The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of epistemic beliefs and knowledge representations in cognitive and metacognitive processing and conceptual change when learning about physics concepts through text. Specifically, I manipulated the representation of physics concepts in…

Throughout university, students are required to complete complex writing tasks that involve a host of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, yet little is known about the differences in students' approach to the writing process. In particular, the role of students' beliefs…

Placebo effects constitute context-dependent medical phenomena, and exemplify the link between psychosocial factors and physiological processes. By surveying medical students (Study 1) and practicing physicians (Study 2), the present thesis explores the knowledge and attitudes towards the role of placebos,…

Structured knowledge representations are becoming central to the area of Information Science. Search engines companies have said that constructing an entity graph is the key to classifying their enormous corpus of documents in order to provide more relevant results to…

For individuals with disabilities the transition from school to adopting adult roles within the community often presents numerous challenges. In a sample of pre-service education teachers, perceptions of school to community transitions of students with disabilities were investigated. Pre-service education…

Marketers often use scarcity to influence consumers, with announcements such as "limited quantities," "until stocks last," "few tickets left for this event," "limited time offer," or "24 hour sale." Past research indicates that scarcity often has a positive effect on…

Interfaces between subsystems in collaborative product development projects are presently defined by interface control documents. These documents are created after agreements are made between designers on how to design subsystem interfaces. The designers must commit to the definitions given by…

Invasive research procedures, such as biopsy for pharmacodynamic study, often have no value for patient-volunteers in terms of diagnosis or clinical management. Accordingly, their burdens are generally justifiable only by appeal to knowledge value (that is, the benefit to future…

This thesis a study of the notion of scientia in thinkers of the Latin West in the twelfth century. Scientia is a Latin word that has served to refer to important conceptions of science. Important in medieval philosophy is its…

Design is concerned with the question of how to construct an artifact or system to meet the desired specification and is normally categorized as either routine, non-routine or creative. Up until now, the study of knowledge-based design has concentrated on…