This Action Research project and Pilot Study was designed and implemented to improve students' hypothetical thinking abilities by exploring the possibility that learning and playing the computer game Minesweeper may inherently help improve hypothetical thinking. One objective was to use educational tools to make it easier for students to learn the…

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…

Many research-related classes in social sciences present probability as a unified approach based upon mathematical axioms, but neglect the diversity of various probability theories and their associated philosophical assumptions. Although currently the dominant statistical and probabilistic approach is the Fisherian tradition, the use of Fisherian…

Individuals with autism frequently show impairments in text reading comprehension. This often is attributed to poor ability to draw inferences during reading and to inadequate access to relevant knowledge. The current study tested this hypothesis by measuring the time taken to read the same question, relating to either physical or social world…

Dealing with alternative causes is necessary to avoid making inaccurate causal inferences from covariation data. However, information about alternative causes is frequently unavailable, rendering them unobserved. The current article reviews the way in which current learning models deal, or could deal, with unobserved causes. A new model of causal…

A substantial body of scholarship focused on the processes involved in message planning has accumulated in the communication literature. One of the central tenets of memory models upon which most of the message planning models are based is that dynamic memory systems organize and reorganize knowledge structures to maximize information processing…

Researchers conducting structural equation modeling analyses rarely, if ever, control for the inflated probability of Type I errors when evaluating the statistical significance of multiple parameters in a model. In this study, the Type I error control, power and true model rates of famsilywise and false discovery rate controlling procedures were…

Adjustment methods such as propensity scores and analysis of covariance are often used for estimating treatment effects in nonexperimental data. Shadish, Clark, and Steiner used a within-study comparison to test how well these adjustments work in practice. They randomly assigned participating students to a randomized or nonrandomized experiment.…

Purpose: This study tested the accuracy with which the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, Level III (CDI-III), a parent report measure of language ability, discriminated children with language impairment from those developing language typically. Method: Parents of 58 children, 49 with typically developing language (age 30 to 42…

Some students enter the world of mathematics with a disadvantage. The authors explored the causes for this from a language-processing perspective. They were particularly concerned with students with potential learning disabilities or specific language impairments. They also explored the role of language-mediated instruction in creating an…

For students with or at risk for learning disabilities, developing fluency with reading connected texts remains a formidable challenge. In response, teachers often use repeated reading practices designed to provide students with multiple exposures to the same words. This study examined research focused on determining the efficacy of repeated…

Achievement gaps concern educators at all levels today. Educators recognize the threats these gaps pose to education quality and equity, and they are working hard to close them--but an equally threatening gap in education with consequences just as serious is largely ignored. It influences every educational-improvement effort and seriously…

Despite the advances in understanding cognitive improvements in executive function in adolescence, much less is known about the influence of affective and social modulators on executive function and the biological underpinnings of these functions and sensitivities. Here, recent behavioral and neuroscientific studies are summarized that have used…

Both researchers and teachers of statistics have made considerable efforts during the last decades to re-conceptualize statistics courses in accordance with the general reform movement in mathematics education. However, students still hold misconceptions about statistical inference even after following a reformed course. The study presented in…

Both substantive (i.e. factual knowledge, concepts, laws and theories) and procedural knowledge (understanding and applying concepts such as reliability and validity, measurement and calibration, data collection, measurement error, the ability to interpret evidence and the like) are involved in carrying out an open-ended science investigation.…