It is difficult to monitor whether information was originally retrieved internally, from our own memory, or externally, from another person or a device. We report two experiments that examined whether people were more likely to confuse prior access to information on a smartphone with accessing their own knowledge. Participants were experimentally…

Both sketching and self-explanation are widely believed to be effective for problem-solving in science learning. However, it is unclear which aspects of these strategies promote learning and how they might interact. Compared to a read-only baseline, we examined the impact of instructing 11-year-old students to solve science problems to sketch,…

Studies on children's understanding of counting examine when and how children acquire the cardinal principle: the idea that the last word in a counted set reflects the cardinal value of the set. Using Wynn's (1990) Give-N Task, researchers classify children who can count to generate large sets as having acquired the cardinal principle…

Rubrics, which are designed to inform learners about assessment criteria and quality levels concerning a task assignment, are a widely used means to support learners in self-assessing their task performance. Usually, rubrics enhance task performance. Surprisingly, however, relatively little is known about the underlying mechanisms via which…

Classroom response systems (i.e., clickers) have become increasingly popular to facilitate student learning. Unfortunately, the common practice of pausing a lecture to ask questions takes up precious time to cover content. Asking questions "on the fly" without pausing is a possible solution. But can students both attend to lecture and…

We examined the relationship between the Early start Denver model (ESDM) intervention and mu rhythm attenuation, an EEG paradigm reflecting neural processes associated with action perception and social information processing. Children were assigned to either receive comprehensive ESDM intervention for two years, or were encouraged to pursue…

Statistical knowledge of a target's location may benefit visual search, and rapidly understanding the changes in regularity would increase the adaptability in visual search situations where fast and accurate performance is required. The current study tested the sources of statistical knowledge--explicitly-given instruction or experience-driven…

The use of realistic visualizations has gained considerable interest due to the proliferation of virtual reality equipment. This review is concerned with the theoretical basis, technical implementation, cognitive effects, and educational implications of using realistic visualizations. Realism can be useful for learners, but in several studies,…

The articles in this special issue take an important step in beginning to test the PET framework. Together, these articles illustrate the importance of considering individual differences in attitudes and prior knowledge as well as differences in task demands when investigating the role of emotions in shaping cognitive processing while reading…

A large body of research has revealed that viewing example image stimuli tends to constrain creative idea generation. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying such visual fixation in creative cognition are unclear. In the present experiment, we explored whether example images impacted creative imagination and patterns of neural activity…

Background: Realistic visualizations have been associated with benefits in retention performance, but also with disadvantages in transfer tasks. Realistic details are considered to be helpful for the initial learning of content, but not for the generalization to other domains and tasks. Objectives: The contradictory nature of previous evidence…

Integrating evidence from multiple sources to guide decisions is something humans do on a daily basis. Existing research suggests that not all sources of information are weighted equally in decision-making tasks, and that observers are subject to biases in the face of internal and external noise. Here we describe two experiments that measured…

Stable individual differences in cognitive motivation (i.e., the tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities) have been documented with self-report measures, yet convergent support for a trait-level construct is still lacking. In the present study, we used an innovative decision-making paradigm (COG-ED) to quantify the costs of…

Classical quantifiers (like "all," "some," and "none") express relationships between two sets, allowing us to make generalizations (like "no elephants fly"). Devices like these appear to be universal in human languages. Is the ubiquity of quantification due to a universal property of the human mind or is it…

This study aimed to characterize the relationship between insistence on sameness (IS), executive functioning (EF) and anxiety among individuals with "PTEN" mutations and individuals with macrocephalic ASD. The sample included 38 individuals with "PTEN" mutation and ASD diagnosis ("PTEN"-ASD; M[subscript age] =…