The present investigation focuses on first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers' sensitivity to lexical fixedness and compositionality of Italian word combinations. Two studies explored language users' intuitions about three types of word combinations: free combinations, collocations, and idioms. In Study 1, Italian Verb+Noun…

Sleep fosters the generation of explicit knowledge. Whether sleep also benefits implicit intuitive decisions about underlying patterns is unclear. We examined sleep's role in explicit and intuitive semantic coherence judgments. Participants encoded sets of three words and after a sleep or wake period were required to judge the potential…

Solving many quantitative problems does not necessarily lead to an improved Physics understanding. However, physicists, who have learned physics largely through quantitative problems solving, often have a refined physical intuition. Assuming that the refinement of physical intuitions occurs, to a great extent, during problem solving, the question…

Whether intuitive abilities can be improved through purposeful training for a more holistic approach to education was the object of this study. It was hypothesized that individuals participating in a mental training program designed to improve right-brain intuitive abilities would show significant improvement in such abilities, while a control…

Three studies examined strategy flexibility in mathematical problem solving among high school students on Scholastic Assessment Test-Mathematics problems and among college students on Graduate Record Examination-Quantitative items. Results suggested that strategy flexibility was a source of gender differences in mathematics ability as assessed by…