Related papers: Investigating students' scientific reasoning throu…
Research in cognitive science has provided extensive evidence of human cognitive ability in performing physical reasoning of objects from noisy perceptual inputs. Such a cognitive ability is commonly known as intuitive physics. With…
Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit impressive reasoning abilities, yet their reliance on structured step-by-step processing reveals a critical limitation. In contrast, human cognition fluidly adapts between intuitive, heuristic (System 1)…
Spatial puzzles composed of rigid objects, flexible strings and holes offer interesting domains for reasoning about spatial entities that are common in the human daily-life's activities. The goal of this work is to investigate the automated…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
Inferential decision-making algorithms typically assume that an underlying probabilistic model of decision alternatives and outcomes may be learned a priori or online. Furthermore, when applied to robots in real-world settings they often…
Human reasoning can often be understood as an interplay between two systems: the intuitive and associative ("System 1") and the deliberative and logical ("System 2"). Neural sequence models -- which have been increasingly successful at…
Modeling the creative mathematical sensemaking that characterizes expert thinking in physics is typically a struggle for new learners. To help students learn to reason this way, we created a set of supplemental activities called Physics…
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University -- termed upper-division in the US, many of students' primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop…
Diagnostic reasoning is a key component of many professions. To improve students' diagnostic reasoning skills, educational psychologists analyse and give feedback on epistemic activities used by these students while diagnosing, in…
The Mathematization project investigates students' use of mathematical tools across the undergraduate physics curriculum. As a part of this project, we look at intermediate mechanics students' written homework solutions to understand how…
Although an important goal of introductory physics labs is to train students in scientific reasoning and critical thinking, currently there are no standard tests in physics designed to assess such skills. We are in the process of developing…
Developing and making sense of quantitative models is a core practice of physics. Covariational reasoning -- considering how the changes in one quantity affect changes in another, related quantity -- is an essential part of modeling…
Learning underlies nearly all human behavior and is central to education and education reform. Although recent advances in neuroscience have revealed the fundamental structure of learning processes, these insights have yet to be integrated…
The systematic biases seen in people's probability judgments are typically taken as evidence that people do not reason about probability using the rules of probability theory, but instead use heuristics which sometimes yield reasonable…
What kind of problem-solving instruction can help students apply what they have learned to solve the new and unfamiliar problems they will encounter in the future? We propose that mathematical sensemaking, the practice of seeking coherence…
Symbolic calculators like Mathematica are becoming more commonplace among upper level physics students. The presence of such a powerful calculator can couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. It does not merely…
Machine learning with application to questions in the physical sciences has become a widely used tool, successfully applied to classification, regression and optimization tasks in many areas. Research focus mostly lies in improving the…
We describe the development of a course of quantum mechanics for secondary school designed to address the challenges related to the revision of classical knowledge, to the building of a well-organized knowledge structure on the discipline,…
A variety of activities are commonly used in college physics courses including lab, tutorials, and studio curricula. Instructors must choose among using research-based activities, designing their own activities or modifying existing…
In an information-rich world, people's time and attention must be divided among rapidly changing information sources and the diverse tasks demanded of them. How people decide which of the many sources, such as scientific articles or…