abstract: Virtual Patient Simulations (VPS) are web-based exercises involving simulated patients in virtual environments. This study investigates the utility of VPS for increasing medical student clinical reasoning skills, collaboration, and engagement. Many studies indicate that VPS provide medical students with essential practice in clinical decision making before they encounter real life patients. The utility of a recursive, inductive VPS for increasing clinical decision-making skills, collaboration, or engagement is unknown. Following a design-based methodology, VPS were implemented in two phases with two different cohorts of first year medical students: spring and fall of 2013. Participants were 108 medical students and six of their clinical faculty tutors. Students collaborated in teams of three to complete a series of virtual patient cases, submitting a ballpark diagnosis at the conclusion of each session. Student participants subsequently completed an electronic, 28-item Exit Survey. Finally, students participated in a randomized controlled trial comparing traditional (tutor-led) and VPS case instruction methods. This sequence of activities rendered quantitative and qualitative data that were triangulated during data analysis to increase the validity of findings. After practicing through four VPS cases, student triad teams selected accurate ballpark diagnosis 92 percent of the time. Pre-post test results revealed that PPT was significantly more effective than VPS after 20 minutes of instruction. PPT instruction resulted in significantly higher learning gains, but both modalities supported significant learning gains in clinical reasoning. Students collaborated well and held rich clinical discussions; the central phenomenon that emerged was "synthesizing evidence inductively to make clinical decisions." Using an inductive process, student teams collaborated to analyze patient data, and in nearly all instances successfully solved the case, while remaining cognitively engaged. This is the first design-based study regarding virtual patient simulation, reporting iterative phases of implementation and design improvement, culminating in local theories (petite generalizations) about VPS design. A thick, rich description of environment, process, and findings may benefit other researchers and institutions in designing and implementing effective VPS. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2014

Matrix inductive reasoning has been a popular research topic due to its claimed relationship with the general factor of intelligence. In this research, four subabilities were identified: working memory, rule induction, rule application, and figure detection. This quantitative study examined the relationship between these four subabilites and students' general ability to solve Matrix Reasoning problems. Using tests developed for this research to measure the identified subabilities, the data were collected from 334 Chinese students aged from 12 to 15. Structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the collected data and to evaluate the hypothesized models. Results from the analysis showed that a valid model existed to represent the construct of matrix inductive reasoning. Except for figural detection ability, the other three subabilities had significant direct effects on matrix inductive reasoning ability. Readers should interpret from this result with caution due to the unsatisfactory reliability of the Figure Detection scores. To improve the validity of the interpretation, a new model without the latent variable of figure detection was reexamined. In this analysis, significant relationships still existed from the three subablities to matrix inductive reasoning ability. The strongest relationship existed from working memory ability to matrix reasoning ability, with a standardized coefficient of .52. Effects from rule induction and rule application ability to matrix reasoning dropped to .36 and .34 respectively. These results suggested the important role of working memory on solving inductive reasoning problems. In addition, a significant and substantial indirect path was found that lead from working memory to rule induction to rule application to matrix reasoning. The indirect path indicated that a process existed when students solved Matrix Reasoning tasks.

