Clear and rigorous quantum reasoning is needed to explain quantum physical phenomena. As pillars of true quantum physical explanations, we suggest specific quantum reasoning derived from quantum physical key ideas. An experiment is suggested to support such a quantum reasoning, in which a quantized radiation field interacts with an optical beam…

Having the ability to make informed decisions about health, financial investments, and even the weather are all important to our everyday lives. However, most people receive no formal education on how to read and understand data presented in formats such as data tables and graphs. Research within the field of statistical reasoning demonstrates a…

Categorical perception (CP) effects manifest as faster or more accurate discrimination between objects that come from different categories compared with objects that come from the same category, controlling for the physical differences between the objects. The most popular explanations of CP effects have relied on perceptual warping causing…

The authors describe how the Monty Hall Dilemma, a well-known choice anomaly, can be demonstrated with a simple and versatile classroom experiment. In addition to demonstrating the anomaly, the experiment can be used to introduce students to some institutional modifications that have been shown to ameliorate it. This experiment, which can be…

Stimuli that capture the central tendency of presented exemplars are often preferred--a phenomenon also known as the classic beauty-in-averageness effect. However, recent studies have shown that this effect can reverse under certain conditions. We propose that a key variable for such ugliness-in-averageness effects is the category structure of the…

The two-high-threshold (2HT) model of recognition memory assumes that people make memory errors because they fail to retrieve information from memory and make a guess, whereas the continuous unequal-variance (UV) model and the low-threshold (LT) model assume that people make memory errors because they retrieve misleading information from memory.…

Teaching probability and statistics is more than teaching the mathematics itself. Historically, the mathematics of probability and statistics was first developed through analyzing games of chance such as the rolling of dice. This article makes the case that the understanding of probability and statistics is dependent upon building a…

This undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory exercise introduces students to the study of probability distributions both experimentally and using computer simulations. Students perform the classic coin toss experiment individually and then pool all of their data together to study the effect of experimental sample size on the binomial…

In order to increase students' awareness for and comfort with mathematical modeling of biological processes, and increase their understanding of diffusion, the following lab was developed for use in 100-level, majors/non-majors biology and neuroscience courses. The activity begins with generation of a data set that uses coin-flips to replicate…

Feedback is highly contingent on behavior if it eventually becomes easy to predict, and weakly contingent on behavior if it remains difficult or impossible to predict even after learning is complete. Many studies have demonstrated that humans and nonhuman animals are highly sensitive to feedback contingency, but no known studies have examined how…

This study considers probability models as tools for both making informal statistical inferences and building stronger conceptual connections between data and chance topics in teaching statistics. In this paper, we aim to explore pre-service mathematics teachers' use of probability models for a chance game, where the sum of two dice matters in…

Three experiments examined the immediate free recall (IFR) of auditory-verbal and visuospatial materials from single-modality and dual-modality lists. In Experiment 1, we presented participants with between 1 and 16 spoken words, with between 1 and 16 visuospatial dot locations, or with between 1 and 16 words "and" dots with synchronized…

Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigated the role of prediction in the processing of repair disfluencies (e.g., "The chef reached for some salt uh I mean some ketchup ..."). Experiment 1 showed that listeners were more likely to fixate a critical distractor item (e.g., "pepper") during the processing of repair…

The article reports 4 experiments that explore the notion of recognition without awareness using words as the material. Previous work by Voss and associates has shown that complex visual patterns were correctly selected as targets in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) recognition test although participants reported that they were guessing. The…

Thermodynamic spontaneity-equilibrium criteria require that in a single-reaction system, reactions in either the forward or reverse direction at equilibrium be nonspontaneous. Conversely, the concept of dynamic equilibrium holds that forward and reverse reactions both occur at equal rates at equilibrium to the extent allowed by kinetic…