Robert L. Goldstone

Showed empirically and verified with quantitative modeling that high and low level cognition are flexibly tuned to conceptual needs, and grounded in our perception-action abilities. This research led to the development of tutoring systems for mathematics and science based on systematically caricaturing and idealizing training examples to foster cross-domain transfer and gradually fading from concrete to idealized materials. These items are then sequenced to take advantage of shared features of related concepts and distinctive features of differing concepts, and training sophisticated reasoning by rigging up perception and actions systems to become increasingly congruent with formal operations.