In this dissertation, I investigate the effects of a grounded learning experience on college students' mental models of physics systems. The grounded learning experience consisted of a priming stage and an instruction stage, and within each stage, one of two different types of visuo-haptic representation was applied: visuo-gestural simulation (visual modality and gestures) and visuo-haptic simulation (visual modality, gestures, and somatosensory information). A pilot study involving N = 23 college students examined how using different types of visuo-haptic representation in instruction affected people's mental model construction for physics systems. Participants' abilities to construct mental models were operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Findings from this pilot study revealed that, while both simulations significantly improved participants' mental modal construction for physics systems, visuo-haptic simulation was significantly better than visuo-gestural simulation. In addition, clinical interviews suggested that participants' mental model construction for physics systems benefited from receiving visuo-haptic simulation in a tutorial prior to the instruction stage. A dissertation study involving N = 96 college students examined how types of visuo-haptic representation in different applications support participants' mental model construction for physics systems. Participant's abilities to construct mental models were again operationalized through their pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system and their performance on a transfer task involving an advanced physics system. Participants' physics misconceptions were also measured before and after the grounded learning experience. Findings from this dissertation study not only revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was significantly more effective in promoting mental model construction and remedying participants' physics misconceptions than visuo-gestural simulation, they also revealed that visuo-haptic simulation was more effective during the priming stage than during the instruction stage. Interestingly, the effects of visuo-haptic simulation in priming and visuo-haptic simulation in instruction on participants' pretest-to-posttest gain scores for a basic physics system appeared additive. These results suggested that visuo-haptic simulation is effective in physics learning, especially when it is used during the priming stage.

How best to help students master the control of variables skill is a debated topic among educators and psychologists. Contrasting theories as to how it develops parallel contrasting ideas about how it should be taught. Recent studies relying on direct instruction have shown that this approach to teaching the control of variables skill is not successful for academically disadvantaged populations. Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a method of instruction that holds promise in this regard and is explored in the present work as a method for teaching the control of variable skill. Recent empirical studies have proven its effectiveness with the learning and application of declarative knowledge. A tightly controlled experiment was conducted with 6th and 7th grade students. Students were randomly assigned to one of 4 conditions (team, individual, observer, control) following a pretest to determine skill level. These groups varied in level of engagement and social interaction. Students who solved the problem individually, in a team of three, or students that observed an individual solver were compared to a control group. Students were presented with a realistic problem involving causes of teen crime. Records from varying towns reported variable levels and outcomes. Over three sessions students examined the records with the objective of determining which variables did or did not make a difference to teen crime. Following the PBL sessions students in all conditions were administered both immediate and delayed assessments of skill.. Between 75 and 80% of students in the PBL individual and team conditions successfully demonstrated use of the skill. Students who achieved the highest level on both the causal and noncausal variables scored on average 41% higher on the posttest. There was no difference between these two groups in acquisition of the skill. A significant difference was found between the the PBL groups and the two remaining groups (observer and control). Performance of these groups was not significantly different and inferior to that of the PBL groups.. The implications of these findings are considered in a number of different theoretical and applied contexts: a) enhancing students' mastery of the control of variables skill; (b) extending evidence of the effectiveness of a PBL method from declarative to procedural knowledge; (c) active vs. vicarious learning, and (d) individual vs. collaborative reasoning and problem solving.