Text in Afrikaans / Summaries in English and Afrikaans / 'n Onderskeidende kenmerk van die Pinksterbeweging (waarvan die AGS deel is) wat aan die begin van hierdie eeu tot stand gekom het, was die funksionering van die pneumatika (die geestelike gawes in 1 Korintiers 12:7-11 genoem) in die lewens van lidmate en in die liturgie van die erediens. Die opkoms van die Charismatiese beweging vanaf die sestigerjare het hierdie fenomeen opnuut onder die aandag van die kerk gebring. Histories blyk dit dat die funksionering van die pneumatika 'n integrale deel van die bemoeienis van God met die mens was. Sommige van die pneumatika was reeds in die Ou Testament teenwoordig, is prominent in die bediening van Jesus gesien tydens sy vleeslike bestaan, en was kenmerkend van die kerklike lewe in apostoliese tye. In die na-apostoliese tye was daar 'n merkbare afuame hiervan, maar het selfs in die middeleeue nooit heeltemal van die toneel verdwyn het nie. Vanaf die twaalfde eeu was daar weer 'n gestadigde toename in die voorkoms van die pneumatika wat sy klimaks bereik in die wereldwye Pinksterherlewing aan die begin van die twintigste eeu. Die teoretiese teologiese teorie binne die AGS hou die ideaal voor dat die pneumatika steeds op Nuwe Testamentiese wyse (soos deur die AGS geinterpreteer) in die erediens sal funksioneer. 'n Empiriese ondersoek met behulp van 'n situasie-analise (Wallace se model van deduktiewe en induktiewe redenering) toon aan dat daar 'n beduidende verskil tussen ideaal en praktyk is - die pneumatika funksioneer slegs sporadies in die eredienste, terwyl lidmate se betrokkenheid daarby en kennis daarvan dienooreenkomstig van beperkte aard is. n V erstelde praktykteorie word voorgestel. Dit behels 'n model wat die interathanklikheid en relasie aandui tussen Christus as Hoof van die gemeente en Bron van die pneumatika, lidmate en pastore se houding en kennis in verband hiermee, en die ruimte vir en implementering van die pneumatika in die erediens. Fasiliterend tot hierdie interaktiewe proses is die doping in die Heilige Gees, opleidingsprogramme, en kleingroepe. Hierdie praktykteorie is oop vir toekomstige toetsing en verstelling - alles moet lei na die herstel van die funksionering van die pneumatika tot opbou van die gemeente en meerdere verheerliking van God. / A distinctive characteristic of the Pentecostal Movement (of which the AFM is a part), formed at the beginning of this century, was the functioning of the pneumatics (the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11) in the lives of members and in the liturgy of their worship service. The Charismatic Movement arising in the sixties brought this phenomenon under the attention of the church anew. Historically it seems that the pneumatics were a integral part of the activities of God with his people. Some of the pneumatics were already present in the Old Testament, were seen in the earthly ministry ofJesus, and were distinctive of the apostolic period. In the after-apostolic period there was a marked decline in the appearance thereof From the twelfth century onwards there was an increase in the appearance of the pneumatics that climaxed in the worldwide Pentecostal revival at the beginning of this century. The theoretical theological theory in the AFM presents the ideal that the pneumatics would still be operating, as in New Testament times (i.e. as interpreted by the AFM), in their worship services. An empirical survey with the aid of a situation analysis (yv allace' s model of deductive and inductive reasoning was used), shows that there is a marked difference between ideal and practice - the pneumatics are operating sporadically and on a limited scale in the worship services, whilst the participation of the members and their knowledge in this regard are accordingly limited. An improved practice theory is suggested. It entails an interactive model that shows the interdependency and relation between Christ as head of the church and source of the pneumatics, church members and pastors whose attitude and knowledge in connection with this are of utmost importance, and the place for and implementing of the pneumatics in the worship service. Facilitating this interactive process is the baptism in the Holy Spirit, teaching programmes, and small groups. This practice theory is open for future testing and improvement - this must all lead to the restoring of the functioning of the pneumatics for the edification of the church and the greater glorifying of God. / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / Th. D. (Practical Theology)

Text in Afrikaans / Summaries in English and Afrikaans / 'n Onderskeidende kenmerk van die Pinksterbeweging (waarvan die AGS deel is) wat aan die begin van hierdie eeu tot stand gekom het, was die funksionering van die pneumatika (die geestelike gawes in 1 Korintiers 12:7-11 genoem) in die lewens van lidmate en in die liturgie van die erediens. Die opkoms van die Charismatiese beweging vanaf die sestigerjare het hierdie fenomeen opnuut onder die aandag van die kerk gebring. Histories blyk dit dat die funksionering van die pneumatika 'n integrale deel van die bemoeienis van God met die mens was. Sommige van die pneumatika was reeds in die Ou Testament teenwoordig, is prominent in die bediening van Jesus gesien tydens sy vleeslike bestaan, en was kenmerkend van die kerklike lewe in apostoliese tye. In die na-apostoliese tye was daar 'n merkbare afuame hiervan, maar het selfs in die middeleeue nooit heeltemal van die toneel verdwyn het nie. Vanaf die twaalfde eeu was daar weer 'n gestadigde toename in die voorkoms van die pneumatika wat sy klimaks bereik in die wereldwye Pinksterherlewing aan die begin van die twintigste eeu. Die teoretiese teologiese teorie binne die AGS hou die ideaal voor dat die pneumatika steeds op Nuwe Testamentiese wyse (soos deur die AGS geinterpreteer) in die erediens sal funksioneer. 