Peer-reviewed presentation exchange in an undergraduate classroom.

Reading, presenting, and discussing peer-reviewed scientific reports, case studies, and reviews are essential to modern biology education. These exercises model crucial aspects of students' future professional activities and introduce the students to the current scientific concepts and methodology, data analysis, and presentation. A common format for working with primary literature is a journal club: presenting and discussing research literature in front of peers, which has many merits. However, in large modern classrooms, this format is very time-consuming and stressful, especially since presenting is not a commonly taught skill. We argue that student groups for whom the current educational and professional paradigms present a challenge due to a historical lack of representation or wellness issues are deprived of a key educational opportunity. To solve this problem, we formulated an approach called Peer-Reviewed Presentation Exchange (PRPE), which focuses on collaborative analysis, presentation, and review of research literature that includes (i) voice-narrated research presentations by students, (ii) checklists generated by the instructor to establish expectations for an informative presentation or review, and (iii) presentation assignment and peer review process. We tested this approach in an undergraduate cell biology class over 3 years. Pre- and post-assessments show significant gains in self-efficacy and knowledge not only by students who presented but also by the students who reviewed the presentations; therefore, peer-reviewed presentations are an effective tool for learning. Exit surveys show that the approach is seen as beneficial by most students. Our approach allows every student to speak and ask questions in a low-stress creative environment. It is an excellent customizable, trackable, and scalable low-stakes assessment tool.

Analogy as a strategy for supporting complex problem solving under uncertainty.

Complex problem solving in naturalistic environments is fraught with uncertainty, which has significant impacts on problem-solving behavior. Thus, theories of human problem solving should include accounts of the cognitive strategies people bring to bear to deal with uncertainty during problem solving. In this article, we present evidence that analogy is one such strategy. Using statistical analyses of the temporal dynamics between analogy and expressed uncertainty in the naturalistic problem-solving conversations among scientists on the Mars Rover Mission, we show that spikes in expressed uncertainty reliably predict analogy use (Study 1) and that expressed uncertainty reduces to baseline levels following analogy use (Study 2). In addition, in Study 3, we show with qualitative analyses that this relationship between uncertainty and analogy is not due to miscommunication-related uncertainty but, rather, is primarily concentrated on substantive problem-solving issues. Finally, we discuss a hypothesis about how analogy might serve as an uncertainty reduction strategy in naturalistic complex problem solving.

Storytelling as a Tool to Enhance Conceptual Knowledge in Cell Biology.

Research in a range of disciplines shows that many undergraduate students struggle with aggregating complex knowledge components into a complete picture and incorporating research literature into the learning process. To build and improve on the practice of project-based approaches to teaching cell biology, we transformed an undergraduate cell biology class by introducing the concept of storylines that are selected by groups of students for development throughout the semester. Each storyline integrates molecular and organellar concepts discussed during the semester into the cell- and tissue-level functions, conditions, or diseases shared and discussed during online poster sessions. Three semester-long studies conducted with an undergraduate cell biology class utilized pre- and postassignment assessments of self-efficacy and content knowledge (administered three times during the semester), and these studies showed that both parameters were significantly improved following each assignment. Specifically, student self-efficacy showed large gains, preassignment to postassignment (pre-post) [F (1,13) = 47.8, P < .001], and content knowledge showed moderate pre-post gains [F (1,12) = 14.5, P < 0.002]. Attitude surveys administered at the end of the semester suggest that the approach is seen as beneficial and enriching. We conclude that it is possible to integrate multiple levels of material in a complicated class by using storytelling and that such integration is positive and useful.

Corrigendum: Effects of Trained Peer vs. Teacher Feedback on EFL Students' Writing Performance, Self-Efficacy, and Internalization of Motivation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.788474.].

The neural correlates of strategic reading comprehension: cognitive control and discourse comprehension.

Neuroimaging studies of text comprehension conducted thus far have shed little light on the brain mechanisms underlying strategic learning from text. Thus, the present study was designed to answer the question of what brain areas are active during performance of complex reading strategies. Reading comprehension strategies are designed to improve a reader's comprehension of a text. For example, self-explanation is a complex reading strategy that enhances existing comprehension processes. It was hypothesized that reading strategies would involve areas of the brain that are normally involved in reading comprehension along with areas that are involved in strategic control processes because the readers are intentionally using a complex reading strategy. Subjects were asked to reread, paraphrase, and self-explain three different texts in a block design fMRI study. Activation was found in both executive control and comprehension areas, and furthermore, learning from text was associated with activation in the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC). The authors speculate that the aPFC may play a role in coordinating the internal and external modes of thought that are necessary for integrating new knowledge from texts with prior knowledge.