The role of diagrammatic representations and visual reasoning in mathematics problem solving has been extensively studied. Prior research on visual reasoning and problem solving has provided evidence that the format of a diagram can modulate solvers’ interpretations of the structure and concept of the represented problem information, and influence their problem solving outcomes. In this dissertation, two studies investigated how different types of diagrams influence solvers’ choice of solution strategy and their success rate in solving probability word problems. Participants’ solution strategies suggested that problem solvers tended to construct solutions that reflect the structure of a provided diagram, resulting in different representations of the mathematical structure of the problem. For the present set of problems, a binary tree or a binary table tends to steer solvers to use a sequential-sampling strategy, which defines simple or conditional probabilities for each selection stage and calculates the intersection of these probabilities as the final probability value, using the multiplication rule of probability. This strategy choice is structurally matched with the diagrammatic structure of a binary tree or a binary table, which represents unequally-likely outcomes at the event level. In contrast, an N-by-N (outcome) table steers solvers to use of an outcome-search strategy, which involves searching for the total number of target outcomes and all the possible outcomes at the equally-likely outcome level, and calculates the part-over-the-whole value as the final probability, using the classical definition of probability. This strategy is strongly cued by the N-by-N (outcome) table, because the table structure represents all equally-likely outcomes for a probability problem, and organizes the information so that the target outcomes can be seen as a subset embedded in the whole outcome space. When an N-ary (outcome) tree was provided, choices were split between the two solutions, because the N-ary tree structure not only cues searching for equally-likely outcomes but also organizes the problem information in a sequential-sampling, stage-by-stage way. Furthermore, different diagrams seem to be associated with different patterns of characteristic errors. For example, solving a combinations problem with an N-by-N table tended to elicit erroneous solutions involving miscounting those self-repeated combinations represented by the table’s diagonal cells as valid outcomes. Typical errors associated with the use of a binary tree involved incorrect value definitions of the conditional probability of the outcome of a selection. And the N-ary tree may lead to less successful coordination of all the target outcomes for the studied problems, because the target outcomes were dispersed in the outcome space depicted by the tree, thus not salient. The findings support arguments (e.g., Tversky, Morrison, & Betrancourt, 2002) that in order to promote problem solving success, a diagrammatic representation must be carefully selected or designed so that its structure and content can be well-matched to the problem structure and content. And for computational efficiency, information should be spatially organized so that it can be processed readily and accurately. In addition to the implications for effective diagram design for problem solving activities, the findings also offer important insights for probability education. It is suggested that a variety of diagram types be utilized in the educational activities for novice learners of probability, because they tend to highlight different probability concepts and structures even for the same probability topic.

How does argumentive writing develop as young adolescents examine evidence and engage in rich peer discourse on a succession of four topics (13 class sessions each) over an academic year? Three classes participated, one randomly assigned to a control group and two to experimental groups. In a supporting-evidence experimental group, students only examined evidence that supported their own favored position on a topic. In a mixed-evidence experimental group, students examined multiple types of evidence that supported their position, weakened their position, supported the opposing position, or weakened the opposing position. A control group was not provided any evidence. In individual final essays on each of the topics, both experimental groups included more evidence-based statements and were more successful in using evidence functionally to address a claim, compared to the control group. The experimental groups did not differ from one another in the employment of evidence-based arguments that supported their own position and both groups surpassed the control group in this regard. The mixed-evidence group exceeded the supporting-evidence and control groups in the successful use of evidence that weakened the opposing position; the supporting-evidence group also surpassed the control group in this regard. In use of evidence that supported the opposing position there was an effect of time, with performance improving over time, and an interaction between time and condition with the mixed-evidence group surpassing the control group by topic four. (There was low incidence of, and no significant effects for, use of evidence that weakened own position.) In a final year-end transfer assessment, all students wrote on a novel topic and had access to the same set of mixed evidence. Evidence use on this essay showed a condition effect, with the mixed-evidence intervention group using more evidence than either of the other two groups (who did not differ from one another). However, in contrast to their essay writing on the topics with which they had deep engagement during the intervention itself, these essays by the mixed-evidence group on a novel topic included with little exception only evidence to support their own position. Even though they were able to show their skill in using the range of types of evidence when they had gained familiarity with the topic, the lack of experience with the transfer topic limited their ability to fully implement their skills in using evidence in argument. These findings suggest that students’ argumentive writing, specifically with respect to the use of evidence, benefits from experience with a variety of forms of evidence, including evidence that weakens as well as supports claims. More broadly, these findings support dialogic argumentation as a productive technique in the development of student’s individual argumentive writing.