'n Empiriese ondersoek met behulp van 'n situasie-analise (Wallace se model van deduktiewe en induktiewe redenering) toon aan dat daar 'n beduidende verskil tussen ideaal en praktyk is - die pneumatika funksioneer slegs sporadies in die eredienste, terwyl lidmate se betrokkenheid daarby en kennis daarvan dienooreenkomstig van beperkte aard is. n V erstelde praktykteorie word voorgestel. Dit behels 'n model wat die interathanklikheid en relasie aandui tussen Christus as Hoof van die gemeente en Bron van die pneumatika, lidmate en pastore se houding en kennis in verband hiermee, en die ruimte vir en implementering van die pneumatika in die erediens. Fasiliterend tot hierdie interaktiewe proses is die doping in die Heilige Gees, opleidingsprogramme, en kleingroepe. Hierdie praktykteorie is oop vir toekomstige toetsing en verstelling - alles moet lei na die herstel van die funksionering van die pneumatika tot opbou van die gemeente en meerdere verheerliking van God. / A distinctive characteristic of the Pentecostal Movement (of which the AFM is a part), formed at the beginning of this century, was the functioning of the pneumatics (the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11) in the lives of members and in the liturgy of their worship service. The Charismatic Movement arising in the sixties brought this phenomenon under the attention of the church anew. Historically it seems that the pneumatics were a integral part of the activities of God with his people. Some of the pneumatics were already present in the Old Testament, were seen in the earthly ministry ofJesus, and were distinctive of the apostolic period. In the after-apostolic period there was a marked decline in the appearance thereof From the twelfth century onwards there was an increase in the appearance of the pneumatics that climaxed in the worldwide Pentecostal revival at the beginning of this century. The theoretical theological theory in the AFM presents the ideal that the pneumatics would still be operating, as in New Testament times (i.e. as interpreted by the AFM), in their worship services. An empirical survey with the aid of a situation analysis (yv allace' s model of deductive and inductive reasoning was used), shows that there is a marked difference between ideal and practice - the pneumatics are operating sporadically and on a limited scale in the worship services, whilst the participation of the members and their knowledge in this regard are accordingly limited. An improved practice theory is suggested. It entails an interactive model that shows the interdependency and relation between Christ as head of the church and source of the pneumatics, church members and pastors whose attitude and knowledge in connection with this are of utmost importance, and the place for and implementing of the pneumatics in the worship service. Facilitating this interactive process is the baptism in the Holy Spirit, teaching programmes, and small groups. This practice theory is open for future testing and improvement - this must all lead to the restoring of the functioning of the pneumatics for the edification of the church and the greater glorifying of God. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. D. (Practical Theology)

<p dir="ltr">Our ability to understand language and perform reasoning crucially relies on a robust system of semantic cognition (G. L. Murphy, 2002; Rogers & McClelland, 2004; Rips et al., 2012; Lake & Murphy, 2021): processes that allow us to learn, update, and produce inferences about everyday concepts (e.g., cat, chair), properties (e.g., has fur, can be sat on), categories (e.g., mammals, furniture), and relations (e.g., is-a, taller-than). Meanwhile, recent progress in the field of natural language processing (NLP) has led to the development of language models (LMs): sophisticated neural networks that are trained to predict words in context (Devlin et al., 2019; Radford et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2020), and as a result build representations that encode the knowledge present in the statistics of their training environment. These models have achieved impressive levels of performance on a range of tasks that require sophisticated semantic knowledge (e.g. question answering and natural language inference), often even reaching human parity. To what extent do LMs capture the nuances of human conceptual knowledge and reasoning? Centering around this broad question, this dissertation uses core ideas in human semantic cognition as guiding principles and lays down the groundwork to establish effective evaluation and improvement of conceptual understanding in LMs. In particular, I build on prior work that focuses on characterizing what semantic knowledge is made available in the behavior and representations of LMs, and extend it by additionally proposing tests that focus on functional consequences of acquiring basic semantic knowledge.<br><br>I primarily focus on inductive generalization (Hayes & Heit, 2018)—the unique ability of humans to rely on acquired conceptual knowledge to project or generalize novel information—as a context within which we can analyze LMs’ encoding of conceptual knowledge. I do this, since the literature surrounding inductive generalization contains a variety of empirical regularities that map to specific conceptual abstractions and shed light on how humans store, organize and use conceptual knowledge. Before explicitly analyzing LMs for these empirical regularities, I test them on two other contexts, which also feature the role of inductive generalization. First I test the extent to which LMs demonstrate typicality effects—a robust finding in human categorization literature where certain members of a category are considered to be more central to the category than are others. Specifically, I test