Articles

Teaching students to think spatially through embodied actions: Design principles for learning environments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

Spatial thinking is a vital component of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum. However, to date, broad development of learning environments that target domain-specific spatial think...

Authors: D. DeSutter and M. Stieff

Using analogy to learn about phenomena at scales outside human perception

Understanding and reasoning about phenomena at scales outside human perception (for example, geologic time) is critical across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Thus, devising strong methods t...

Authors: Ilyse Resnick, Alexandra Davatzes, Nora S. Newcombe and Thomas F. Shipley

Visual routines are associated with specific graph interpretations

We argue that people compare values in graphs with a visual routine – attending to data values in an ordered pattern over time. Do these visual routines exist to manage capacity limitations in how many values can...

Authors: Audrey L. Michal and Steven L. Franconeri

The effect of multispectral image fusion enhancement on human efficiency

The visual system can be highly influenced by changes to visual presentation. Thus, numerous techniques have been developed to augment imagery in an attempt to improve human perception. The current paper exami...

Authors: Jennifer L. Bittner, M. Trent Schill, Fairul Mohd-Zaid and Leslie M. Blaha

How sense-of-direction and learning intentionality relate to spatial knowledge acquisition in the environment

People’s impression of their own “sense-of-direction” (SOD) is related to their ability to effectively find their way through environments, such as neighborhoods and cities, but is also related to the speed an...

Authors: Heather Burte and Daniel R. Montello

The effect of abstract versus concrete framing on judgments of biological and psychological bases of behavior

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about th...

Authors: Nancy S. Kim, Samuel G. B. Johnson, Woo-kyoung Ahn and Joshua Knobe

Support of mathematical thinking through embodied cognition: Nondigital and digital approaches

Research on mathematics education has shown that learners’ actions can influence how they think and vice versa. Much of this work has been rooted in the use of manipulatives, gestures, and body movements. Our ...

Authors: Cathy Tran, Brandon Smith and Martin Buschkuehl

Holistic processing of fingerprints by expert forensic examiners

Holistic processing is often characterized as a process by which objects are perceived as a whole rather than a compilation of individual features. This mechanism may play an important role in the development ...

Authors: Macgregor D. Vogelsang, Thomas J. Palmeri and Thomas A. Busey

The importance of search strategy for finding targets in open terrain

A number of real-world search tasks (i.e. police search, detection of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)) require searchers to search exhaustively across open ground. In the present study, we simulated this p...

Authors: Charlotte A. Riggs, Katherine Cornes, Hayward J. Godwin, Simon P. Liversedge, Richard Guest and Nick Donnelly

Think3d!: Improving mathematics learning through embodied spatial training

Spatial thinking skills positively relate to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) outcomes, but spatial training is largely absent in elementary school. Elementary school is a time when children d...

Authors: Heather Burte, Aaron L. Gardony, Allyson Hutton and Holly A. Taylor

Distraction in diagnostic radiology: How is search through volumetric medical images affected by interruptions?

Observational studies have shown that interruptions are a frequent occurrence in diagnostic radiology. The present study used an experimental design in order to quantify the cost of these interruptions during ...

Authors: Lauren H. Williams and Trafton Drew

Language play facilitates language learning: Optimizing the input for gender-like category induction

Gender induction has been claimed to be virtually impossible unless nouns provide reliable semantic or phonological gender-relevant cues. However, learners might exploit syntactic cues, such as definite articl...

Authors: Johanna Bebout and Eva Belke

Remembering that big things sound big: Sound symbolism and associative memory

According to sound symbolism theory, individual sounds or clusters of sounds can convey meaning. To examine the role of sound symbolic effects on processing and memory for nonwords, we developed a novel set of...

Authors: Melissa A. Preziosi and Jennifer H. Coane

Grounded and embodied mathematical cognition: Promoting mathematical insight and proof using action and language

We develop a theory of grounded and embodied mathematical cognition (GEMC) that draws on action-cognition transduction for advancing understanding of how the body can support mathematical reasoning. GEMC propo...

Authors: Mitchell J. Nathan and Candace Walkington

I want to media multitask and I want to do it now: Individual differences in media multitasking predict delay of gratification and system-1 thinking

Media multitasking, the concurrent use of multiple media forms, has been shown to be related to greater self-reported impulsivity and less self-control. These measures are both hallmarks of the need for immedi...

Authors: Dan Schutten, Kirk A. Stokes and Karen M. Arnell

Grounded understanding of abstract concepts: The case of STEM learning

Characterizing the neural implementation of abstract conceptual representations has long been a contentious topic in cognitive science. At the heart of the debate is whether the “sensorimotor” machinery of the...

Authors: Justin C. Hayes and David J. M. Kraemer

Applying math onto mechanisms: mechanistic knowledge is associated with the use of formal mathematical strategies

It is notoriously difficult for people to adaptively apply formal mathematical strategies learned in school to real-world contexts, even when they possess the required mathematical skills. The current study ex...

