This article assesses how people reason with categories whose features are related in causal cycles. Whereas models based on causal graphical models (CGMs) have enjoyed success modeling category-based judgments as well as a number of other cognitive phenomena, CGMs are only able to represent causal structures that are acyclic. A number of new…

Researchers have proposed that an explicit reasoning system is responsible for learning rule-based category structures and that a separate implicit, procedural-learning system is responsible for learning information-integration category structures. As evidence for this multiple-system hypothesis, researchers report a dissociation based on…

While many researchers in science education have argued that students' epistemological understanding of models and of modelling processes would influence their cognitive processing on a modelling task, there has been little direct evidence for such an effect. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relation between students' epistemological…

We applied a mixed-method research design to investigate the patterns of reasoning used by novice undergraduate chemistry students to classify chemical substances as elements, compounds, or mixtures based on their particulate representations. We were interested in the identification of the representational features that students use to build a…

The investigation sought to prove that retarded conceptualization behavior of deaf children can be improved by specific compensatory experiences in the manipulation of objects. Twenty-six deaf children of normal intelligence but deficient in language as determined by reading achievement level, ages 10-13 years, were randomly assigned to…

Evaluation of classification skills of 88 unimpaired children (grades K, 2, 4, and 6) were evaluated using the Iconic-Symbolic test (IS) of the Muma Assessment Program and follow-up interviews. Results found little relationship between the rationales the children reported using and the classification criteria presumed by the IS procedure. (DB)

Surface and relational similarity were examined in two experiments involving isomorphic and nonisomorphic analogical transfer, using direct-mapping and cross-mapping conditions. In the first experiment, third and sixth graders exhibited mapping based on relational similarity more frequently than did kindergartners; in the second, most four- to…

Several observations about the way humans conceive of attributes, changes, and covariation of stimuli are presented as indications for the existence of a conceptual hierarchy of dimensions in which time dominates space, and space dominates every other dimension. (Author)

Results show that basic objects are shown to be the most inclusive categories for which a concrete image of the category as a whole can be formed, to be the first categorizations made during perception of the environment and to be the categories most codable, most coded, and most necessary in language. (Author/DEP)

The task consisted of categorizing a set of slides depicting concepts of freedom, nonfreedom, justice, and nonjustice. The results of the analysis indicated that abstract thinkers performed significantly better than did concrete thinkers and that performance increased as a function of grade level. (Author/BJG)

The conversion model of formal reasoning was examined for its ability to predict the decisions made by college students when solving concrete and abstract syllogisms. Results supported the model's contentions that reasoner's decisions reflect natural language processes in the encoding of syllogistic premises, and follow rationally from…

Two experiments examined the development of recall organization by observing use of categorical and spatial clustering strategies and how encoding experiences and recall task influence degree of organization. Children and adults recalled furniture from their home. Older subjects organized items spatially; when recalling objects and their…

Employed regression analysis to determine the association between multiplicative classification and inductive reasoning. Subjects were 103 fourth grade children. (SDH)