Solving organic chemistry reactions requires reasoning with multiple concepts and data (i.e., multivariate reasoning). However, studies have reported that organic chemistry students typically demonstrate univariate reasoning. Case comparisons, where students compare two or more tasks, have been reported to support students' multivariate reasoning.…

This study aims at elaborating a well-established theoretical framework that distinguishes three modes of thinking in linear algebra: the analytic-arithmetic, the synthetic-geometric, and the analytic-structural mode. It describes and analyzes the bundle of signs produced by an engineering student during an interview, where she was asked to recall…

Critical thinking is embedded in national university graduate outcomes and included in international bodies' statements on higher education. At the same time, there are tensions surrounding critical thinking in higher education, such as its commodification, Eurocentrism, and relationship to rapidly digitalising cultures. Drawing from the…

Moral decisions often involve dilemmas: cases of conflict between competing obligations. In two studies (N = 204), we ask whether children appreciate that reasoning through dilemmas involves acknowledging that there is no single, simple solution. In Study 1, 5- to 8-year-old US children were randomly assigned to a Moral Dilemma condition, in which…

Siegel claimed that teachers are obliged to provide grounds whenever demanded, as a result of which they must be able to subject to scrutiny whatever they teach. In this paper, however, and taking as a reference Wittgenstein's "On Certainty," it is shown that such a demand cannot work for second language teachers because their main task…

Purpose: Although the existing literature has explored the link between cognitive functioning and speech recognition in noise, the specific role of fluid intelligence still needs to be studied. Given the established association between working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence and the predictive power of WMC for speech recognition in…