Past Event

Please join us on Thursday, October 10th from 12:00 to 1:00, Dunton 2203, for the first talk in our 2013-2014 Cognitive Science Colloquium series. There will be light refreshments before the talk.

Speaker: Dr. Malcolm Cunningham

Title: Investigating the Relation between Learning and Development

Abstract:

The relation between learning and development remains a controversial issue in all branches of developmental inquiry. Looking at top-down cognitive change studies, I argue this is partly a result of imprecise terminology and a change in the way we have historically studied development. State-based, long-term models of Piaget’s time have been replaced by process-based, short-term, alternatives.

I explore the relation between learning and development by re-analyzing children’s original responses to a developmental test created by Okamoto and Case (1996) – called the Number Knowledge Test (NKT) – and comparing these results to an analysis of an adapted version of the NKT. The adapted test was specifically designed as a novel task to get at adult learning.

A common Rasch modeling approach (i.e., item response model) will be used to analyze both child and adult data. By focusing on item responses between parallel tests, it is possible to compare child and adult data to Case’s (1996) original theory of number sense development.

Results indicate that the relation between learning and development may be better understood if both state-and process-based views are combined into a single investigative modeling approach.

Throughout the discussion, I will focus on the research design, problems with the design, and opportunities for future probabilistic modeling approaches.

Bio:

Dr. Cunningham is an interdisciplinary scholar with formal training in measurement and evaluation. He received his PhD from OISE/UT in 2012.  His research interests focus on mathematics learning and development using statistical modeling methods to inform theory; his particular area of new research has to do with diagnostic methods of measuring mathematics proficiency differences.