Assessing group-level participation in fluid teams: testing a new metric.

Participation is an important factor in team success. We propose a new metric of participation equality that provides an unbiased estimate across groups of different sizes and across those that change size over time. Using 11 h of transcribed utterances from informal, fluid, colocated workgroup meetings, we compared the associations of this metric with coded equality of participation and standard deviation. While coded participation and our metric had similar patterns of findings, standard deviation had a somewhat different pattern, suggesting that it might lead to incorrect assessments with fluid teams. Exploratory analyses suggest that, as compared with mixed-age/status groups, groups of younger faculty had more equal participation and that the presence of negative affect words was associated with more dominated participation. Future research can take advantage of this new metric to further theory on team processes in both face-to-face and distributed settings.

Effects of Trained Peer vs. Teacher Feedback on EFL Students' Writing Performance, Self-Efficacy, and Internalization of Motivation.

This study investigated the longer-term impacts (i.e., into the next semester) of trained peer feedback in comparison with teacher feedback on students' writing development and writing motivation. Sections of an EFL writing course were randomly assigned to either teacher feedback or trained peer feedback conditions across two semesters. In the first semester, during their writing class, students either received training in how to implement peer feedback or simply studied models of writing (that were also used in the training work). In the second semester, students either received teacher or peer feedback across multiple assignments. Writing competence, writing self-efficacy, and writing self-regulated learning were assessed at the beginning and end of the second semester. Trained peer feedback and teacher feedback had similar positive effects on the improvement of writing competence and writing self-efficacy. However, trained peer feedback led to a significant enhancement of students' autonomous motivation relative to no such growth from teacher feedback.

What Should Cognitive Science Look Like? Neither a Tree Nor Physics.

While pointing out important features of cognitive science, Núñez et al. (2019) also argue prematurely for the end of cognitive science. I discuss problematic analytic features in the application of hierarchical cluster analysis to journal citation data. On the conceptual side, I argue that the research programs framework of Lakatos may not be so wisely applied to cognitive science. Further, the diversity of structure in cognitive science departments may represent a rational, strategic adaptation by an interdisciplinary department to cognitive and other resource challenges rather than the sign of low progress on a discipline.

Design-based learning for biology: Genetic engineering experience improves understanding of gene expression.

Gene expression is a difficult topic for students to learn and comprehend, at least partially because it involves various biochemical structures and processes occurring at the microscopic level. Designer Bacteria, a design-based learning (DBL) unit for high-school students, applies principles of DBL to the teaching of gene expression. Throughout the 8-week unit, students genetically engineer bacteria to meet a need in their own lives. Through a series of investigations, discussions, and design modifications, students learn about the molecular processes and structures involved in gene expression, and how these processes and structures are dependent upon various environmental variables. This article is intended to describe the Designer Bacteria unit and report preliminary results of student progress and performance on pre-unit and post-unit assessments. Teacher experiences and student progress indicate that Designer Bacteria successfully taught core aspects of gene expression through DBL.

The nature of science identity and its role as the driver of student choices.

BACKGROUND: A major concern in science education involves the under-representation of many groups in science and technology fields, especially by gender (Brotman and Moore, J Res Sci Teach 45:971-1002, 2008; Clark Blickenstaff, Gend Educ 17:369-386, 2006), stemming from an intersection of systemic obstacles (Cantú, Equity Excell Educ 45:472-487, 2012; Rosa and Mensah, Phys Rev Phys Educ Res 12:020113, 2016). Research on persistence of minoritized populations within science trajectories has often highlighted identity as particularly important (Archer et al., Sci Educ 94:617-639, 2010; Barton and Calabrese, Am Educ Res J 50:37-75, 2007; Barton et al., Am Educ Res J 50:37-75, 2013; Merolla and Serpe, Soc Psychol Educ 16:575-597, 2013). RESULTS: This study quantitatively investigated the nature of science identity in over 1300 seventh and ninth grade students from a range of urban US public schools using survey data on science identity, choice preferences, and optional science experiences. Factor analyses validated this conceptualization of science identity as integrating perceived internal and external identity components. Regression analyses revealed the importance of this conceptualization of science identity for driving students' choices at this crucial developmental period. Furthermore, science identity had a complex differential function in supporting students' optional science choices by gender. CONCLUSIONS: The novel contribution to the science identity field highlights the specific multi-component ways in which students endorse science identity in middle school and early high school. There was an important finding that science identity has a complex differential function in supporting student's optional science choices by gender. Thus, at this age, developing a strong science identity is especially critical for girls.