Authors: Allison S. Liu and Christian D. Schunn

Individual differences predict low prevalence visual search performance

Critical real-world visual search tasks such as radiology and baggage screening rely on the detection of rare targets. When targets are rare, observers search for a relatively short amount of time and have a h...

Authors: Chad Peltier and Mark W. Becker

Timing disownership experiences in the rubber hand illusion

Some investigators of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have suggested that when standard RHI induction procedures are employed, if the rubber hand is experienced by participants as owned, their corresponding bio...

Authors: Timothy Lane, Su-Ling Yeh, Philip Tseng and An-Yi Chang

A different kind of weapon focus: simulated training with ballistic weapons reduces change blindness

Attentional allocation is flexibly altered by action-related priorities. Given that tools – and specifically weapons – can affect attentional allocation, we asked whether training with a weapon or holding a we...

Authors: J. Eric T. Taylor, Jessica K. Witt and Jay Pratt

Gesture enhances learning of a complex statistical concept

Prior research has shown that gestures that co-occur with speech can improve understanding of abstract concepts by embodying the underlying meaning of those concepts, thereby making them more accessible to the...

Authors: Linda Rueckert, Ruth Breckinridge Church, Andrea Avila and Theresa Trejo

Effects of cues to event segmentation on subsequent memory

To remember everyday activity it is important to encode it effectively, and one important component of everyday activity is that it consists of events. People who segment activity into events more adaptively h...

Authors: David A. Gold, Jeffrey M. Zacks and Shaney Flores

Making sense of movement in embodied design for mathematics learning

Embodiment perspectives from the cognitive sciences offer a rethinking of the role of sensorimotor activity in human learning, knowing, and reasoning. Educational researchers have been evaluating whether and h...

Authors: Dor Abrahamson and Arthur Bakker

Supporting dynamic change detection: using the right tool for the task

Detecting task-relevant changes in a visual scene is necessary for successfully monitoring and managing dynamic command and control situations. Change blindness—the failure to notice visual changes—is an impor...

Authors: Benoît R. Vallières, Helen M. Hodgetts, François Vachon and Sébastien Tremblay

The perceptual processing of fused multi-spectral imagery

Multi-spectral imagery can enhance decision-making by supplying multiple complementary sources of information. However, overloading an observer with information can deter decision-making. Hence, it is critical...

Authors: Elizabeth L. Fox and Joseph W. Houpt

The evolution of pace in popular movies

Movies have changed dramatically over the last 100 years. Several of these changes in popular English-language filmmaking practice are reflected in patterns of film style as distributed over the length of movi...

Authors: James E. Cutting

“Special needs” is an ineffective euphemism

Although euphemisms are intended to put a more positive spin on the words they replace, some euphemisms are ineffective. Our study examined the effectiveness of a popular euphemism for persons with disabilities,

Authors: Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Adam R. Raimond, M. Theresa Balinghasay and Jilana S. Boston

Age-related differences in the legibility of degraded text

Aging-related changes in the visual system diminish the capacity to perceive the world with the ease and fidelity younger adults are accustomed to. Among many consequences of this, older adults find that text ...

Authors: Benjamin Wolfe, Jonathan Dobres, Anna Kosovicheva, Ruth Rosenholtz and Bryan Reimer

Multiple event monitoring

Suppose you were monitoring a group of people in order to determine if anyone of them did something suspicious (e.g., putting down a bag) or if any two interacted in a suspicious manner (e.g., trading bags). H...

Authors: Chia-Chien Wu and Jeremy M. Wolfe

Comparison versus reminding

Comparison and reminding have both been shown to support learning and transfer. Comparison is thought to support transfer because it allows learners to disregard non-matching features of superficially differen...

Authors: Jonathan G. Tullis and Robert L. Goldstone

Iconic faces are not real faces: enhanced emotion detection and altered neural processing as faces become more iconic

Iconic representations are ubiquitous; they fill children’s cartoons, add humor to newspapers, and bring emotional tone to online communication. Yet, the communicative function they serve remains unaddressed b...

Authors: L. N. Kendall, Quentin Raffaelli, Alan Kingstone and Rebecca M. Todd

Spatial analogies pervade complex relational reasoning: Evidence from spontaneous gestures

How do people think about complex phenomena like the behavior of ecosystems? Here we hypothesize that people reason about such relational systems in part by creating spatial analogies, and we explore this poss...

Authors: Kensy Cooperrider, Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow

Creating visual explanations improves learning

Many topics in science are notoriously difficult for students to learn. Mechanisms and processes outside student experience present particular challenges. While instruction typically involves visualizations, s...

Authors: Eliza Bobek and Barbara Tversky

Interactivity mitigates the impact of working memory depletion on mental arithmetic performance

Doing long sums in the absence of complementary actions or artefacts is a multistep procedure that quickly taxes working memory; congesting the phonological loop further handicaps performance. In the experimen...

