Brief Report. Educated adults are still affected by intuitions about the effect of arithmetical operations: evidence from a reaction-time study

This study tested the hypothesis that intuitions about the effect of operations, e.g., “addition makes bigger” and “division makes smaller”, are still present in educated adults, even after years of instruction. To establish the intuitive character, we applied a reaction time methodology, grounded in dual process theories of reasoning. Educated adult participants were asked to judge the correctness of statements about the effect of operations. Their accuracy and reaction times were measured. For items where the correct answer was not in line with the assumed intuitions, more mistakes were observed; moreover, we found longer reaction times for correct responses, indicating that these intuitions interfere in participants’ reasoning on these tasks, even when they provide a correct response.     

Associative and postprandial control of schedule-induced drinking: Implications for the study of interim behavior

Schedule-induced drinking and food-magazine contacts were examined in rats receiving either true- or pseudodiscriminative conditioning. Schedule-induced drinking was largely confined to S? following true discrimination training, but when SI and S2 were unrelated to food deliveries (pseudo condition), drinking occurred after food ingestion. A stimulus generalization test for drinking yielded an excitatory postdiscrimination gradient around S? after the true discrimination and a flat gradient after the pseudo discrimination. Additional observations showed S? drinking to be closely related to the amount of food consumed during the immediately preceding S+ trial. These data suggested that both the predictive feature of S? and postprandial stimuli can control schedule-induced drinking. It was argued that these variables represent two general processes—induction and selection—both of which are necessary conditions requiring further study. Magazine contacts during S+ did not distinguish the true from the pseudo condition and were not influenced by test stimuli during a generalization test.     

Is Statistical Learning Ability Related to Reading Ability,and If So,Why?

ABSTRACT

Previous studies found a relationship between performance on statistical learning (SL) tasks and reading ability and developmental dyslexia. Thus, it has been suggested that the ability to implicitly learn patterns may be important for reading acquisition. Causal mechanisms behind this relationship are unclear: Although orthographic sensitivity to letter bigrams may emerge through SL and facilitate reading, there is no empirical support for this link. We test 84 adults on two SL tasks, reading tests, and a bigram sensitivity task. We test for correlations using Bayes factors. This serves to test the prediction that SL and reading ability are correlated and to explore sensitivity to bigram legality as a potential mediator. We find no correlations between SL tasks and reading ability, SL and bigram sensitivity, or between the SL tasks. We conclude that correlating SL with reading ability may not yield replicable results, partly due to low correlations between SL tasks.     

What fills the gap between discrete and dense? Greek and Flemish students’ understanding of density

It is widely documented that the density property of rational numbers is challenging for students. The framework theory approach to conceptual change places this observation in the more general frame of problems faced by learners in the transition from natural to rational numbers. As students enrich, but do not restructure, their natural number based prior knowledge, certain intermediate states of understanding emerge. This paper presents a study of Greek and Flemish 9th grade students who solved a test about the infinity of numbers in an interval. The Flemish students outperformed the Greek ones. More importantly, the intermediate levels of understanding—where the type of the interval endpoints (i.e., natural numbers, decimals, or fractions) affects students’ judgments—were very similar in both groups. These results point to specific conceptual difficulties involved in the shift from natural to rational numbers and raise some questions regarding instruction in both countries.     

Curriculum planning for the development of graphicacy capability: three case studies from Europe and the USA

Curriculum planning for the development of graphicacy capability has not been systematically included in general education to coincide with the graphicacy needs of human society. In higher education, graphicacy curricula have been developed to meet the needs of certain disciplines, for example medical and teacher training and engineering, among others. A framework for graphicacy curricula, anticipating the graphicacy needs in higher education, has yet to be strategically planned for general education. This is partly a result of lack of research effort in this area, but also a result of lack of systematic curriculum planning in general. This paper discusses these issues in the context of graphicacy curricula for engineering. The paper presents three broad individual case studies spanning Europe and the USA, brought together by the common denominator, graphicacy. The case studies are based on: an analysis of graphicacy within general education curricula, an analysis of graphicacy for engineering education in Europe and an analysis of graphicacy for engineering education in the USA. These three papers were originally presented in a plenary session at the American Society for Engineering Education, Engineering Design Graphics Division at the University of Limerick in November 2012. The case studies demonstrate the potential for strategic curriculum planning in regard to the development of graphicacy in general education and an overview of a methodology to achieve that. It also offers further evidence towards the importance of the systematic classification of graphics capabilities in Engineering and how the lack of a developed theoretical framework in this area undermines the case for the importance of graphics within engineering education.     

The integration of biodiversity education in the initial education of primary school teachers: four comparative case studies from Europe

In this article, we present results from an international research study on biodiversity education in pre‐service education of primary school teachers. The study was carried out between 2004–2006 in four teacher education institutions in Cyprus, England, Switzerland and Germany. We used document analyses and in‐depth interviews with 27 teacher educators and 22 student teachers to examine the integration of biodiversity into the pre‐service teacher education programmes, and the student teachers’ satisfaction with their respective education. In all teacher education institutions, aspects of biodiversity education were integrated mostly in the natural science modules which provided students at least with some information on the scientific aspects of biodiversity. Few modules included aspects of the controversial nature of biodiversity conservation in relation to economics, ethics, social and political concerns, and methodological approaches on how to deal with this. In the institutions in Cyprus, England and Germany the teaching focus was content‐oriented, whereas in Switzerland a situated method‐oriented approach was used. The student teachers in Switzerland felt more confident to teach about biodiversity in school. All interviewees thought it necessary to prepare primary school student teachers on how to address biodiversity in schools, and strategies on how best to achieve this are critically discussed.