The integration between nonsymbolic and symbolic numbers: Evidence from an EEG study.

Introduction: Adults can represent numerical information in nonsymbolic and symbolic formats and flexibly switch between the two. While some studies suggest a strong link between the two number representation systems (e.g., Piazza, Izard, Pinel, Le Bihan, & Dehaene, 2004 Neuron, 44(3), 547), other studies show evidence against the strong-link hypothesis (e.g., Lyons, Ansari, & Beilock, 2012 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(4), 635). This inconsistency could arise from the relation between task demands and the closeness of the link between the two number systems. Methods: We used a passive viewing task and event-related potentials (ERP) to examine the temporal dynamics of the implicit integration between the nonsymbolic and symbolic systems. We focused on two ERP components over posterior scalp sites that were found to be sensitive to numerical distances and ratio differences in both numerical formats: a negative component that peaks around 170 ms poststimulus (N1) and a positive component that peaks around 200 ms poststimulus (P2p). We examined adults' (n = 55) ERPs when they were passively viewing simultaneously presented dot quantities and Arabic numerals (i.e., nonsymbolic and symbolic numerical information) in the double-digit range. For each stimulus, the nonsymbolic and symbolic content either matched or mismatched in number. We also asked each participant to estimate dot quantities in a separate behavioral task and observed that they tended to underestimate the actual dot quantities, suggesting a need to adjust the match between nonsymbolic and symbolic information to reflect the perceived quantity of the nonsymbolic information. Results: Using this adjustment, participants showed greater N1 and P2p amplitudes when perceived dot quantities matched Arabic numerals than when there was a mismatch. However, no differences were found between the unadjusted match and mismatch conditions. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that adults rapidly integrate nonsymbolic and symbolic formats of double-digit numbers, but evidence of such integration is best observed when the perceived (rather than veridical) dot quantity is considered.

Private Speech and executive functioning among high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders.

Private speech used by high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) (n = 33) during two executive functioning tasks was compared to that of typically developing children (n = 28), and children with ADHD (n = 21). Children with ASD were as likely as others to talk to themselves and their speech was similarly relevant and likely to appear in moments of task difficulty. Unlike others, children with ASD were more likely to get items correct when they were talking than when they were silent. Group differences in performance were observed when children were silent but not when children were talking. Findings suggest that autistic children talk to themselves in relevant ways during problem-solving and that such speech is helpful in normalizing their executive performance relative to controls.

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 explores whether a problem context's mechanism can act as an "embodied analogy" onto which abstract mathematical concepts can be applied, leading to more frequent use of formal mathematical strategies. Participants were asked to program a robot to navigate a maze and to create a navigation strategy that would work for differently sized robots. We compared the strategy complexity of participants with high levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot against participants with low levels of mechanistic knowledge about the robot. Mechanistic knowledge was significantly associated with the frequency and complexity of the mathematical strategies used by participants, suggesting that learning to recognize a problem context's mechanism may promote independent mathematical problem solving in applied contexts.

How personal, behavioral, and environmental factors predict working in STEMM vs non-STEMM middle-skill careers.

BACKGROUND: Much of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) education policy and research centers around developing the upper levels of the STEMM workforce sector. However, there are many positions in this workforce, "middle-skill careers," that are largely responsible for executing the innovations and are largely ignored in STEMM education research. RESULTS: Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, we found differences in what predicts STEMM-related vs. non-STEMM careers across skill-level. For instance, underrepresented minorities and those exhibiting school transgressions are more likely to be working in middle-skill STEMM fields than in middle-skill non-STEMM fields as adults; the same is not true of the high-skill workforce. CONCLUSIONS: One-size-fits-all policies for broadening participation in the STEMM workforce across skill-level are unlikely to be successful. Further, programs that are designed to generate wonder and fascination with STEMM content may be successful in attracting more girls. However, to promote greater participation of individuals from traditionally underrepresented ethnic minority groups in STEMM, programs that support choices toward higher educational attainment, specifically four-year college degree attainment, are more likely to be successful.

Comprehension through explanation as the interaction of the brain's coherence and cognitive control networks.