the behavior 19 different LMs on two contexts where typicality effects modulate human behavior: 1) verification of sentences expressing taxonomic category membership, and 2) projecting novel properties from individual category members to the entire category. In both tests, LMs achieved positive but modest correlations with human typicality ratings, suggesting that they can to a non-trivial extent capture subtle differences between category members. Next, I propose a new benchmark to test the robustness of LMs in attributing properties to everyday concepts, and in making inductive leaps to endow properties to novel concepts. On testing 31 different LMs for these capacities, I find that while they can correctly attribute properties to everyday concepts and even predict the properties of novel concepts in simple settings, they struggle to do so robustly. Combined with the analyses of typicality effects, these results suggest that the ability of LMs to demonstrate impressive conceptual knowledge and reasoning behavior can be explained by their sensitivities to shallow predictive cues. When these cues are carefully controlled for, LMs show critical failures in demonstrating robust conceptual understanding. Finally, I develop a framework that can allow us to characterize the extent to which the distributed representations learned by LMs can encode principles and abstractions that characterize inductive behavior of humans. This framework operationalizes inductive generalization as the behavior of an LM after its representations have been partially exposed (via gradient-based learning) to novel conceptual information. To simulate this behavior, the framework uses LMs that are endowed with human-elicited property knowledge, by training them to evaluate the truth of sentences attributing properties to concepts. I apply this framework to test four different LMs on 13 different inductive phenomena documented for humans (Osherson et al., 1990; Heit & Rubinstein, 1994). Results from these analyses suggest that building representations from word distributions can successfully allow the encoding of many abstract principles that can guide inductive behavior in the models—principles such as sensitivity to conceptual similarity, hierarchical organization of categories, reasoning about category coverage, and sample size. At the same time, the tested models also systematically failed at demonstrating certain phenomena, showcasing their inability to demonstrate pragmatic reasoning, preference to rely on shallow statistical cues, and lack of context sensitivity with respect to high-level intuitive theories.</p>

The present study sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of a dynamic approach to aptitude testing. It was proposed that it is not always appropriate to use conventional aptitude tests to predict future academic success in the South African context. The study posited the belief that an alternative testing format could be facilitated by using a test-train-test procedure within a learning potential paradigm. The learning potential paradigm as formulated through Vygotskian and Feuersteinian theory is operationalised in the form of a Newtest Battery. The Newtest procedure is in direct contrast to traditional approaches to aptitude testing. The latter approaches both implicitly and explicitly adopt a static view of ability, whereas the Newtest approach focuses on the learning potential of the testee, as well as consequent performance. However, the assessment of learning potential poses problems of its own. Modifications were introduced to ensure that the Newtest format is both appropriate and psychometrically defensible. The construction and evaluation of the Newtest Battery is described. A sample of both advantaged and disadvantaged students were tested on a battery of traditional aptitude tests. This group of students was contrasted with another sample of both advantaged and disadvantaged students who undertook the Newtest Battery in the modified dynamic testing format. The traditional measures of aptitude were found to be invalid predictors of university success. Matric results showed a relationship with academic success for both groups. The Newtest measures enhanced the prediction of academic success for both advantaged and disadvantaged students. The Deductive Reasoning dynamic measure was found to be a valid predictor of university success for the disadvantaged students. The results thus successfully extend the learning potential paradigm into the realm of group aptitude testing. The validity of traditional aptitude test measures has been brought into question by the findings of the study. The study points the way forward to a more equitable and relevant aptitude testing procedure. Finally, it was shown that the testing environment forms part of the socio-educational context. Personnel involved in the administration of aptitude tests are given guidelines \vi th the aim of equalising the test process. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

