-one second grade students from seven schools in Northeast Georgia participated in the study. In fall of the second grade, children…

Many people believe that mathematics provides a model of what thinking is, or should be. They imagine that mathematical thinking always proceeds in a logically rigorous, step-by-step fashion from one truth to another, like a formal proof or a computer program. In fact, insights in mathematics -- whether they are the scholar's breakthroughs or the…

Fostering pupils' competencies in inventive thinking and problem-solving has remained a rather unresolved issue in traditional schooling, mainly because many people regard creative thinking as a God-given ability, something an individual either possesses or does not possess, but can only be slightly learned or improved. The current study is aimed…

Based on a rather simple thesis that we can learn from our mistakes, Karl Popper developed a falsificationist epistemology in which knowledge grows through falsifying, or criticizing, our theories. According to him, knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, progresses through conjectures (i.e. tentative solutions to problems) that are controlled…

Despite nearly 40 years of scientific theorizing about reading, the field remains fragmented with little progress toward unification. In this article, we (a) emphasize the privileged position of unified theories in all science, (b) compare the growth of theory in cognitive science and reading, (c) identify the phenomenal domain of a unified…

Of the vexed issues confronting teachers of the first-year writing sequence, none is more frustrating than that of getting students to write in the drafting stages. And not just "to" write, but to write the right thing. The solution that the Composition literature offers to the problem of fluency and content development is process. That…

Clinical decision-making is challenging mainly because of two factors: (1) patient conditions are often complicated with partial and changing information; (2) people have cognitive biases in their decision-making and information-seeking. Consequentially, misdiagnoses and ineffective use of resources may happen. To better support clinical…

Although dual-process models in cognitive, personality, and social psychology have stimulated a large body of research about analytic and heuristic modes of decision making, these models have seldom been applied to the study of adolescent risk behaviors. In addition, the developmental course of these two kinds of information processing, and their…

A localist, parallel constraint satisfaction, artificial neural network model is presented that accounts for a broad collection of attitude and attitude-change phenomena. The network represents the attitude object and cognitions and beliefs related to the attitude, as well as how to integrate a persuasive message into this network. Short-term…

Using heuristic inquiry, this study investigates how dialect affects the ethnic identity development of the first author as well as fellow Lumbee students attending a predominantly white university. Heuristic inquiry is a process that begins with a question or problem that the researcher seeks to illuminate or answer. Findings from this study…

The automated assembly of alternate test forms for online delivery provides an alternative to computer-administered, fixed test forms, or computerized-adaptive tests when a testing program migrates from paper/pencil testing to computer-based testing. The weighted deviations model (WDM) heuristic particularly promising for automated test assembly…