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Additional file 3: Appendix C. To determine if men and women could be included in the same factor analysis, we conducted tests for both strong and weak measurement invariance.

Additional file 1: Appendix A. Original Survey Items. Italicized items were removed during validation.

There is a significant underrepresentation of women in many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors and careers. Prior research has shown that self-efficacy can be a critical factor in student learning, and that there is a tendency for women to have lower self-efficacy than men in STEM disciplines. This study investigates gender differences in the relationship between engineering students' self-efficacy and course grades in foundational courses. By focusing on engineering students, we examined these gender differences simultaneously in four STEM disciplines (mathematics, engineering, physics, and chemistry) among the same population. Using survey data collected longitudinally at three time points and course grade data from five cohorts of engineering students at a large US-based research university, effect sizes of gender differences are calculated using Cohen's d on two measures: responses to survey items on discipline-specific self-efficacy and course grades in all first-year foundational courses and second-year mathematics courses. In engineering, physics, and mathematics courses, we find sizeable discrepancies between self-efficacy and performance, with men appearing significantly more confident than women despite small or reverse direction differences in grades. In chemistry, women earn higher grades and have higher self-efficacy. The patterns are consistent across courses within each discipline. All self-efficacy gender differences close by the fourth year except physics self-efficacy. The disconnect between self-efficacy and course grades across subjects provides useful clues for targeted interventions to promote equitable learning environments. The most extreme disconnect occurs in physics and may help explain the severe underrepresentation of women in "physics-heavy" engineering disciplines, highlighting the importance of such interventions., Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables

A theoretical account of the mirror effect for word frequency and of dissociations in the pattern of responding Remember vs. Know (R vs. K) for low- and high-frequency words was tested both empirically and computationally by comparing predicted with observed data theory in 3 experiments. The SAC (Source of Activation Confusion) theory of memory makes the novel prediction of more K responses for high- than for low-frequency words, for both old and new items. Two experiments used a continuous presentation and judgment paradigm that presented words up to 10 times. The computer simulation closely modeled the pattern of results, fitting new Know and Remember patterns of responding at each level of experimental presentation and for both levels of word frequency for each participant. Experiment 3 required list discrimination after each R response (Group 1) or after an R or K response (Group 2). List accuracy was better following R responses. All experiments were modeled using the same parameter values.

Previous research on scientific reasoning has shown that it involves a diverse set of skills. Yet, little is known about generality of those skills, an important issue to theories of expertise and to attempts to automate scientific reasoning skills. We present a study examining what kinds of skills psychologists actually use in designing and interpreting experiments. The results suggest: 1) that psychologists use many domain-general skills in their experimentation; 2) that bright and motivated undergraduates are missing many of these skills; 3) some domain-general skills are not specific to only scientists; and 4) some domain-specific skills can be acquired with minimal domain-experience.

Instructional approaches that support the acquisition of innovation design process skills for engineering and other design students are critical to developing design competencies. Resources that enable efficient and valid evaluation of design outcomes are needed; however current evaluation methods do not apply well to the heterogeneous projects found in authentic project-based design classes such as capstone design. We develop a robust and efficient measure of design outcome innovation and validate our measure with a large and diverse set of design outcomes from a project-based design class. The measure is based on expert judgments of design concepts' value and functionality derived from a set of importance-weighted design requirements. In the context of an engineering design class, the innovation score was a statistically significant predictor of success in terms of implementation status by the client. Thus, the measure's validity was supported by its ability to predict design concepts' implementation by clients in the context of a product realization class. New design outcome assessment measures in the context of authentic project-based design environments, such as the one developed in the present study, should interface with process-based metrics to create higher-quality input into the overall assessment of design team performance. Resumen Los enfoques instructivos para la adquisición de habilidades en procesos de diseño innovativo para ingenieros y diseñadores son fundamentales para desarrollar competencias de diseño. Se necesitan recursos que permitan una evaluación eficiente y válida de los resultados del diseño, sin embargo, los métodos de evaluación actuales no son adecuados para los proyectos heterogéneos de las clases de diseño basadas en proyectos auténticos como diseño final. Por ello, nosotros desarrollamos una medida robusta y eficiente, y la validamos con un conjunto grande y diverso de resultados de diseño de una clase de diseño basada en proyectos. La medida se basa en juicios expertos sobre el valor y la funcionalidad de los conceptos de diseño derivados de una serie de requisitos de diseño ponderados por su importancia. Las nuevas medidas de evaluación de los resultados en el contexto de entornos de diseño auténticos basados en proyectos, como el desarrollado en el presente estudio, deben interactuar con las métricas basadas en procesos para crear una entrada de mayor calidad en la evaluación general de rendimiento del equipo de diseño. Ressumo As abordagens instrutivas para adquirir habilidades em processos de design inovadores para engenheiros e designers são fundamentais para desenvolver competências de design. Os recursos são necessários para permitir uma avaliação eficiente e válida dos resultados do projeto, no entanto, os métodos de avaliação atuais não são adequados para projetos heterogêneos de classes de design com base em projetos autênticos como design final. Portanto, desenvolvemos uma medida robusta e eficiente e a validamos com um conjunto grande e diversificado de resultados de design de uma classe de projeto baseada em projetos. A medida baseia-se em julgamentos especializados sobre o valor e a funcionalidade dos conceitos de design derivados de um número de requisitos de design ponderados pela sua importância. Novas medidas para avaliar os resultados no contexto de ambientes de projeto autênticos baseados em projetos, como a desenvolvida no presente estudo, devem interagir com métricas baseadas em processos para criar uma entrada de maior qualidade no Avaliação geral do desempenho da equipe de design.

