Workshop on Higher Cognition in
Adolescents and Young Adults

Workshop on Higher Cognition
in Adolescents and Young Adults:
Social, Behavioral, and Biological Influences on Learning

September 29-30, 2008
National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard 
Arlington, Virginia

Background

The Workshop on Higher Cognition in Adolescents and Young Adults, funded by the National Science Foundation, concerns higher-order cognitive processes and its aim is to advance basic science by focusing leading scientists on key problems that are ripe for groundbreaking discoveries.

These problems include:
(1) Metrics of Meaning, that is, devising valid measures of meaning, a construct that is at the heart of research on comprehension, reasoning, and learning;
(2) Reasoning and Judgment; and
(3) Neuroscience of Reasoning, Representation, and Retrieval.

The workshop will bring together separate but overlapping research communities. These communities include those with basic research expertise in cognition, development, and neuroscience and those who have expertise in more applied research, especially education.  

Special attention will be given to acquisition of mathematical knowledge and skills, and their application in reasoning (e.g., scientific reasoning) and judgment (e.g., economic judgments). The workshop is also expected to facilitate development of new metrics and methods for studying higher-order cognition.