Search results for "logical reasoning"
showing 10 items of 28 documents
Practicing logical reasoning through Drosophila segmentation gene mutants.
2021
Laboratory practical sessions are critical to scientific training in biology but usually fail to promote logical and hypothesis-driven reasoning and rely heavily on the teacher's instructions. This paper describes a 2-day laboratory practicum in which students prepare and analyze larval cuticle preparations of Drosophila segmentation gene mutant strains. Embryonic segmentation involves three major classes of genes according to their loss-of-function phenotypes: the establishment of broad regions by gap genes, the specification of the segments by the pair-rule genes, and the compartments within segments by the segment polarity genes. Students are asked to sort undefined segmentation mutants …
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) for the improvement of cognitive abilities. Premilinary findings
2021
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to students aging from 6 to 12. It consists of a series of exercises of different types (verbal inferences, understanding of graphs and tables, series of digits, etc.) and increasing difficulty, properly devised to activate and train the abilities of logical reasoning. Hopefully, such an enhancement should result in an improvement of academic achievements, especially in low proficiency learner students. Here we report on a study carried out on a large cohort of fifth-grade students. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of LIEP in improving students’ cognitive abilities and abstract reasoning.
Metaphors in the mirror: The influence of teaching metaphors in a medical education programme
2016
Medical students often face problems in using and understanding metaphors when communicating with a patient or reading a scientific paper. These figures of speech constitute an interpretative problem and students need key strategies to facilitate metaphor comprehension and disambiguation of meaning. This article examines how medical students' strategies of metaphor comprehension could be improved by specific teaching on metaphors using a Cognitive Linguistics approach. Medical students' ability to comprehend mirror neuron metaphors was assessed comparing the performance of students who did not receive any instruction about metaphoric extension strategies after a lesson on mirror neurons wit…
Analogical reasoning and aging: the processing speed and inhibition hypothesis.
2014
This study was designed to investigate the effect of aging on analogical reasoning by manipulating the strength of semantic association (LowAssoc or HighAssoc) and the number of distracters' semantic analogies of the A:B::C:D type and to determine which factors might be responsible for the age-related differences on analogical reasoning by testing two different theoretical frameworks: the inhibition hypothesis and the speed mediation hypothesis. We compared young adults and two groups of aging people (old and old-old) with word analogies of the A:B::C:D format. Results indicate an age-related effect on analogical reasoning, this effect being greatest with LowAssoc analogies. It was not asso…
The popularization of plate tectonics: presenting the concepts of dynamics and time
1996
There have been many attempts to describe and represent the theory of plate tectonics to laypeople. In the context of a study conducted at the request of a museum, we have tried to determine how the concepts of both geological time and the movements of the plates have been reformulated. After having systematically studied in detail publications aimed at more or less educated readers, we have selected a corpus of twelve articles from nine different magazines or journals. Among the different means of expression used by the popularizers, rhetorical figures constitute a significant resource. Procedures based on analogy (metaphor, comparison, analogical reasoning) were brought together in a sing…
K-means Clustering to Study How Student Reasoning Lines Can Be Modified by a Learning Activity Based on Feynman’s Unifying Approach
2017
Background:Research in Science Education has shown that often students need to learn how to identify differences and similarities between descriptive and explicative models. The development and use of explicative skills in the field of thermal science has always been a difficult objective to reach. A way to develop analogical reasoning is to use in Science Education unifying conceptual frameworks.Material and methods:A questionnaire containing six open-ended questions on thermally activated phenomena was administered to the students before instruction. A second one, similar but focused on different physical content was administered after instruction. Responses were analysed using k-means Cl…
The Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices in Healthy Children: A Qualitative Approach
2020
Studies on the structure of intelligence refer to two main theoretical models: the first one considers intelligence as a unitary construct, the second one assumes the involvement of a plurality of factors. Studies using Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM) tasks have often highlighted the involvement of different cognitive abilities and brain structures, but in the clinical setting, RCPM measurement continues to be used as a single score. The current study aimed to analyse the RCPM performance following qualitative clustering, in order to provide an interpretation of the intelligence assessment through a factorial criterion. The RCPM have been administered to a large group of typica…
Counter-Clock World: How Planning Backwards Helps in Moving Forward in Collapsing Environments
2021
Research on corporate decline and turnarounds as well as the strategic use of history have so far remained two separate research fields. We integrate these two fields with a thought experiment, proposing ways in which strategists can work with, and through time in managing and turning around declines. Our thought experiment involves two very different types of analogies: a textual one from Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novels, on the one hand, and a visual one from Einsteinian relativity science, on the other hand. Inspired and informed by these different conceptualizations of the past and time, we develop four forms of backward strategizing to successfully manage a struggling corporatio…
Integrating epistemic knowledge and logical reasoning skills in adult cognitive development 1
2020
The Notion of Eikos Within Conspiracy Theories. A Rhetorical Analysis
2022
Based on the analysis of one specific conspiracy theory, this paper will explore, from the rhetorical framework, the antic concept of likelihood [eikos]. Indeed, we believe that the rhetorical approach could allow us, on a larger scale, to (re)question, in the light of contemporary challenges, the complex relationship we have with the notions of rationality and truth. More precisely, to proceed with the rhetorical analysis, we will mobilise two types of logical reasoning: first, “the logic of the pot” argument from pragmatic logic and second, the logic of amplification and poetization of discourse. This will allow us to draw some comparisons between conspiracist speeches and, respectively, …