Male college subjects read an essay that supposedly had been written by a college freshman co-ed. They then evaluated the quality of the essay and the ability of its writer on several dimensions. By means of a photo attached to the essay, one third of the subjects were led to believe that the writer was physically attractive and one third that she was unattractive. The remaining subjects read the essay without any information about the writer's appearance. In addition, one half of the subjects read a version of the essay that was well written while the other subjects read a version that was poorly written. Significant main effects for essay quality and writer attractiveness were predicted and obtained. The subjects who read the good essay evaluated the writer and her work more favorably than the subjects who read the poor essay. The subjects also evaluated the writer and her work most favorably when she was attractive, least when she was unattractive, and intermediately when her appearance was unknown. The impact of the writer's attractiveness on the evaluation of her and her work was most pronounced when the "objective" quality of her work was relatively poor.There is an increasing amount of research data attesting to the relative importance of physical attractiveness as a determinant and moderator of a wide variety of interpersonal processes: heterosexual liking (Berscheid,

In 4 experiments, the authors explored the role of visual layout in rule-based syntactic judgments. Participants judged the validity of a set of algebraic equations that tested their ability to apply the order of operations. In each experiment, a nonmathematical grouping pressure was manipulated to support or interfere with the mathematical convention. Despite the formal irrelevance of these grouping manipulations, accuracy in all experiments was highest when the nonmathematical pressure supported the mathematical grouping. The increase was significantly greater when the correct judgment depended on the order of operator precedence. The result that visual perception impacts rule application in mathematics has broad implications for relational reasoning in general. The authors conclude that formally symbolic reasoning is more visual than is usually proposed.Keywords: symbolic processing, mathematics, embodied cognition, relational reasoning, perceptual grouping How thinking creatures manage to think using symbols is one of the central mysteries facing the cognitive sciences. Most research into formal symbolic reasoning emphasizes the abstract and arbitrary quality of formal symbol systems (

Despite their importance in public discourse, numbers in the range of 1 million to 1 trillion are notoriously difficult to understand. We examine magnitude estimation by adult Americans when placing large numbers on a number line and when qualitatively evaluating descriptions of imaginary geopolitical scenarios. Prior theoretical conceptions predict a log-to-linear shift: People will either place numbers linearly or will place numbers according to a compressive logarithmic or power-shaped function Siegler & Opfer, 2003). While about half of people did estimate numbers linearly over this range, nearly all the remaining participants placed 1 million approximately halfway between 1 thousand and 1 billion, but placed numbers linearly across each half, as though they believed that the number words "thousand, million, billion, trillion" constitute a uniformly spaced count list. Participants in this group also tended to be optimistic in evaluations of largely ineffective political strategies, relative to linear number-line placers. The results indicate that the surface structure of number words can heavily influence processes for dealing with numbers in this range, and it can amplify the possibility that analogous surface regularities are partially responsible for parallel phenomena in children. In addition, these results have direct implications for lawmakers and scientists hoping to communicate effectively with the public.Keywords: Psychology; Reasoning; Human experimentation; Mathematical cognition; Mathematical modeling; Number line estimation "And so he went back over the sunny hills and down through the cool valleys, to show all his pretty kittens to the very old woman. It was very funny to see those hundreds and thousands and millions and billions and trillions of cats following him." -Wanda Ga'g, Millions of Cats

Although the field of perceptual learning has mostly been concerned with low-to middle-level changes to perceptual systems due to experience, we consider high-level perceptual changes that accompany learning in science and mathematics. In science, we explore the transfer of a scientific principle (competitive specialization) across superficially dissimilar pedagogical simulations. We argue that transfer occurs when students develop perceptual interpretations of an initial simulation and simply continue to use the same interpretational bias when interacting with a second simulation. In arithmetic and algebraic reasoning, we find that proficiency in mathematics involves executing spatially explicit transformations to notational elements. People learn to attend mathematical operations in the order in which they should be executed, and the extent to which students employ their perceptual attention in this manner is positively correlated with their mathematical experience. For both science and mathematics, relatively sophisticated performance is achieved not by ignoring perceptual features in favor of deep conceptual features, but rather by adapting perceptual processing so as to conform with and support formally sanctioned responses. These ''rigged-up perceptual systems'' offer a promising approach to educational reform.

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