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This paper introduces A Library for Innovative Category Exemplars (ALICE) database, a resource that enhances research efficiency in cognitive and developmental studies by providing printable 3D objects representing 30 novel categories. Our research consists of three experiments to validate the novelty and complexity of the objects in ALICE. Experiment 1 assessed the novelty of objects through adult participants' subjective familiarity ratings and agreement on object naming and descriptions. The results confirm the general novelty of the objects. Experiment 2 employed multidimensional scaling (MDS) to analyze perceived similarities between objects, revealing a three-dimensional structure based solely on shape, indicative of their complexity. Experiment 3 used two clustering techniques to categorize objects: k-means clustering for creating nonoverlapping global categories, and hierarchical clustering for allowing global categories that overlap and have a hierarchical structure. Through stability tests, we verified the robustness of each clustering method and observed a moderate to good consensus between them, affirming the strength of our dual approach in effectively and accurately delineating meaningful object categories. By offering easy access to customizable novel stimuli, ALICE provides a practical solution to the challenges of creating novel physical objects for experimental purposes.

Although improving racial equity in critical college courses such as introductory statistics is a laudable goal, making research-based progress toward that aim in a scalable manner remains a challenge. To translate psychological insights to benefit racially marginalized students, we implemented the “Better Book” approach, where instructors, researchers, and developers work together to improve an online textbook used in introductory statistics. The “Better Book” approach to equity assumes that racially marginalized students are a “canary in the coal mine”, alerting us to systemic issues that can affect a broader array of students. We started by finding places in the textbook where racially marginalized students reported higher perceptions of costs (the effort and time required to learn the content) than non-marginalized students. Then we drew upon suggestions from users to redesign the textbook where gaps in cost perceptions peaked. We then analyzed data from both the original and redesigned versions of the textbook to evaluate the impact on students who were subsequently enrolled in the course. Results showed that perceptions of cost were dramatically reduced in the experience of racially marginalized students but also the redesign resulted in an improved experience for all students.

In this study, we examined the effect of video-based feedback designed to highlight a peer engaging in effective thinking processes on self-efficacy beliefs and learning outcomes (performance on a delayed quiz). Students in an introductory statistics course participated in an online learning activity where they received feedback in one of three randomly assigned conditions: a video of a peer demonstrating the process of arriving at a correct answer (mastery condition), a peer making mistakes then self-correcting those errors before arriving at a correct answer (coping condition), or a screenshot of a peer's correct worked example (as a control). Results indicated that students who watched the mastery videos, but not the coping videos, rated their self-efficacy higher and scored higher on a class quiz taken more than a day after the feedback intervention than students who viewed a worked example. However, students in the two video conditions did not significantly differ in terms of either self-efficacy and quiz performance. The results of this study, although modest in scope, illustrate how the design of feedback could lead to noticeable differences in student learning.

In recent years, embodied learning has gained significant at- tention as a valuable approach to STEM education. However, previous studies have often focused on highly controlled lab experiments and have failed to consider the unique perspec- tives and backgrounds of learners. The current study aims to replicate the findings of Zhang et al. (2022) by integrat- ing the embodied learning intervention into an online class with students that may differ in important ways from Amer- ican college students (Chinese high school students). Students were introduced to abstract concepts related to randomness and using coding to mimic a shuffling process. Students in sec- tions were randomly assigned to get this introduction through an embodied hands-on video or a less-embodied live-coding video. The learning outcomes were evaluated through authen- tic class assessments (homework and exam). Results showed that students introduced to target concepts with the more em- bodied video outperformed those who watched the less em- bodied video. The benefit of embodiment was observed only on questions related to the topic covered in the intervention videos.

We developed an interactive online textbook that interleaves R programming activities with text as a way to facilitate students' understanding of statistical ideas while minimizing the cognitive and emotional burden of learning programming. In this exploratory study, we characterize the attitudes and experiences of 672 undergraduate students as they used our online textbook as part of a 10-week introductory course in statistics. Students expressed negative attitudes and concerns related to R at the beginning of the course, but most developed more positive attitudes after engaging with course materials, regardless of demographic characteristics or prior programming experience. Analysis of a subgroup of students revealed that change in attitudes toward R may be linked to students' patterns of engagement over time and students' perceptions of the learning environment.

