The study of children's prospective memory has gained new momentum over the past 20 years and is now an active area of research in cognitive development. Yet, this resurgence has been accompanied by significant challenges that offer important lessons and insights for other areas of developmental science. In this article, I provide an overview and…

Cognitive load theory (CLT), a construct of instructional psychologist John Sweller, has long been a mainstay of educational psychology and university educational technology courses, regionally and internationally. Although aspects of this cognitivist theory have been severely criticised, including its insistence on direct instruction in…

Based on recent findings in cognitive neuroscience and psychology as well as computational models of working memory and reasoning, I argue that fluid intelligence (fluid reasoning) can amount to representing in the mind the key relation(s) for the task at hand. Effective representation of relations allows for enormous flexibility of thinking but…

Drawing on evolutionary theory, the author questions which cognitive processes underlie the capacities to play and to pretend play and the degree to which they are present in both humans and nonhuman animals. Considering cognitive capacities not all-or-nothing phenomena, she argues they are present in varying degrees in a wide range of species.…

This paper examines how research in second language acquisition has approached the study of cognitive individual differences in the process and product of L2 writing from a theoretical and empirical perspective, paying special attention to the three empirical studies included in this special issue. The paper is divided into three sections. The…

Capitalizing on cognitive load theory and learning by analogy, we propose two instructional methods to learn a complex linear equation (e.g. two-step equation) by building on prior knowledge of a simpler linear equation (e.g. one-step equation). We will examine the proposal theoretically in this paper. In line with the design principles of…

In the present meta-analysis, we systematically investigated the relative contributions of students' initial mathematics, reading, and cognitive skills on subsequent mathematics performance measured at least 3 months later. With one-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling, we conducted analyses based on 580,437 students from 265…

The development of numerical and arithmetic abilities constitutes a crucial cornerstone in our modern and educated societies. Difficulties to acquire these central skills can lead to severe consequences for an individual's well-being and nation's economy. In the present review, we describe our current broad understanding of the functional and…

We evaluated external and internal sources of variation in second language (L2) and native language (L1) proficiency among college students. One hundred and twelve native-English L2 learners completed measures of L1 and L2 speaking proficiency, working memory, and cognitive control and provided self-ratings of language exposure and use. When…

Models of creative problem solving are predicated upon mental states to explain everything from the outcome of problem-solving experiments to the emergence of artistic creativity. We present two converging perspectives that describe a profoundly different ontological description of creativity. Our analysis proceeds from a distinction between…

Society can be obsessed with the concept of intelligence, according to the author. Parents want to know if their children are smart. Schools try to detect the intelligence of children so that they can separate them into "gifted and talented" programs on one end of the spectrum and remedial programs on the other. Employers want to know if…

Using advanced quantitative methods, this article demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic, and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual…

We propose a review of the literature of the studies investigating reading acquisition in intellectual deficiency (ID), with particular focus on the explanatory factors for reading difficulties. Indeed, we explore the role of intellectual efficiency, perceptual abilities, oral language development, phonological processing and memory. The study of…

Virtual Reality (VR) has made significant inroads into both the consumer and professional sectors. As VR has matured as a technology, its overall practicality for use in education has also increased. However, due to the rapid evolution of the technology, the educational field struggles to stay informed of the latest advancements, changing…

Early conceptions of aptitude were concerned with explicit learning abilities in formal learning settings, which according to MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test) were measurable based on a phonemic coding ability, an inductive learning ability, an associative memory, and a grammatical sensitivity (Carroll, 1962). However, recent understanding on…