This chapter addresses how cognitive flexibility enables an individual to respond adaptively to new situations and respond appropriately to any situation. Interrupting automaticity avoids being trapped in mindsets that foreclose generating new options; avoiding reductive bias reduces the tendency to oversimplify and turn dynamic processes into fixed objects and make complex interactions linear; avoiding functional fixedness reduces the tendency to apply the same solution to different situations; and cognitive connectivity opens up to new approaches in which mental models can be transformed, schemata reorganized, and cognitive bridges built between previous expertise and new situations. This kind of cognitive flexibility enables individuals to respond and adapt to the new situation into which they are moving. This is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Chapter 4 discusses various theories of learning that have an impact on how EC professionals can work with young children. Theories about how children (and, indeed, adults) learn science and the factors that affect learning in young children are described. The relationship between everyday concepts and scientific concepts is distinguished. The place of affective factors in children’s learning is also described. Various case studies are presented to highlight aspects of children’s learning.

Mental models are the internal representations that guide interactions with the world. Mental models are experience based and they inform an individual’s understanding of what is going on, how things work, and how a situation is likely to evolve. This chapter provides two principles for supporting the development of robust mental models in trainees. The Mental Model Articulation Principle emphasizes building training experiences that encourage learners to verbalize aspects of their mental models to identify flaws and gaps. The Many Variations Principle highlights the value of providing learners with a range of experiences with the intent of expanding their mental models to support performance in diverse conditions.

This chapter begins with an outline of logic and of the attempts to use it as a theory of human deduction. The fatal impediments to this approach led to the model theory in which models based on the meanings of premises yield deductive conclusions. And the chapter describes in detail the implementation of this theory’s account of deductions based on sentential connectives such as “if,” and how this simulation led to the discovery of systematic but compelling fallacies.The chapter outlines how algorithms based on models simulate deductions of the spatial relations among objects. And it points out the problems that need to be solved to extend accounts of elementary inferences from quantified assertions to deal with multiply-quantified relations. One alternative to the model theory is the idea that human deduction relies on probabilities. This approach concerns only which inferences people make, not the underlying mental processes by which they are made. The model theory fills the gap, because it applies to the deductions of probabilities, both those based on frequencies or proportions, and those based on evidence pertinent to unique events. The chapter ends with an account of why theories of human deduction need to be simulated in computer programs.

Spoken or written texts are coherent sequences of sentences. Text comprehension is equivalent to the construction of multiple mental representations in working memory. It is based on an interaction between external text information and internal prior knowledge information stored in long-term memory. Mental representations include a text surface representation, a propositional representation, and a mental model. They are characterized by different forgetting rates. As speakers and authors omit information which can be easily completed by listeners and readers, text comprehension always includes inferences. Listening and reading comprehension use the same lexicon and the same syntax but qualitatively different text surface structures. Due to local and global coherence of texts, comprehension is also a process of mental coherence formation. Limitations of working memory require focused attention on the construction of topic-specific mental models which are carried along from sentence to sentence by a flow of consciousness. Speakers and authors can direct this process through topic information within the text surface.

In Chapter 2 I argue that we reason by building and manipulating mental models. These causal models allow us to predict, control and explain the world around us. They are idealized and schematic, which reduces complexity but can lead to reasoning biases. I also present an account of how we generate these models, by using intuitive theories of how things work and how humans behave. This allows for learning and inference at multiple levels, and it helps explain our proficiency at explaining the world.

The brain strives to become a model of the world in which it must survive. It is often more important for it to be functional and efficient than it is to be factually correct. Indeed, there are numerous instances in which it seems to favour usefulness over accuracy, expectation over actuality. This has led many to conclude that even normal perception has a constructive or hallucinatory quality. In extremis, under the influence of fatigue, fear, illness or drugs, an entire reality may be created, one that seems to conflict with the reality accepted by those around us. This condition, known as psychosis, offers us important glimpses into the mechanisms of the mind and the many ways in which they may be altered.

