Models and modeling are a major issue in science studies and in science education. In addressing such an issue, we first propose an epistemological discussion based on the works of Cartwright (1983, 1999), Fleck (1935/1979), and Hacking (1983). This leads us to emphasize the transitions between the abstract and the concrete in the modeling…

Previous studies with various non-human animals have revealed that they possess an evolved predator recognition mechanism that specifies the appearance of recurring threats. We used the preferential looking and habituation paradigms in three experiments to investigate whether 5-month-old human infants have a perceptual template for spiders that…

Several types of parameterizations of attribute correlations in cognitive diagnosis models use the reduced reparameterized unified model. The general approach presumes an unconstrained correlation matrix with K(K - 1)/2 parameters, whereas the higher order approach postulates K parameters, imposing a unidimensional structure on the correlation…

Brewin's dual representation theory, Ehlers and Clark's cognitive appraisal model, and Dalgleish's schematic, propositional, analogue and associative representational systems model are considered in the light of recent evidence on the neural substrates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The models' proposals about the cognitive mechanism of…

This research investigated the cognitive processes underlying remember-know judgments in terms of contextual binding in multidimensional source memory. Stochastic dependence between the retrieval of different context attributes, which formed the empirical criterion of binding, was observed for remembered items but not for known items. Experiment 1…

Purpose: This review presents the state of swallowing rehabilitation science as it relates to evidence for neural plastic changes in the brain. The case is made for essential collaboration between clinical and basic scientists to expand the positive influences of dysphagia rehabilitation in synergy with growth in technology and knowledge. The…

Computational models will play an important role in our understanding of human higher-order cognition. How can a model's contribution to this goal be evaluated? This article argues that three important aspects of a model of higher-order cognition to evaluate are (a) its ability to reason, solve problems, converse, and learn as well as people do;…

Object-location memory is the only spatial task where female subjects have been shown to outperform males. This result is not consistent across all studies, and may be due to the combination of the multi-component structure of object location memory with the conditions under which different studies were done. Possible gender differences in object…

During the last 25 years, prospect theory and its successor, cumulative prospect theory, replaced expected utility as the dominant descriptive theories of risky decision making. Although these models account for the original Allais paradoxes, 11 new paradoxes show where prospect theories lead to self-contradiction or systematic false predictions.…

Using the DRM paradigm, our experiments examined the activation and monitoring of memories in semantic and phonological networks. Participants viewed lists of words and/or pseudohomophones (e.g., "dreem"). In Experiment 1, participants verbally recalled lists of semantic associates or attempted to write them as they appeared during study. False…

A total of 80 children (40 5-year-olds and 40 7-year-olds) took part in an experiment to evaluate their capacity to mentally evoke a motor image of their own displacement. Using a chronometry paradigm, movement duration was compared in a task where children were asked to move in order to take a puppet back to its home (actual) and to think about…

In this paper I address one question asked by teachers who teach online--"How can I build community among my learners in my class?" This paper provides an answer; in fact, it provides ten possible answers, in the form of ten models for teachers to use to build community in on-line courses. Each model has been tried and tested over ten…

Mediated priming refers to the activation of a target (e.g., "stripes") by a prime (e.g., "lion") that is related indirectly via a connecting mediator (e.g., tiger). In previous mediated priming studies (e.g., McNamara & Altarriba, 1988), the mediator was associatively related to the prime. In contrast, pure mediated…

Background: In order to design appropriate environments for performance and learning of movement skills, physical educators need a sound theoretical model of the learner and of processes of learning. In physical education, this type of modelling informs the organisation of learning environments and effective and efficient use of practice time. An…

The information that individuals can hold in working memory is quite limited, but researchers have typically studied this capacity using simple objects or letter strings with no associations between them. However, in the real world there are strong associations and regularities in the input. In an information theoretic sense, regularities…