General Cognitive Strategies Research Articles

Constructive Combinatorics in Elementary School Mathematics

The paper describes in detail a class of educational problems from an elementary school course of mathematics and computer science. This course has been implemented over the past decades by a team led by Academician of the RAS A.L. Semenov. In the problems, it is necessary to find, build, or list all objects that satisfy a certain system of conditions. The student conducts these activities in a visual world of basic objects of discrete mathematics and computer science: strings (finite sequences of symbols), bags (multisets), tables, trees, and statements containing quantifiers. The connections of these problems with problems in computational combinatorics (counting the number of options), with search problems in the theory of computational complexity, with “big ideas,” and general cognitive strategies for their formation in education are considered. The content of education in our approach is more adequate to the context of the modern world.

CONSTRUCTIVE COMBINATORICS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL MATHEMATICS

The paper is describing the class of educational problems from the course of mathematics and computer science for elementary school. This course has been implemented over the past decades by a team led by A.L. Semenov. In the problems it is required to find, build, list all objects that satisfy a certain system of conditions. The student conducts these activities in the visual world of the basic objects of discrete mathematics and computer science: strings (finite sequences of symbols), bags (multisets), tables, trees, and statements containing quantifiers. The connections of these problems with problems of computational combinatorics (“counting the number of options”), search problems of the theory of computational complexity, with “big ideas”, general cognitive strategies in their formation are considered. The content of education in our approach is more adequate to the context of the modern world.

Self-regulated learning strategies and achievement goals among preservice physical education teachers

Self-regulated learning is critical to student academic success as well as healthy lifestyles. Although widely conducted among students from various disciplines, self-regulated learning research seems not to have paid much attention to preservice physical education teachers. Attempting to amend this literature gap as well as inform the current status of self-regulated learning among preservice physical education (PE) teachers, this study focused on two essential components: learning strategies and motivation. Participants included 419 preservice PE teachers from five teacher preparation programmes in the USA. They responded to two questionnaires that assessed self-regulated learning strategies use and achievement goals. Each item on the questionnaires was on a seven-point Likert scale. Results showed that this group of preservice teachers’ use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies was at a medium level. Their mastery-approach goals demonstrated a predominant effect on general cognitive strategies and elaboration. Performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals also had a positive association with general cognitive strategies and critical thinking. Based on these results, we recommend PE teacher educators integrate self-regulated learning into instructions and focus preservice teachers on endorsing mastery-oriented goals for their learning.

Developing the concept of perimeter and area in students with learning disabilities (LD)

The present research is aimed at developing an educational program effective for the development of the concepts of perimeter and area in students with LD and testing this program. The study combined action research with quasi-experimental design involving experimental (LD) and comparison (non-LD) groups. The intervention program consisted of 12 sessions and included the development of both general cognitive strategies and more specific geometry strategies. The central element of the program was the elaboration of the concept of “measure” and its use for the estimation of length and area. The comparison of the experimental group pre-and post-program test results demonstrated statistically significant improvement of pupils’ performance in all tasks. Students in the comparison (non-LD) group, predictably, started with better pre-test results. However, they made less impressive changes than their peers from the experimental (LD) group, who actually even outperformed the comparison group at the post-test. It is possible to conclude that an intervention program based on a combination of general cognitive strategies with the concept and operation of “measurement” appears to be effective in significantly improving the geometry task performance of pupils with LD and facilitating their inclusion into regular classrooms.

Socio-cognitive profiles for visual learning in young and older adults.

It is common wisdom that practice makes perfect; but why do some adults learn better than others? Here, we investigate individuals’ cognitive and social profiles to test which variables account for variability in learning ability across the lifespan. In particular, we focused on visual learning using tasks that test the ability to inhibit distractors and select task-relevant features. We tested the ability of young and older adults to improve through training in the discrimination of visual global forms embedded in a cluttered background. Further, we used a battery of cognitive tasks and psycho-social measures to examine which of these variables predict training-induced improvement in perceptual tasks and may account for individual variability in learning ability. Using partial least squares regression modeling, we show that visual learning is influenced by cognitive (i.e., cognitive inhibition, attention) and social (strategic and deep learning) factors rather than an individual’s age alone. Further, our results show that independent of age, strong learners rely on cognitive factors such as attention, while weaker learners use more general cognitive strategies. Our findings suggest an important role for higher-cognitive circuits involving executive functions that contribute to our ability to improve in perceptual tasks after training across the lifespan.

Cognitive Linguistics in the Year 2015

Cognitive linguistics views linguistic cognition as indistinguishable from general cognition and thus seeks explanation of linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognitive strategies, such as metaphor, metonymy, and blending. Grammar and lexicon are viewed as parts of a single continuum and thus expected to be subject to the same cognitive strategies. Significant developments within cognitive linguistics in the past two decades include construction grammar and the application of quantitative methods to analyses.