This paper describes three conceptual areas in physics that are particularly important targets for educational interventions in K-12 science. These conceptual areas are force and motion, conservation of energy, and geometrical optics, which were prominent in the US national and four US state standards that we examined. The four US state standards that were analyzed to explore the extent to which the K-12 science standards differ in different states were selected to include states in different geographic regions and of different sizes. The three conceptual areas that were common to all the four state standards are conceptual building blocks for other science concepts covered in the K-12 curriculum. Since these three areas have been found to be ripe with deep student misconceptions that are resilient to conventional physics instruction, the nature of difficulties in these areas is described in some depth, along with pointers towards approaches that have met with some success in each conceptual area., 27 pages, Keywords: Physics education research, Teaching, learning, pedagogy, Teacher preparation, k-12 education, force and motion, energy, optics, see http://www2.phy.ilstu.edu/~wenning/jpteo/issues/aut2009.html

In complex systems with stochastic components, systems laws often emerge that describe higher level behavior regardless of lower level component configurations. In this paper, emergent laws for describing mechanochemical systems are investigated for processive myosin-actin motility systems. On the basis of prior experimental evidence that longer processive lifetimes are enabled by larger myosin ensembles, it is hypothesized that emergent scaling laws could coincide with myosin-actin contact probability or system energy consumption. Because processivity is difficult to predict analytically and measure experimentally, agent-based computational techniques are developed to simulate processive myosin ensembles and produce novel processive lifetime measurements. It is demonstrated that only systems energy relationships hold regardless of isoform configurations or ensemble size, and a unified expression for predicting processive lifetime is revealed. The finding of such laws provides insight for how patterns emerge in stochastic mechanochemical systems, while also informing understanding and engineering of complex biological systems., PLoS Computational Biology, 11 (4), ISSN:1553-734X, ISSN:1553-7358

Poster presented at "Measuring Scientific Reasoning and Argumentation" Spring School 2015 at Munich. First results on how measuring scientific sense making predicts learning in a science classroom and firsts attempts at scale validation

Published version

Department of Psychology

Shepard and Chipman's second order isomorphism describes how the brain may represent the relations in the world. However, a common interpretation of the theory can cause difficulties. The problem originates from the static nature of representations. In an alternative interpretation, I propose that we assign an active role to the internal representations and relations. It turns out that a collection of such active units can perform analogical tasks. The new interpretation is supported by the existence of neural circuits that may be implementing such a function. Within this framework, perception, cognition, and motor function can be understood under a unifying principle of analogy.

We study how Extraversion or Introversion influences people's language production. A corpus of e-mail texts was gathered from individuals categorised via Eysenck's EPQ-R personality test. One experiment analysed the corpus using existing content analysis tools, and found relatively weak effects of Extraversion. A second experiment used more sensitive bigram-based techniques from statistical natural language processing to replicate earlier findings, and uncover novel patterns of behaviour.

This paper describes a new computational model of phonological production, Holographic Reduced Representations for Oscillator Recall, or HORROR. HORROR's architecture accounts for phonological speech error patterns by combining the hierarchical oscillating context signal of the OSCAR serial-order model~\cite{VousdenEtAl:2000,BrownEtAl:2000} with a holographic associative memory~\cite{Plate:1995}. The resulting model is novel in a number of ways. Most importantly, all of the noise needed to generate errors is intrinsic to the system, instead of being generated by an external process. The model features fully-distributed hierarchical phoneme representations and a single distributed associative memory. Using fewer parameters and a more parsimonious design than OSCAR, HORROR accounts for error type proportions, the syllable-position constraint, and other constraints seen in the human speech error data.