Though the scientific study of stress is relatively new, not even one hundred years old, there has been robust inquiry and discovery in stress research since its instantiation. Yet, many unanswered questions remain on how specific stressors impact the mind, brain and body. Social threat is a pervasive form of stress for species that are organized in social hierarchies, like humans and some animals. Social evaluative threat (SET), occurring when there is potential for negative evaluation or rejection from others, is a pervasive and important form of stress in humans having many links to stress-related physiological outcomes which in turn have important implications for health outcomes. The brain is a critical component in the mind-brain-body-health connection, but less is known about SET at the neural level. Here in this thesis, there are three studies that characterize the neural circuitry that responds to SET. Using a novel imaging technique, arterial spin labeling, Study 1 asks whether SET-related brain circuitry is modulated by a SET-related trait level vulnerability, Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE). Overall, Study 1 replicated previous work by showing SET-related reactivity in the left pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) and medial periaqueductal gray and extended previous work by showing that changes in the left vMPFC and the right thalamus were predicted by FNE. Using blood oxygenation level-dependent imaging (BOLD), Study 2 asks whether SET influences the brain circuitry on which the formation of relational episodic memory relies. With the use of mediation analysis, it was found that SET impaired relational episodic memory, and that the impairment was a function of activity in the right parahippocampal cortex and bilateral vMPFC. Using BOLD imaging, Study 3 asks whether SET influences the brain circuitry that subserves working memory (WM). With the use of mediation analysis, it was found that SET impaired WM, and that the impairment was a function of activity in bilateral intraparietal sulcus. Links between mind, brain, body and health are discussed throughout this work.

Gestures have been found to be helpful to people in many cognitive and daily activities, such as speaking, counting, learning, and problem solving. However, different gestures benefit people to different degrees, and people use gestures in different ways to assist thinking and learning. From an embodied cognition perspective, gesture is seen as a simulated action. Therefore, to further understand the mechanisms of gesture’s effects on thinking will directly help us harness embodied cognition theories to guide teaching and learning. In the literature, it is widely known that gesture not only reflects thinking, but also actively promotes thinking and learning. However, the mechanisms that account for gesture’s effects on cognition remained obscure to us. To better understand how different types of gestures benefit thinking and learning, Study 1 was conducted with 31 participants to investigate how teaching big (n=15) and small gestures (n=16) as a problem solving strategy influenced the actual gesture use and performance. The results suggested that the small gesture might possibly be a more effective gesture, because people who were taught small and used small gestures had the highest accuracy percentage on the primary task. However, using the small gesture did not significantly lower cognitive load compared to using the big gesture. Based on these findings, Study 2 was conducted with 100 adults to further investigate how teaching different types of gestures influenced learners’ gesture use, performance, learning, and cognitive load. In this study, the participants were randomly assigned to three groups, where they were taught to solve a molecular structure problem using small (n=25), big (n=50), or no gestures (n=25). Then they were left in a quiet room to solve 15 molecule questions independently. Their answers and time spent on each question were recorded. A dual-task paradigm was used as an objective measure of cognitive load, and a NASA Questionnaire was used as a subjective measure of cognitive load. At the end, participants were asked to answer some transfer questions. Throughout the study, all participants’ gestures and body movements were recorded by two cameras. The findings from the two studies suggested that teaching different types of gestures had some influence on people’s gesture use, performance, learning, and cognitive load. Specifically, small gestures taught as a problem-solving strategy were adopted more easily and more effectively used than big gestures and body movements. Questions that were answered through small gestures seemed to have a slightly higher accuracy percentage, but were not necessarily related to lowered cognitive load. The study also found that when people were taught gesture as a problem solving strategy and then asked to use it, they took some time at the very beginning to try and practice, and then gradually transitioned to using no gestures. In both studies, their thinking time, gesture time, gesturing density decreased gradually, without sacrificing accuracy. These findings contributed to both embodied cognition theories and gesture literature, and also shed light on instructional design in an educational setting.