Análisis de procesos cognitivos en el comportamiento de estudiantes de último curso de bachillerato y primer curso de carrera involucrados en tareas de clasificación, cálculo, memorización y categorización de información

Analysis of cognitive processes in the behavior of high school seniors and first year undergrads executing task associates with classification, calculation, memorization and categorization of informationJuan-Antonio Martínez-Comeche, Jorge Horcas-Pulido and Zuriñe Piña-LandaburuThis paper offers and analysis of the cognitive processes entailed in classification, mathematical calculation, memorization and categorization tasks. Empirical studies of information seeking behaviors commonly ask participants to do complex tasks. As a result, only general cognitive strategies may be deduced about information seeking behaviors. To these question in greater depth, this research breaks down the information behavior into atomized tasks reflecting cognitive processes. Three data collection techniques were employed: log files, video recording and in-depth interviews. Grounded Theory was employed as a data analysis method, allowing researchers to discern the behaviors of subjects. The study uncovered several cognitive processes as the main components of simple information-seeking tasks. Moreover, these cognitive processes constitute the core of the subjects’ behaviors of the participants. This study supports the furtherance theoretical models of behaviors for several information-seeking tasks, understood as chain of cognitive processes. Some of these cognitive processes apparently are common to entirely distinct tasks, such as classification, memorization and categorization.

Development of Physical and Self-Control Abilities of Primary School Learners (10–11 Years Old)

Development of Physical and Self-Control Abilities of Primary School Learners (10–11 Years Old)

Language Correlates of Disciplinary Literacy

Disciplinary literacy is defined here as the ability to engage in social, semiotic, and cognitive practices consistent with those of content experts. Characterizing literacy development as a process of braiding 3 language strands of everyday language, abstract language, and metaphoric language, this

Metonymy in word-formation

Abstract A foundational goal of cognitive linguistics is to explain linguistic phenomena in terms of general cognitive strategies rather than postulating an autonomous language module (Langacker 1987: 12–13). Metonymy is identified among the imaginative capacities of cognition (Langacker 1993: 30, 2009: 46–47). Whereas the majority of scholarship on metonymy has focused on lexical metonymy, this study explores the systematic presence of metonymy in word-formation. I argue that in many cases, the semantic relationships between stems, affixes, and the words they form can be analyzed in terms of metonymy, and that this analysis yields a better, more insightful classification than traditional descriptions of word-formation. I present a metonymic classification of suffixal word-formation in three languages: Russian, Czech, and Norwegian. The system of classification is designed to maximize comparison between lexical and word-formational metonymy. This comparison supports another central claim of cognitive linguistics, namely that grammar (in this case word-formation) and lexicon form a continuum (Langacker 1987: 18–19), since I show that metonymic relationships in the two domains can be described in nearly identical terms. While many metonymic relationships are shared across the lexical and grammatical domains, some are specific to only one domain, and the two domains show different preferences for source and target concepts. Furthermore, I find that the range of metonymic relationships expressed in word-formation is more diverse than what has been found in lexical metonymy. There is remarkable similarity in word-formational metonymy across the three languages, despite their typological differences, though they all show some degree of language-specific behavior as well. Although this study is limited to three Indo-European languages, the goal is to create a classification system that could be implemented (perhaps with modifications) across a wider spectrum of languages.

Situations, rules, and conventional meaning: Some uses of games of partial information

Three uses of partial information games are considered, the situational use, the derivation of rules, and the derivation of conventional meaning. The possibility of probabilistic communication is introduced and modeled. The role of rules and general cognitive strategies is discussed in the context of partial information games. The requirement of common knowledge is also considered briefly in the context of static and evolutionary games.

Visual Cognition: Where Cognition and Culture Meet

Case studies of diverse scientific fields show how scientists use a range of resources to generate new interpretative models and to establish their plausibility as explanations of a domain. They accomplish this by manipulating imagistic representations in particular ways. I show that scientists in different domains use the same basic transformations. Common features of these transformations indicate that general cognitive strategies of interpretation, simplification, elaboration, and argumentation are at work. Social and historical studies of science emphasize the diversity of local contexts of practice. However, the existence of common strategies shows that this diversity masks an important repertoire of cognitive strategies. Scientists use this repertoire to adapt their representations to meet the cognitive demands of different contexts of practice. This paper considers the implications of this finding for the notion of scientists as cognitive agents in distributed knowledge-producing systems.

Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics

The authors present a comprehensive overview of past research in ambiguity in the field of psycholinguistics. Experimental results have often been equivocal in allowing a choice between the single-reading hypothesis and the multiple-reading hypothesis of processing of ambiguous sentences. This text reviews the arguments and experimental results in support of each of these views, and further investigates the contributions of context and thematic constraints in the process of ambiguity resolution. Commentary is also made on the possible hierarchical ordering of difficulty in the treatment of ambiguity, as well as critically related considerations like bias, individual differences, general cognitive strategies for dealing with multiphase representations, and the inherent differences between lexical and syntactic ambiguity.