Andreas Demetriou

Embedding cognizance in intellectual development

This study examined whether cognizance of cognitive processes (i.e., awareness of the perceptual and inferential origins of knowledge) mediates between basic processing efficiency functions (i.e., processing speed, attention control, and working memory) and fluid cognition (e.g., performance on Raven-like matrices) during development. For this aim, children from 4 to 8 years of age were examined by various measures addressed to each of these processes. All processes developed systematically throughout this age period. Structural equation modeling showed that awareness does have this mediating role, that this mediation is phase specific based on perceptual awareness and theory of mind during the 5- and 6-year phase and on inferential awareness during the 7- and 8-year phase, and that it builds up within each developmental cycle. Attention control emerges from, rather than directs, working memory and largely remains beyond awareness through the age span studied. Implications for theory of intellectual development are discussed.

Coping With Logical Fallacies: A Developmental Training Program for Learning to Reason

This study trained children to master logical fallacies and examined how learning is related to processing efficiency and fluid intelligence (gf). A total of one hundred and eighty 8- and 11-year-old children living in Cyprus were allocated to a control, a limited (LI), and a full instruction (FI) group. The LI group learned the notion of logical contradiction and the logical structure of the schemes involved. The FI group learned, additionally, to recognize other deductive reasoning principles. Reasoning improved proportionally to training. Awareness improved equally in LI and FI. Changes in reasoning and awareness changes were related to attention control and gf. Awareness mediated the influence of training on reasoning but not vice versa, suggesting that awareness is necessary for conditional reasoning. Implications are discussed.

Mind and Intelligence: Integrating Developmental, Psychometric, and Cognitive Theories of Human Mind

This chapter summarizes a comprehensive theory of intellectual organization and growth. The theory specifies a common core of processes (abstraction, representational alignment, and cognizance, i.e., AACog) underlying inference and meaning making. AACog develops over four reconceptualization cycles (episodic representations, realistic representations, rule-based inference and principle-based inference starting at birth, 2, 6, and 11 years, respectively) with two phases in each (production of new mental units and alignment). This sequence relates to changes in processing efficiency and working memory (WM) in overlapping cycles such that relations with efficiency are high in the production phases and relations with WM are high in the alignment phases over all cycles. Reconceptualization is self-propelled because AACog continuously generates new mental content expressed in representations of increasing inclusiveness and resolution. Each cycle culminates into an insight about the cycle’s representations and underlying inferential processes that is expressed into executive programs of increasing flexibility. Learning addressed to this insight accelerates the course of reconceptualization. Individual differences in intellectual growth are related to both the state of this core and its interaction with different cognitively primary domains (e.g. categorical, quantitative, spatial cognition, etc.). We will also demonstrate that different levels of intelligence expressed through IQ measures actually correspond to different types of representational and problem-solving possibilities as expressed through the AACog reconceptualization cycles.

The developmental trinity of mind: Cognizance, executive control, and reasoning

This paper summarizes research on how cognizance, that is, awareness of mental processes, interacts with executive control and reasoning from childhood to adolescence. Central positions are that (a) cognizance changes extensively with age; (b) it contributes to the formation of executive control, and (c) mediates between executive control and reasoning. Cognizance recycles with changes in executive and inferential possibilities in four developmental cycles: it registers their present state, yielding insight into their operation, allowing their better management; this catalyzes their transformation into the next level. Implications for theory of intellectual development and practical implications for education are discussed. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Development and Aging Neuroscience > Cognition Neuroscience > Development Philosophy > Consciousness.

Mind God's mind: History, development, and teaching

We dispute the target article that belief in Big Gods facilitated development of large societies and suggest that the direction of causality might be inverted. We also suggest that plain theory of mind (ToM), although necessary, is not sufficient to conceive Big Gods. Grasp of other aspects of the mind is required. However, this theory is useful for the teaching of religion.

Intelligence in Cultural, Social and Educational Context

Abstract This article reviews recent research on human intelligence and intellectual development and the effects of culture and other social factors on both. It also capitalizes on recent literature on how intellectual development may be strengthened by education. Contrary to a common depiction of human intelligence as a unitary trait that is invariant across time, space, and cultural context, this article argues, with Sternberg (2004), that “Intelligence cannot be fully or even meaningfully understood outside its cultural context.”