Clark (2011) recently reviewed literature on cognitive phenomena such as automaticity, non-conscious processing, and the "illusion of conscious will," concluding that most learning theories and instructional design models are informed by faulty assumptions regarding psychological functioning--namely, that most cognitive activity is conscious and…

Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) has a history built, in part, on leveraging representational design to improve system performance. Traditionally, however, CSE has focused on visual representation of "monitored" processes--active, ongoing, and interconnected activities occurring in a system of interest and monitored by human…

There is great concern in the scientific community that students in the United States, when compared with other countries, are falling behind in their scientific achievement. Increasing students' reading comprehension of scientific text may be one of the components involved in students' science achievement. To investigate students'…

The purpose of this study is to examine individuals' computer based complex task performing processes and strategies in order to determine the reasons of failure by cognitive task analysis method and cued retrospective think aloud with eye movement data. Study group was five senior students from Computer Education and Instructional Technologies…

Recent work (e.g., Nairne & Pandeirada, 2010) has shown that words are remembered better when they have been processed for their survival value in a grasslands context than when processed in other contexts. It has been suggested that this is because human memory systems were shaped by evolution specifically to help humans survive. Thus far,…

Transformations of hand movements by tools such as levers or electronic input devices can invoke performance costs compared to untransformed movements. This study investigated by means of the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm at which stage of information processing such tool-transformation costs arise. We used an inversion…

In this paper I argue my opposition to the consensus which has dominated the literature that young children view shapes as a whole and pay no attention to shape structure and that geometrical thinking can be described through a hierarchical model formed by levels. This consensus is linked to van Hiele's weok by van Hiele-based research. In the…

Digital cognitive games (DCGs) are games whose primary purpose is to mediate (i.e., support, develop, and enhance) cognitive activities such as problem solving, decision making, planning, and critical reasoning. As these games increase in popularity and usage, more attention should be paid to their design. Currently, there is a lack of design…

We examined the role of working memory (WM) in dynamic decision making by having participants perform decision-making tasks under single-task or dual-task conditions. In 2 experiments participants performed dynamic decision-making tasks in which they chose 1 of 2 options on each trial. The decreasing option always gave a larger immediate reward…

When in pursuit of rewards, humans weigh the value of potential rewards against the amount of effort that is required to attain them. Although previous research has generally conceptualized this process as a deliberate calculation, recent work suggests that rudimentary mechanisms--operating without conscious intervention--play an important role as…

Active head turns to the left and right have recently been shown to influence numerical cognition by shifting attention along the mental number line. In the present study, we found that passive whole-body motion influences numerical cognition. In a random-number generation task (Experiment 1), leftward and downward displacement of participants…

The aim of this experiment was to examine the preattentive processing of syllables in 9-11-year-old children with dyslexia and matched controls using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), an auditory Event-Related brain potential (ERP) related to preattentive discrimination. Children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards…

Definitions of related concepts (e.g., "genotype-phenotype") are prevalent in introductory classes. Consequently, it is important that educators and students know which strategy(s) work best for learning them. This study showed that a new comparative elaboration strategy, called differential-associative processing, was better for learning…

This study examines the dynamics of cognitive processes during writing. Participants were 5th, 7th and 9th graders ranging in age from 10 to 15 years. They were shown a short silent video composed of clips illustrating conflictual situations between people in school, and were invited to produce a narrative text. Three chronometric measures of word…

It is often said that experienced musicians are capable of hearing what they read (and vice versa). This suggests that they are able to process and to integrate multimodal information. The present study investigates this issue with an eye-tracking technique. Two groups of musicians chosen on the basis of their level of expertise (experts,…