Authors: Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau, Miroslav Sirota and Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau

Mastering algebra retrains the visual system to perceive hierarchical structure in equations

Formal mathematics is a paragon of abstractness. It thus seems natural to assume that the mathematical expert should rely more on symbolic or conceptual processes, and less on perception and action. We argue i...

Authors: Tyler Marghetis, David Landy and Robert L. Goldstone

Design of embodied interfaces for engaging spatial cognition

Aspects of spatial cognition, specifically spatial skills, are strongly correlated with interest and success in STEM courses and STEM-related professions. Because growth in STEM-related industries is expected ...

Authors: Paul G. Clifton, Jack Shen-Kuen Chang, Georgina Yeboah, Alison Doucette, Sanjay Chandrasekharan, Michael Nitsche, Timothy Welsh and Ali Mazalek

Leveling the playing field: Grounding learning with embedded simulations in geoscience

Although desktop simulations can be useful in representing scientific phenomena during inquiry activities, they do not allow students to embody or contextualize the spatial aspects of those phenomena. One lear...

Authors: Allison J. Jaeger, Jennifer Wiley and Thomas Moher

Understanding visual attention in childhood: Insights from a new visual foraging task

A recently developed visual foraging task, involving multiple targets of different types, can provide a rich and dynamic picture of visual attention performance. We measured the foraging performance of 66 chil...

Authors: Inga María Ólafsdóttir, Tómas Kristjánsson, Steinunn Gestsdóttir, Ómar I. Jóhannesson and Árni Kristjánsson

Use-inspired basic research in medical image perception

This journal is dedicated to “use-inspired basic research” where a problem in the world shapes the hypotheses for a study in the laboratory. This brief review presents several examples of “use-inspired basic r...

Authors: Jeremy M. Wolfe

Talking to your car can drive you to distraction

This research examined the impact of in-vehicle information system (IVIS) interactions on the driver’s cognitive workload; 257 subjects participated in a weeklong evaluation of the IVIS interaction in one of t...

Authors: David L. Strayer, Joel M. Cooper, Jonna Turrill, James R. Coleman and Rachel J. Hopman

Looming sounds are perceived as faster than receding sounds

Each year thousands of people are killed by looming motor vehicles. Throughout our evolutionary history looming objects have posed a threat to survival and perceptual systems have evolved unique solutions to c...

Authors: John G. Neuhoff

That’s not what you said the first time: A theoretical account of the relationship between consistency and accuracy of recall

Over multiple response opportunities, recall may be inconsistent. For example, an eyewitness may report information at trial that was not reported during initial questioning—a phenomenon called reminiscence. Such...

Authors: Sarah E. Stanley and Aaron S. Benjamin

Through the Google Glass: The impact of heads-up displays on visual attention

In five experiments, we evaluated how secondary information presented on a heads-up display (HUD) impacts performance of a concurrent visual attention task. To do so, we had participants complete a primary vis...

Authors: Joanna E. Lewis and Mark B. Neider

Relative judgment theory and the mediation of facial recognition: Implications for theories of eyewitness identification

Many in the eyewitness identification community believe that sequential lineups are superior to simultaneous lineups because simultaneous lineups encourage inappropriate choosing due to promoting comparisons a...

Authors: Ryan M. McAdoo and Scott D. Gronlund

Visual search behaviors of association football referees during assessment of foul play situations

It is well reported that expert athletes have refined perceptual-cognitive skills and fixate on more informative areas during representative tasks. These perceptual-cognitive skills are also crucial to perform...

Authors: Jochim Spitz, Koen Put, Johan Wagemans, A. Mark Williams and Werner F. Helsen

ROC curve analyses of eyewitness identification decisions: An analysis of the recent debate

How should the accuracy of eyewitness identification decisions be measured, so that best practices for identification can be determined? This fundamental question is under intense debate. One side advocates fo...

Authors: Caren M. Rotello and Tina Chen

Seeing the unseen? Illusory causal filling in FIFA referees, players, and novices

Humans often falsely report having seen a causal link between two dynamic scenes if the second scene depicts a valid logical consequence of the initial scene. As an example, a video clip shows someone kicking ...

Authors: Alisa Brockhoff, Markus Huff, Annika Maurer and Frank Papenmeier

Bayesian reasoning in residents’ preliminary diagnoses

Whether and when humans in general, and physicians in particular, use their beliefs about base rates in Bayesian reasoning tasks is a long-standing question. Unfortunately, previous research on whether doctors...

Authors: Benjamin Margolin Rottman, Micah T. Prochaska and Roderick Corro Deaño

Learning to interpret topographic maps: Understanding layered spatial information

Novices struggle to interpret maps that show information about continuous dimensions (typically latitude and longitude) layered with information that is inherently continuous but segmented categorically. An ex...

Authors: Kinnari Atit, Steven M. Weisberg, Nora S. Newcombe and Thomas F. Shipley

Rethinking the basic-applied dichotomy

Authors: Jeremy M. Wolfe