Explains how an understanding of evolution's heuristic, or explanatory, advantage can inform today's evolution/creationism debates. (WRM)

Contends that students must learn to adopt a lateral way of thinking, which generates multiple solutions, to resolve their problems. Offers examples of heuristics (plans of attack) that students can use to better approach their problems, such as: visualizing the situation, exploring ideas, choosing a strategy, finding a solution, and checking to…

Four experiments investigated transformation problems with insight characteristics. In Experiment 1, performance on a version of the 6-coin problem that had a concrete and visualizable solution followed a hill-climbing heuristic. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the difficulty of a version of the problem that potentially required insight for…

Two accounts explain why studying pictures reduces false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995). The impoverished relational-encoding account suggests that studying pictures interferes with the encoding of relational information, which is the primary basis for false memories…

Propositions about the nature of expertise, in general, and expertise in pedagogy, in particular, are discussed. The time needed to develop expertise in teaching and the highly contextual nature of teachers' knowledge are also discussed. Four theories of teacher development are presented, with an elaboration on the heuristic value of the theory of…

This paper is based on hermeneutic research into creativity and learning mentors, focusing on mental well being and the role of the mentor throughout the creative cycle. Participants relate their experiences of the role of the mentor within the creative cycle in their own words. The researcher/participant hermeneutic dialogue shows that the…

The most important things learned about violence and trauma in the past 20 years are that interpersonal violence is prevalent, with different forms co-occurring, and that victims' reactions are complex. Researchers are called to consider models that include the ecological context within which victims experience violence and trauma to gain a better…

This paper describes the transcendental method of Bernard Lonergan and its relevance to science education in general, and to physics education in particular. Lonergan formulated a cognitional theory, based upon the self-assembling dynamic invariant structure of human knowing, that unfolds the complex relation among knowing, objective knowledge,…

Human resource development (HRD) can be seen as both a professional field and an organizational function; the I-A framework introduced in this article is a heuristic that enables us to understand HRD from both of these perspectives. Although scholars have presented frameworks for understanding the underlying theories, philosophies, and meanings of…

Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible.…

The current perspective of autonomous learning defines it as the agentive exhibition of resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence in self-directed learning. As a form of human agency, it has been argued in the literature that this perspective should be consistent with Bandura's (1986) Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The purpose of this article…

The Barnes maze is a spatial memory task that requires subjects to learn the position of a hole that can be used to escape the brightly lit, open surface of the maze. Two experiments assessed the relative importance of spatial (extra-maze) versus proximal visible cues in solving the maze. In Experiment 1, four groups of mice were trained either…

Research in mathematics education usually attempts to look into students' learning and other mental processes. It could therefore be expected to build on knowledge acquired within the academic discipline of cognitive psychology. Our aim in this paper is to show how some recent developments in cognitive psychology can help interpret empirical…

In recent years, e-learning system has become more and more popular and many adaptive learning environments have been proposed to offer learners customized courses in accordance with their aptitudes and learning results. For achieving the adaptive learning, a predefined concept map of a course is often used to provide adaptive learning guidance…

The authors propose a heuristic model of the social outcomes of childhood brain disorder that draws on models and methods from both the emerging field of social cognitive neuroscience and the study of social competence in developmental psychology/psychopathology. The heuristic model characterizes the relationships between social adjustment, peer…