Cognitive processes have been shown to be severely affected by exposure to combat and war. While the negative impact of war on cognitive performance is apparent through numerous soldier narratives, the scientific investigation of this phenomenon is limited. Furthermore, the moderating influence of an individual’s resilience and grit on cognitive functions following combat environments is unknown. Understanding this interaction is essential in further understanding individual cognitive performance. Because the psychological wounds inflicted by combat situations affect individuals’ mental health, studying how such environments influence cognitive processes and performance can improve the training of our soldiers. This dissertation focuses on assessing how combat-like environments influence an individual’s ability to effectively and efficiently reason, and further examines whether an individual’s grit and resilience affect deductive and inductive reasoning in stressful environments. Participants were recruited from a private US military academy. The study used a pretest-posttest mixed design to investigate possible cognitive decrements in individuals’ ability to reason following exposure to war-like environments simulated by immersive and non-immersive technologies. Dependent measures included both inductive and deductive reasoning (as measured by The Letter Sets Test and Overton’s (1990) version of the Wason Selection Task, respectively) by placing participants into the immersive or non-immersive conditions. Self-reported resilience and grit were tested for interaction effects to examine how an individual’s resilience and grit influences an individual’s ability to reason in war-like environments. These findings might give a richer understanding of the ways in which cognitive mechanisms are affected by stressful environments like combat.

As maker spaces, engineering design curricula, and other hands-on active learning tasks become more popular in science classrooms, it is important to consider what students are intended to take away from these tasks. Many teachers use engineering design tasks as a means of teaching students more general science principles. However, few studies have explored exactly how the design of these activities can support more generalized student learning and transfer. Specifically, research has yet to sufficiently investigate the effects of task design components on the learning and transfer processes that can occur during these kinds of tasks. This dissertation explores how various task manipulations and focusing processes affect how well students can learn and transfers science concepts from an engineering design task. I hypothesized that learning goals that focus students on the deep structure of the problem, and contrasting cases that help students notice that deep structure, would aid learning and transfer. In two experimental studies, students were given an engineering design task. The first study was a 2x2 between subjects design where goal where goal (outcome or learning) and reflection (on contrasting cases or the engineering design process) were manipulated. A subsequent second study then gave all students contrasting cases to reflect on, and only the goal manipulation was manipulated. Results showed that learning goals improved student performance on a transfer task that required students to apply the deep structure to a different engineering design task. In the second study, learning goals improved student performance on a transfer test. Transfer performance in both studies was predicted by the ability to notice the deep structure during the reflection on contrasting cases, even though noticing this structure did not differ by goal condition. Students with a learning goal valued the learning resources they were given more during the engineering design activity, and this perceived value of resources was linked to greater learning. A qualitative case study analysis was then conducted using video data from the second study. This case study investigated noticing processes during the building process, partner dialogue, and resource use. This analysis showed how high transfer pairs were better able to focus on the deep structure of the problem. Results suggest that what students noticed didn’t differ much between the various pairs. However, high transfer pairs were better able to focus on the deep structure through establishing a joint understanding of the deep structure, sustaining concentration on that deep structure during the cases reflection, referencing resources to identify features to test, and then systematically testing those features to identify their relevance. These processes are discussed in relation to how they differ in low transfer pairs. This dissertation consists of four chapters: an intro, two standalone journal articles, and a conclusion. The first chapter provides a conceptual framing for the two journal articles, and discusses the findings from these articles in conversation. The second chapter describes the two empirical studies investigating how task goals and contrasting cases affect learning, and transfer from an engineering design task. The third chapter describes the comparative case study of how mechanisms of focusing on the deep structure differ between high and low transfer pairs. Finally, the fourth conclusion chapter discusses the implications of the work from both of these papers.