The flipped classroom has recently become a popular method used in both higher education and K-12 classrooms, yet research has not consistently demonstrated clear benefits of flipping a classroom. Also, any benefits seen might not be from the flipped design itself, but instead from the individual aspects of a flipped classroom (e.g., more active learning in class, more feedback on homework). This suggests that research focused on how to develop the activities and components of the flipped classroom, instead of simply flipping the traditional in-class and out-of-class activities, is critical to flipped pedagogy. These activities (both in and out of the classroom) should be designed based on a theory of learning. We draw upon the Practicing-Connections (PC) Hypothesis, supported by contemporary theories and research in the cognitive sciences, to design instructional activities to promote learning by having students practice making connections between concepts and situations. This paper examines a flipped class based on a theory-driven design versus a basic flipped classroom. The results of this work offer suggestions as to what dimensions of flipping may be important and how to design and evaluate flipped classrooms based on theories of learning.

Cooking is a powerful teaching activity that can be used as an integral part of an early childhood curriculum. In this study, we designed and implemented a cooking-infused program in order to investigate the ways that such a program supports preschoolers' math concepts and skills and their attitudes toward mathematics. Data were collected over three years through both quantitative and qualitative measures of the participants' math gains. The study results show that the following characteristics of the cooking-infused program are central to improving preschoolers' math understanding and positive attitude toward mathematics--child-centred learning, problem-solving, daily-life connections, and peer guidance. We highlight that preschoolers could explore high levels of mathematics concepts and develop positive attitudes toward math when their learning is supported with carefully-designed cooking activities.

BackgroundHealth disparities exist between urban and rural populations, yet research on rural-urban disparities in temperature-mortality relationships is limited. As inequality in the United States increases, understanding urban-rural and regional differences in the temperature-mortality association is crucial.ObjectiveWe examined regional and urban-rural differences of the temperature-mortality association in North Carolina (NC), USA, and investigated potential effect modifiers.MethodsWe applied time-series models allowing nonlinear temperature-mortality associations for 17 years (2000-2016) to generate heat and cold county-specific estimates. We used second-stage analysis to quantify the overall effects. We also explored potential effect modifiers (e.g. social associations, greenness) using stratified analysis. The analysis considered relative effects (comparing risks at 99th to 90th temperature percentiles based on county-specific temperature distributions for heat, and 1st to 10th percentiles for cold) and absolute effects (comparing risks at specific temperatures).ResultsWe found null effects for heat-related mortality (relative effect: 1.001 (95% CI: 0.995-1.007)). Overall cold-mortality risk for relative effects was 1.019 (1.015-1.023). All three regions had statistically significant cold-related mortality risks for relative and absolute effects (relative effect: 1.019 (1.010-1.027) for Coastal Plains, 1.021 (1.015-1.027) for Piedmont, 1.014 (1.006-1.023) for Mountains). The heat mortality risk was not statistically significant, whereas the cold mortality risk was statistically significant, showing higher cold-mortality risks in urban areas than rural areas (relative effect for heat: 1.006 (0.997-1.016) for urban, 1.002 (0.988-1.017) for rural areas; relative effect for cold: 1.023 (1.017-1.030) for urban, 1.012 (1.001-1.023) for rural areas). Findings are suggestive of higher relative cold risks in counties with the less social association, higher population density, less green-space, higher PM2.5, lower education level, higher residential segregation, higher income inequality, and higher income (e.g., Ratio of Relative Risks 1.72 (0.68, 4.35) comparing low to high education).ConclusionResults indicate cold-mortality risks in NC, with potential differences by regional, urban-rural areas, and community characteristics.

Research suggests that expert understanding is characterized by coherent mental representations featuring a high level of connectedness. This paper advances the idea that educators can facilitate this level of understanding in students through the practicing connections framework: a practical framework to guide instructional design for developing deep understanding and transferable knowledge in complex academic domains. We start by reviewing what we know from learning sciences about the nature and development of transferable knowledge, arguing that connectedness is key to the coherent mental schemas that underlie deep understanding and transferable skills. We then propose features of instruction that might uniquely facilitate deep understanding and suggest that the connections between a domain’s core concepts, key representations, and contexts and practices of the world must be made explicit and practiced, over time, in order for students to develop coherent understanding. We illustrate the practicing connections approach to instructional design in the context of a new online interactive introductory statistics textbook developed by the authors.

