Combining the study of animal minds, artificial minds, and human evolution, this book examine the advances made by comparative psychologists in explaining the intelligent behavior of primates, the design of artificial autonomous systems, and the cognitive products of language evolution.

In this book, a number of experts from various disciplines take a look at three different strands in learning to model. They examine the activity of modeling from disparate theoretical standpoints, taking into account the individual situation of the individuals involved. The chapters seek to bridge the modeling of communication and the modeling of particular scientific domains. In so doing, they seek to throw light on the educational communication that goes on in conceptual learning. Taken together, the chapters brought together in this volume illustrate the diversity and vivacity of research on a relatively neglected, yet crucially important aspect of education across disciplines: learning to model. A common thread across the research presented is the view that communication and interaction, as fundamental to most educational practices and as a repository of conceptual understanding and a learning mechanism in itself, is intimately linked to elaborating meaningful, coherent, and valid representations of the world. The editors hope this volume will contribute to both the fundamental research in its field and ultimately provide results that can be of practical value in designing new situations for teaching and learning modeling, particularly those involving computers.

In this book, a number of experts from various disciplines take a look at three different strands in learning to model. They examine the activity of modeling from disparate theoretical standpoints, taking into account the individual situation of the individuals involved. The chapters seek to bridge the modeling of communication and the modeling of particular scientific domains. In so doing, they seek to throw light on the educational communication that goes on in conceptual learning.
Taken together, the chapters brought together in this volume illustrate the diversity and vivacity of research on a relatively neglected, yet crucially important aspect of education across disciplines: learning to model. A common thread across the research presented is the view that communication and interaction, as fundamental to most educational practices and as a repository of conceptual understanding and a learning mechanism in itself, is intimately linked to elaborating meaningful, coherent, and valid representations of the world.
The editors hope this volume will contribute to both the fundamental research in its field and ultimately provide results that can be of practical value in designing new situations for teaching and learning modeling, particularly those involving computers.

'A picture is worth a thousand words' Or is it? What difference does it make whether information is presented using illustrations or language? 'Seeing Reason' is an interdisciplinary study of a central topic in cognitive science: how does the mind respond to different kinds of representation of the same information, especially when learning, reasoning, and communicating. It uses philosophical, logical, linguistic, psychological, and educational methods to explore this topic, reporting theories, observations, and arguments developed during several years' research. Though the focus is on fundamental cognitive theories of human capacities, the issues are closely related to intensely practical issues about the teaching and learning of reasoning and communication skills. Along the way it examines why the human mind has so evolved, the relationship between private language and public thought, and integrates cognitive and social accounts of communication. Written to be accessible to students and researchers within the fields of philosophy and psychology, this book shares new insights into how people process information, and how we use that information to reason, make decisions, and develop theories about the world in which we live.

Combining the study of animal minds, artificial minds, and human evolution, this book examine the advances made by comparative psychologists in explaining the intelligent behaviour of primates, the design of artificial autonomous systems and the cognitive products of language evolution.