This dissertation investigates the nature of the interface between morphosyntax and cognition. My goal is to connect formal semantic theories of meaning with theories of cognition, drawing on the initial hypothesis that the interface between language and cognition is transparent. I look at different forms of adjectival comparatives -- positive and…

Some philosophers argue that reflection is key to rational thinking. By tying reflective thinking to language, they struggle to account for minimally verbal infants and exclude nonhuman animals. This study assessed processing of undermining defeaters--a basic form of reflective thinking--in 36 two-year-old British children (13 female; M[subscript…

This study investigated inductive reasoning abilities in 3-5-year-old children across perceptual similarity and linguistic label conditions. Sixty-five typically developing children aged 3 to 5 participated in reasoning tasks involving natural and artificial targets. In the experimental design, children learned two contrasting characteristics…

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which participants built meaningful culturally and linguistically responsive (CLR) relationships with students and to what extent those same participants engaged in cognitively demanding academic discourse with their students. The participatory action research (PAR) study took place in a rural…

To meet the growth in learner diversity in today's classroom, a new paradigm for improving the precision and accuracy of "personalization" is critical to address the needs of students who are held back by traditional pathways designed for the mythical "average" learner. In response to this challenge, Digital Promise Global has…

We conducted a systematic review of research involving K-12 students that examined associations among individual differences factors (e.g., working memory) and intertextual integration. We identified 25 studies published in 23 peer-reviewed journal articles and two dissertations/theses. These examined a wide range of individual difference factors,…

Functional connectivity within and between Intrinsic Connectivity Networks (ICNs) transforms over development and is thought to support high order cognitive functions. But how variable is this process, and does it diverge with altered cognitive development? We investigated age-related changes in integration and segregation within and between ICNs…

Understanding the role of prior knowledge in human learning is essential for predicting, improving, and explaining competence acquisition. However, the size and breadth of this field make it difficult for researchers to glean a comprehensive overview. Hence, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of 13,507 relevant studies published between 1980 and…

The pervasive use of distributional semantic models or word embeddings for both cognitive modeling and practical application is because of their remarkable ability to represent the meanings of words. However, relatively little effort has been made to explore what types of information are encoded in distributional word vectors. Knowing the internal…

In higher education, concept mapping has been extensively adopted as an assessment and evaluation tool for conceptual knowledge. In recent years, an increasing number of researchers have applied concept mapping to teaching in technology-based environments. However, no research was found to holistically explore the role of concept maps in…

Our visual experience is surprisingly rich: We do not only see low-level properties such as colors or contours; we also see events, or what is happening. Within linguistics, the examination of how we talk about events suggests that relatively abstract elements exist in the mind which pertain to the relational structure of events, including general…

One of the guiding questions in this discussion is how is it that certain ideologies become so ingrained and resistant to challenge and scrutiny? The central assumptions sustaining the argument conceive curriculum--the backbone of educational practice--to be an expression of ideological activity; the understanding of ideology as lived experience;…

The prevalence of children with autism spectrum disorders appears to be on the increase and educators are becoming more aware of their educational and social needs. In particular, many students with high-functioning autism have a deficit in reading comprehension. As a consequence, there is now a greater determination by educators to design the…

This paper introduces a special issue of "Cognitive Science" initiated on the 25th anniversary of the publication of "Parallel Distributed Processing" (PDP), a two-volume work that introduced the use of neural network models as vehicles for understanding cognition. The collection surveys the core commitments of the PDP…

Although for many children, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong disability, a subset of children with ASD lose their diagnosis and show typical cognitive and adaptive abilities. The ages at which this transition can occur is not known, but it sometimes occurs quite early. Participants in the current study were 207 children with an ASD at…