The theoretical framework of this book is first of all defined in terms of sociocognitive discourse analysis of antiracism and antiracist discourse within the larger framework of a theory of social movements. In this case the movement is both global and historical and hence rather a macromovement. Different from other studies of social movements, this book focused on discourse and cognition and their history. Antiracism is defined as a movement of resistance and solidarity. After a summary of a theory of antiracist social cognition (mental models, knowledge, attitudes and ideologies) antiracist practices in genersal antiracist discourse are defined - as well as their historical dimensions. A detailed literature summarizes earlier theory and research on antiracism, as well as a discussion of major issues in studies of antiracism - such as whether or not antiracism today is dominant or prevalent.

Medication errors are not random events, nor are they necessarily evidence of a lack of carefulness on the part of the practitioner concerned. To a substantial degree, the particular type of medication error that is likely to occur in a particular set of circumstances is predictable. Furthermore, each of these types of error will continue to occur at their current rate if we continue with current approaches to the management of medications in the perioperative period. Errors will not be reduced by ongoing calls for greater carefulness on behalf of individual practitioners. Instead, the need is for fundamental changes in the ways in which medications are presented, selected and administered to patients. Greater investment in systems-based initiatives to improve medication management is essential if medication safety is to improve. However, it is also essential for clinicians to engage with such initiatives if they are to be effective. Achieving this requires sustained effort by departments and institutions, informed by the principles of implementation science.

For language teachers who are already convinced about why to include transformative learning goals, this chapter will help to clarify what we know about how these sometimes-elusive learning goals can be scaffolded within our existing instruction. Language teachers interested in including transformative learning goals in their language classes should know that the transformative process is difficult to predict and to measure. However, instructors can intentionally and even successfully nurture transformation without straying far from widely accepted classroom practices by taking a more critical approach. Authentic texts can be useful for promoting disorienting dilemmas when they are at the learners' cognitive and proficiency level and include feasible tasks. Critical reflection is also essential to transformative learning and can be encouraged through structured written reflection. This reflection can take place in the L1 or L2. Finally, instructors can motivate students to take action by asking them to think about next steps.

Children attempt to make sense of, and to understand, the various phenomena and experiences they have. This is science in its purest and simplest sense – children gaining an understanding of the world around them. Children’s understandings are based on the range of interactions they have and the cognitive development of ‘key understandings (concepts)’ that help to explain the phenomena, at least to them. The Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009, p. 12) indicates that it draws from a range of perspectives from early childhood developmental theory and knowledge about how children learn, which are then used to develop the Principles and Practices. There are many theories about how children (and adults) learn science and the factors that affect learning in young children. This chapter describes and discusses accepted theories of children’s development and the range of influences that impact science learning.

Narrative fiction is a major component of entertainment and culture, comprising books, television, movies, and video games. Our comprehension of these narratives is predicated in part on the imagination, which allows us to simulate fictional events, characters, and worlds. Beyond basic comprehension, the imagination also enables us to generate personalized and unique interpretations of a narrative, effectively allowing us to co-create narratives alongside the author. In this chapter, we discuss the ways in which imagination is used to understand fictional stories across a variety of mediums. We begin with a discussion of mental models, exploring how we use the imagination to translate narrative cues, such as words on a page, into complex and elaborate mental representations. Next, we discuss how the imagination encourages narrative engagement, by allowing us to feel physically transported into fictional worlds. Following that, we examine how the imagination is used to personalize narrative comprehension, through interpreting ambiguous or auxiliary narrative content and through incorporating past personal experiences and current beliefs into the narrative. Finally, we close with a discussion of how modern interactive media may uniquely engage our imagination by providing audiences with the freedom to create their own narratives.

This chapter reviews the basics of cognition, showing how old ideas about learning as storehouses of information, standing at the ready to address problems, have given way to much more complex notions about how our brains make meaning of information by attaching it – or not – to existing mental models. Meaning-making is not only vital to our survival as a species but also presents a challenge to our cognitive development. How we change our mental models is known as transformative learning, arguably the most important theory on adult learning in the last half-century.