To improve students' mathematics achievement, their errors should be treated as an opportunity to stimulate conceptual and procedural understanding. Using a teaching scenario, this study investigated 40 high school teachers' analyses of and responses to a student error(s) in solving a quadratic equation by using the factoring method. The teachers' responses were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Analyses results revealed a gap between identified errors and addressed ones, as well as a gap between interpreting a knowledge weakness and explaining a knowledge focus. While the errors came from conceptual aspects of the factoring method, most of the participants offered conceptual explanations addressed in a teacher-centered way. The results also revealed that student errors and mathematical knowledge were two foci of the teachers' responses to students. The broader implications of the study for the international community are discussed in accordance with the findings.

Data reasoning and digital literacy skills, especially the ability to find, represent, and accurately interpret the relevant data, are critical in workplaces and lifetime experiences. Given the importance of developing data reasoning skills from learners' experiences, this article aims to describe teacher and student actions that contributed to the student explorations of data from life experiences. The authors share a COVID-19 lesson as an example of how a framework that can be used to support student exploration of current issues and represent them mathematically might be applied to support students as they explore data. The authors focused on COVID-19 because it has tremendously affected the world and their students' lives. Disinformation (i.e., misleading information that deliberately circulated) and misinformation about COVID-19 were widely disseminated across the internet, endangering lives and hampering recovery. The student autonomy allowed in this exploration (e.g., the choice of topics and mathematical questions, collaborators, and presentation modalities) enables the inspiration and diverse perspectives shared by students. [Note: The page range (122-129) shown on the abstract page is incorrect. The correct page range is 122-130.]

Producing content-related gestures has been found to impact students' learning, whether such gestures are spontaneously generated by the learner in the course of problem-solving, or participants are instructed to pose based on experimenter instructions during problem-solving and word learning. Few studies, however, have investigated the effect of (a) performing instructed gestures while learning concepts or (b) producing gestures without there being an implied connection between the gestures and the concepts being learned. The two studies reported here investigate the impact of instructed hand movements on students' subsequent understanding of a concept. Students were asked to watch an instructional video-focused on the concept of statistical model-three times. Two experimental groups were given a secondary task to perform while watching the video, which involved moving their hands to mimic the placement and orientation of red rectangular bars overlaid on the video. Students were told that the focus of the study was multitasking, and that the instructed hand movements were unrelated to the material being learned. In the content-match group the placement of the hands reinforced the concept being explained, and in the content-mismatch group it did not. A control group was not asked to perform a secondary task. In both studies, findings indicate that students in the content-match group performed better on the posttest, and showed less variation in performance, than did students in the content-mismatch group, with control students falling in between. Instructed hand movement-even when presented as an unrelated, secondary task-can affect students' learning of a complex concept.

Teachers often use drawings of the normal distribution to support explanations of related statistical concepts, assuming that the normal curve provides a common language for such discussions. However, we find that students may not understand the basic features of the normal curve. In Study 1, we showed that students who already have studied the normal distribution in a college-level class do not understand basic concepts associated with it. Then, in Study 2, we investigated whether a brief instructional, narrated video could improve students’ understanding of the normal probability distribution. Specifically, we compared three instructional formats: static slides, a video recording of a hand physically drawing those plots, and a screen recording of the hand-drawing. Despite the brevity of the intervention, we found significant improvements in students’ understanding of the normal probability distribution and related probability concepts. The findings are discussed in relation to the dynamic representation and embodied cognition literature.

Chronic renal failure is one of the leading causes of death in African lions, cheetahs, and tigers. Conventional methods to measure renal dysfunction include measuring serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN). Symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA) measurement is a reliable predictor of renal dysfunction in the domestic cat because SDMA serum levels increase early when the kidneys are damaged. Serum SDMA levels were assessed and correlated with creatinine as well as BUN from healthy captive Bengal tigers and lions at the Everland Zoo in Korea. Serum SDMA concentrations were increasingly associated with increased age in lions. However, SDMA concentrations were higher in some young Bengal tigers than in older ones, which may allow for earlier renal dysfunction detection in these young cats than would be BUN and creatinine alone. In Bengal tigers, the correlation between the SDMA and BUN was slightly higher than that between SDMA and creatinine. In lions, SDMA correlated better with creatinine than with BUN concentration. These results show that serum SDMA concentration can be used as a biomarker for age-associated renal dysfunction. SDMA measurement may be an essential preventive management method in zoos.