Emotions are ever-present, transient, and powerful mental states that become especially relevant in social situations. As humans develop, we construct lay intuitions about the nature of emotions and about how emotions function in the mind and body. Specifically, we accrue beliefs about the controllability and malleability of emotions. Entity theorists regard emotions as being relatively fixed and difficult to control. On the other hand, Incremental theorists view emotions as being relatively malleable and controllable. These dichotomous implicit theories are known to propagate different cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects. While implicit theories have been researched in the context of social judgment previously, these studies were limited to implicit theories of psychological attributes, like personality/morality/intelligence, and not theories of mental states, like emotions. In this dissertation, I draw from the various fields of cognitive science, moral philosophy, and social psychology to posit: are Implicit Theories of Emotion related to Social Judgment? And if so, what is the specific relationship between these constructs? Thus, in Study 1, I sought to answer these questions by using Tamir et al. (2017) Implicit Theories of Emotions Scale to measure emotion beliefs and by creating narrative scenarios for a blame attribution task. Study 1 also explored the relationship between Implicit Theories of Emotion and self-perceived emotion regulation tendencies, emotion regulation self-efficacy, and the perceived value of emotion regulation. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that Implicit Theories of Emotions are related to Social Judgment. Specifically, being an Incremental theorist was associated with attributing more blame to actors behaving transgressively than being an Entity theorist. This was a correlative trend reversal from the extant research that studied the relationship between Implicit Theories of Psychological Attributes (such as Personality and Morality) and Judgment. In these studies, Entity theorists tend to attribute more blame to actors behaving transgressively. Study 1 also demonstrated that that being an Incremental theorist was related to frequent use of cognitive reappraisal, having an augmented emotion regulation self-efficacy, and a perception that being able to emotionally regulate is an important human quality. In contrast, Entity theorists were associated with ascribing less blame to actors, less frequent use of cognitive reappraisal, attenuated emotion self-efficacy, and were less likely to believe that emotional self-regulation is an important quality. Study 2 measured subjects’ Implicit Theories of both Emotions and Personality and correlated these variables with blame attribution across different types of narrative scenarios. I was able to replicate the correlations from Study 1, which demonstrated that being an Incremental theorist is associated with placing harsher blame on actors behaving transgressively. Additionally, Study 2 established a causal relationship between Implicit Theories of Emotion and Social Judgment by manipulating subjects’ implicit theories using contrived scientific articles and priming activities. Participants who were taught the Entity theory of emotions attributed more blame to actors behaving transgressively than those who were taught the Incremental theory of emotions. I theorized that when people are taught a strong Entity theory of emotions, the concept of ‘emotions’ becomes more like the concept of a psychological attribute (a stable ‘trait-like’ entity). Therefore, when judging others, ‘person control’ judgment variables (such as intentionality and foreseeability) are not as relevant and these individuals become vulnerable to affect biases and to judgments based on dispositional inferences. Teaching an Incremental theory of emotions, on the other hand, had the effect of attenuating aggressive judgment. These findings have important educational and clinical implications.

People gesture every day and everywhere. They gesture in communication, speech, and for themselves while thinking. A large number of studies have explored the gestures in speech and communication under a variety of conditions. However, gestures for thinking did not draw much attention, yet they are natural and spontaneous behaviors of the human being and can reveal the way people process information. Gestures in thinking are also believed to be beneficial in comprehension and memory. Previous studies have demonstrated that people gesture for spatial thinking tasks such as map reading and text navigation test. Theories on embodied cognition and grounded cognition claim that gestures are needed when people visualize the models in mind. What if the models are not inherently spatial? Will people gesture for abstract information? Or on the contrary, what if the models are already presented in visual spatial form that you can simply copy the image, not build one on your own? Will people gesture for diagrams and maps? If so, what kind of gestures will they use? Will gesture improve comprehension and memory? This work provides evidence that people gesture for not inherently spatial models and spatial models that are presented in diagrammatic format. For information that is not inherently spatial, participants use representational gestures to facilitate the visualization. For instance, a temporal schedule can be visualized into a two-dimension table. For linear order text, people create a list of items that are organized by a certain order. When the spatial and not inherently spatial models are presented in maps or diagrams, representational gestures were still observed and beneficial for the memory test. Due to the limited sample size and other limitations of the lab setting experiment, these studies did not provide strong results that support the hypotheses that gestures help people comprehend and memorize information. Gestures were found beneficial for only one type of stimuli (mechanical systems) and an overall effect on memory test scores across text and diagram stimuli. Even though the effect of gestures was not significant between different types and formats of stimuli, it was in the right direction. Future research with more sensitive measurements could further explore gestures for thinking.