Researchers who study student acceptance of evolution rely on surveys that are designed to measure evolution acceptance. It is important for these surveys to measure evolution acceptance accurately and in isolation from other constructs, so that researchers can accurately determine what leads to low acceptance. The Inventory of Student Evolution…

Adopting an evolutionary approach to substantiate major characteristics of human cognitive architecture has been one of the major recent developments in cognitive load theory. According to this approach, human cognitive architecture is a natural information processing system which can be described by five general principles. This paper attempts to…

Chunking mechanisms are central to several cognitive processes and notably to the acquisition of visuo-motor sequences. Individuals segment sequences into chunks of items to perform visuo-motor tasks more fluidly, rapidly, and accurately. However, the exact dynamics of chunking processes in the case of extended practice remain unclear. Using an…

Anxiety alters how we perceive the world and can alter aspects of cognitive performance. Prominent theories of anxiety suggest that the effect of anxiety on cognition is due to anxious thoughts "overloading" limited cognitive resources, competing with other processes. If this is so, then a cognitive load manipulation should impact…

Images, such as photographs and diagrams, play an important role in the teaching and learning of science. To optimize student learning, educational science images should be designed to facilitate the cognitive processes relevant to comprehension. One such process is comparison, which involves aligning multiple representations on the basis of their…

Intuitive conceptions based on cognitive biases (teleology, anthropomorphism, and essentialism) often prove helpful in everyday life while simultaneously being problematic in scientific contexts. Nonetheless, students often have intuitive conceptions of scientific topics such as evolution. As potential approaches to enable students to…

In this experiment we investigated whether the presentation of domain principles within one text facilitates reading to learn from multiple exemplar texts that feature the importance of the principles. There were five texts about natural selection: a principles text, which described principles of natural selection, and four exemplar-based texts…

Like all biological systems, human memory is likely to have been influenced by evolutionary processes, and its abilities have been subjected to selective mechanisms. Consequently, human memory should be primed to better remember information relevant to one's evolutionary fitness. Supporting this view, participants asked to rate words based on…

Evolutionary theory explains a wide range of biological phenomena. Proper understanding of evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection is therefore an essential goal for biology education. Unfortunately, natural selection has time and again proven difficult to teach and learn, and students' resulting understanding is often characterized by…

The purpose of this study was to investigate bridging inferences and learning when students with low topic knowledge read multiple complementary biology texts. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed students' (n = 74) cognitive processes while they read one text about principles of natural selection and three texts about examples of natural…

Language and culture endow humans with access to conceptual information that far exceeds any which could be accessed by a non-human animal. Yet, it is possible that, even without language or specific experiences, non-human animals represent and infer some aspects of similarity relations between objects in the same way as humans. Here, we show that…

Prior studies have shown that students have difficulty understanding the role of mutation in evolution and genetics. However, little is known about unifying themes underlying students' difficulty with mutation. In this study, we examined students' written explanations about mutation from a cognitive science perspective. According to one cognitive…

This study examines how third-graders' conceptions about the origin of species are affected by formal instruction and whether children can learn not only about evolution but also about natural selection. We interviewed the same group of third-grade children (8-9 years old) twice, before and after following a curriculum about these topics.…

This study investigated the effects of task relevance instructions and topic beliefs on reading processes and memory for belief-related text. Undergraduates received task instructions (focus on arguments for vs. against) before reading a dual-position text. In Experiment 1 (n = 88), a reading time methodology showed no differences in reading time…

Although historical changes in scientific ideas sometimes display striking similarities with students' conceptual progressions, some scholars have cautioned that such similarities lack meaningful commonalities. In the history of evolution, while Darwin and his contemporaries often used natural selection to explain evolutionary trait gain or…