Diagrams are powerful opportunities for grappling with and learning abstract relationships, for example learning the relations between elements in an ecosystem rather than simply memorizing the objects within the system. Further, what is crucial from any diagrammatic learning opportunity is the ability to use this relational knowledge in a new…

At the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic, our interdisciplinary team hypothesized that a mathematical misconception--whole number bias (WNB)--contributed to beliefs that COVID-19 was less fatal than the flu. We created a brief online educational intervention for adults, leveraging evidence-based cognitive science…

The relations between the developing mind and developing brain are explored. We outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that the mind comprises four systems of processes (domain-specific, attention and working memory, reasoning, and cognizance) developing in four cycles (episodic, realistic, rule-based, and principle-based…

Internationally, coding is increasingly introduced into primary and junior high schools (children generally aged between 5 and 15) on a compulsory basis, though not all stakeholders support this 'initiative'. In response to the public reception, discussion highlights popular argument around compulsory coding in school education. This is an…

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…

The main aim of the present investigation was to examine conditional reasoning skills in college students whose educational past had emphasized verbatim learning. A successive independent-samples design was utilized to explore the effects of instruction that explicitly targeted critical thinking principles in either freshman students or…

Mathematical reasoning requires perseverance to overcome the cognitive and affective difficulties encountered whilst pursuing a reasoned line of enquiry. The aims of the study were: to understand how children's perseverance in mathematical reasoning (PiMR) manifests in reasoning activities, and to examine how PiMR can be facilitated through a…

Objectives: The aim of the study is to distinguish between perceptuomotor and cognitive inflexibility as the source of set-switching difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methods: Seventeen adolescents with ASD and 17 neurotypical controls were presented with a computerized sequencing game using colored shapes. The sequence…

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception (e.g., nanoseconds, geologic time). This study examines patterns of estimation errors across temporal and spatial magnitudes at large scales. We evaluated the…

Understanding how students learn is crucial for helping them succeed. We examined brain function in 107 undergraduate students during a task known to be challenging for many students--physics problem solving--to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms and determine how these support comprehension and proficiency. Further, we applied module…

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences about mental states. Thus far, little research has examined ToM development in middle childhood. Importantly, recent studies have distinguished between making inferences about beliefs (cognitive ToM) and emotions (affective ToM). ToM has also been associated with executive functioning,…

Students often struggle with solving mechanism problems in organic chemistry courses. They frequently focus on surface features, have difficulty attributing meaning to symbols, and do not recognize tasks that are different from the exact tasks practiced. To be more successful, students need to be able to extract salient features, map similarities…

This article considers a set of well-researched default assumptions that people make in reasoning about complex causality and argues that, in part, they result from the forms of causal induction that we engage in and the type of information available in complex environments. It considers how information often falls outside our attentional frame…

There is considerable interest in the cultivation of student graphic literacy among educators and researchers, especially in the sciences. Previous research, however, has shown that many students manifest difficulties in using diagrammatic representations. One explanation that has been proposed to account for these difficulties is that certain…

A study had been conducted in qualitative design employing phenomenology approach to examine the cognitive basis and the semantic structure of phenomena based reasoning of lower secondary school students in Ambon. The data of the study were collected by using a test. Phenomena stimulus of science was given to the informants in the form of…