The present study sets out to evaluate the effectiveness of a dynamic approach to aptitude testing. It was proposed that it is not always appropriate to use conventional aptitude tests to predict future academic success in the South African context. The study posited the belief that an alternative testing format could be facilitated by using a test-train-test procedure within a learning potential paradigm. The learning potential paradigm as formulated through Vygotskian and Feuersteinian theory is operationalised in the form of a Newtest Battery. The Newtest procedure is in direct contrast to traditional approaches to aptitude testing. The latter approaches both implicitly and explicitly adopt a static view of ability, whereas the Newtest approach focuses on the learning potential of the testee, as well as consequent performance. However, the assessment of learning potential poses problems of its own. Modifications were introduced to ensure that the Newtest format is both appropriate and psychometrically defensible. The construction and evaluation of the Newtest Battery is described. A sample of both advantaged and disadvantaged students were tested on a battery of traditional aptitude tests. This group of students was contrasted with another sample of both advantaged and disadvantaged students who undertook the Newtest Battery in the modified dynamic testing format. The traditional measures of aptitude were found to be invalid predictors of university success. Matric results showed a relationship with academic success for both groups. The Newtest measures enhanced the prediction of academic success for both advantaged and disadvantaged students. The Deductive Reasoning dynamic measure was found to be a valid predictor of university success for the disadvantaged students. The results thus successfully extend the learning potential paradigm into the realm of group aptitude testing. The validity of traditional aptitude test measures has been brought into question by the findings of the study. The study points the way forward to a more equitable and relevant aptitude testing procedure. Finally, it was shown that the testing environment forms part of the socio-educational context. Personnel involved in the administration of aptitude tests are given guidelines \vi th the aim of equalising the test process. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

Design fixation is a phenomenon experienced by professional designers and engineering design students that stifles creativity and innovation through discouraging ideational productivity, fluency and diversity. During the design idea and concept generation phase of the design process, a reliance on perceptual surface feature similarities between design artefacts increases the likelihood of design fixation leading to design duplication. Psychologists, educators and designers have become increasingly interested in creative idea generation processes that encourage innovation and entrepreneurial outcomes. However, there is a notable lack of collaborative research between psychology, education and engineering design particularly on inductive reasoning of undergraduate engineering students in higher education. The data gathered and analysed for this study provides an insight into property inference decision-making preferences and decision switching (SWITCH) patterns of engineering undergraduates under similarity-based inductive judgements [SIM] and category-based inductive judgements [CAT]. For this psychology experiment, property induction tasks were devised using abstract shapes in a triad configuration. Participants (N = 180), on an undergraduate engineering programme in London, observed a triad of shapes with a target shape more similar-looking to one of two given shapes. Factors manipulated for this experiment included category alignment, category group, property type and target shape. Despite the cognitive development and maturation stage of undergraduate engineers (adults) in higher education, this study identified similarity-based inductive judgements [SIM] to play a significant role during inductive reasoning relative to the strength of category-based inductive judgements [CAT]. In addition to revealing the property inference decision-making preferences of a sample of undergraduate engineers (N = 180), two types of switch classification and two types of non-switch classification (SWITCH) were found and named SIM_NCC, SIM-Salient, Reverse_CAT and CAT_Switching. These different classifications for property inference switching and non-switching presented a more complex pattern of decision-making driven by the relative strength between similarity-based inductive judgements [SIM] and category-based inductive judgements [CAT]. The conditions that encouraged CAT_Switching is of particular interest to design because it corresponds to inference decision switching that affirms the sharing of properties between dissimilar-looking shapes designated as category members, i.e., in a conflicting category alignment condition (CoC). For CAT_Switching, this study found a significant interaction between a particular set of conditions that significantly increased the likelihood of property inference decisions switching to affirm the sharing of properties between dissimilar-looking shapes. Stimuli conditions that combined a conflicting category alignment condition (where dissimilar-looking shapes belong to the same category) with category specificity, a causal property and a target shape with merged (or blended) perceptual surface features significantly increased the likelihood of a property inference decision switching. CAT_Switching has important implications for greater ideational productivity, fluency and diversity to discourage design fixation within the conceptual design space. CAT_Switching conditions could encourage more creative design transformations with alternative design functions through inductive inferences that generalise between dissimilar artefact designs. The findings from this study led to proposing a Cartesian view of the concept design space to represent the possibilities for greater movements through flexible and expanding category boundaries to encourage conceptual combinations, greater ideational fluency and greater ideational diversity within a configuration design space. This study has also created a platform for further research into property inference decision-making, ideational diversity and category boundary flexibility under stimuli conditions that encourage designers and design students to make inductive generalisations between dissimilar domains of knowledge through a greater emphasis on causal relations and semantic networks.