Humans routinely use external thinking tools, like pencil and paper, maps, and calculators, to solve cognitive problems that would have once been solved internally. As many youth face unprecedented exposure to increasingly capable technological aids, there is a growing pressure to understand children's cognitive offloading capacities and…

Mathematical problem-solving places heavy demands on children's developing working memory capacity. This review examines how offloading numerical information using embodied (e.g. finger counting) or external tools (e.g. manipulatives) can reduce cognitive load and improve mathematical task performance. Strategic offloading emerges in childhood;…

Children's responses to new, unfamiliar social interactions should be influenced by their cognitive appraisals and physiology, though little is known about how these constructs interrelate. To investigate these links, we examined whether children's appraisals of recalled events and resting parasympathetic physiology predicted social…

Cognitive load theory's incorporation of evolutionary perspectives has generated several instructional designs based on movement, including the tracing effect, occurring when learners benefit from explicit instructions to trace out specific elements of lesson materials with the index finger. Historical descriptions of children's tracing behaviours…

In light of the known visuoperceptual strengths and altered language skills in autism, we investigated the impact of problem content (semantic/visuospatial) combined with complexity and presence of lures on fluid reasoning in 43 autistic and 41 typical children (6-13 years old). Increased complexity and presence of lures diminished performance,…

Ninety-seven children aged 4-11 (49 males, 48 females, mostly White) were given the opportunity to improve their problem-solving performance by devising and implementing a novel cognitive offloading strategy. Across two phases, they searched for hidden rewards using maps that were either aligned or misaligned with the search space. In the second…

Mathematical problem-solving is a core content of primary school education. Therefore, it is necessary to provide all students with a meaningful way of acquisition of problem-solving skills. The objective of this research was to verify the effectiveness of a problem-solving routine based on the Pólya's model and the use of cognitive strategies…

Co-thought gestures are understudied as compared to co-speech gestures yet, may provide insight into cognitive functions of gestures that are independent of speech processes. A recent study with adults showed that co-thought gesticulation occurred spontaneously during mental preparation of problem solving. Moreover, co-thought gesturing (either…

In recent years, the authors have witnessed the rebirth of board games. This contribution aims to investigate the educational potential of non-random board games in two ways: the comparison of performances of "expert adult players" and "adult non-players" through a correlation study (n=45) and the comparison between the results…

Children's cognitive control and knowledge at school entry predict growth rates in analogical reasoning skill over time; however, the mechanisms by which these factors interact and impact learning are unclear. We propose that inhibitory control is critical for developing both the relational representations necessary to reason and the ability to…

Developmental cognitive neuroscience studies tend to show that the prefrontal brain regions (known to be involved in inhibitory control) are activated during the generation of creative ideas. In the present article, we discuss how a dual-process model of creativity--much like the ones proposed to account for decision making and reasoning--could…

As K-12 mathematics standards shift toward emphasizing both conceptual and procedural knowledge in secondary courses such as algebra and geometry, the struggles for students with disabilities become more pronounced. To address these challenges, research has commonly explored the use of technology to aid in the teaching of students with…

Mathematical discussions in which students compare alternative solutions to a problem can be powerful modes for students to engage and refine their misconceptions into conceptual understanding, as well as to develop understanding of the mathematics underlying common algorithms. At the same time, these discussions are challenging to lead…

Video games offer an exciting opportunity for learners to engage in computational thinking in informal contexts. This paper describes a genre of learning environments called constructionist video games that are especially well suited for developing learners' computational thinking skills. These games blend features of conventional video games with…

Mathematical discussions in which students compare alternative solutions to a problem can be powerful modes for students to engage and refine their misconceptions into conceptual understanding, as well as to develop understanding of the mathematics underlying common algorithms. At the same time, these discussions are challenging to lead…