Discourse comprehension processes attempt to produce an elaborate and well-connected representation in the reader's mind. A common network of regions including the angular gyrus, posterior cingulate, and dorsal frontal cortex appears to be involved in constructing coherent representations in a variety of tasks including social cognition tasks, narrative comprehension, and expository text comprehension. Reading strategies that require the construction of explicit inferences are used in the present research to examine how this coherence network interacts with other brain regions. A psychophysiological interaction analysis was used to examine regions showing changed functional connectivity with this coherence network when participants were engaged in either a non-inferencing reading strategy, paraphrasing, or a strategy requiring coherence-building inferences, self-explanation. Results of the analysis show that the coherence network increases in functional connectivity with a cognitive control network that may be specialized for the manipulation of semantic representations and the construction of new relations among these representations.

The importance of iteration in creative conceptual combination.

Theories of creative conceptual combination hypothesize that, to generate highly creative concepts, one should attempt to combine source concepts that are very different from each other. While lab studies show a robust link between far combinations and increased novelty of concepts, empirical evidence that far combinations lead to more creative concepts (i.e., both more novel and of higher quality) is mixed. Drawing on models of the creative process, we frame conceptual combination as a divergent process, and hypothesize that iteration is necessary to convert far combinations into creative concepts. We trace conceptual genealogies of many hundreds of concepts proposed for a dozen different problems on a large-scale Web-based innovation platform, and model the effects of combination distance on creative outcomes of concepts. The results are consistent with our predictions: (1) direct effects of far combinations have a mean zero effect, and (2) indirect effects of far combinations (i.e., building on concepts that themselves build on far combinations) have more consistently positive effects. This pattern of effects is robust across problems on the platform. These findings lend clarity to theories of creative conceptual combination, and highlight the importance of iteration for generating creative concepts.

Effect of anesthetic management on resource utilization and outcome in carotid endarterectomy patients.

Several well-controlled randomized trials have demonstrated the efficacy of carotid endarterectomy for prevention of stroke in patients with symptomatic, severe (> 70%) internal carotid artery stenosis. This benefit has resulted in a significant increase in the number of carotid endarterectomies performed annually. However, the benefit of carotid endarterectomy depends on low perioperative stroke, death and complication rates. This fact has drawn the attention of third party payers and there is considerable emphasis on further decreasing complications and medical expenditures. Implementations of clinical pathways and preventive strategies to obviate complications that increase length of stay and hospital costs have been critical. Although the incidence of perioperative stroke has decreased considerably over the recent years, cardiac and other systemic complications have remained relatively stable. Even though there is no unequivocal evidence of one anesthesia technique over another, several trials have suggested suggested improved clinical outcomes and economic benefit for carotid endarterectomies performed under regional anesthesia. This article describes a study at West Virginia University to assess the role of anesthetic management upon resource utilization and outcome in patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy.

A framework for unpacking cognitive benefits of distributed complex visual displays.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of spatially stacked (i.e., when information sources are presented side-by-side) versus distributed (i.e., when information sources are sitting on top of one another with only the top source fully visible) organizations of information? We introduce a new theoretical decomposition of these advantages and disadvantages (information internalization, information access, and information externalization costs), along with a new analytic technique for measuring each theoretical aspects using eye tracking. Thirty-eight scientists-in-training solved a complex data interpretation problem using either a distributed or a stacked display. Display format influenced all 3 factors, but in opposing ways: stacked displays increase internalization and externalization costs but decrease information access costs. The framework reveals trade-offs among the 3 factors that can be precisely characterized to guide interface user design and optimization.

Is the link from working memory to analogy causal? No analogy improvements following working memory training gains.

Analogical reasoning has been hypothesized to critically depend upon working memory through correlational data, but less work has tested this relationship through experimental manipulation. An opportunity for examining the connection between working memory and analogical reasoning has emerged from the growing, although somewhat controversial, body of literature suggests complex working memory training can sometimes lead to working memory improvements that transfer to novel working memory tasks. This study investigated whether working memory improvements, if replicated, would increase analogical reasoning ability. We assessed participants' performance on verbal and visual analogy tasks after a complex working memory training program incorporating verbal and spatial tasks. Participants' improvements on the working memory training tasks transferred to other short-term and working memory tasks, supporting the possibility of broad effects of working memory training. However, we found no effects on analogical reasoning. We propose several possible explanations for the lack of an impact of working memory improvements on analogical reasoning.