Papers by NIKOLAOS MAKRIS

Frontiers in Psychology
This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and elaborates on its educational implica... more This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and elaborates on its educational implications. The theory postulates that development occurs in cycles along multiple fronts. Cognitive competence in each cycle comprises a different profile of executive, inferential, and awareness processes, reflecting changes in developmental priorities in each cycle. Changes reflect varying needs in representing, understanding, and interacting with the world. Interaction control dominates episodic representation in infancy; attention control and perceptual awareness dominate in realistic representations in preschool; inferential control and awareness dominate rule-based representation in primary school; truth and validity control and precise self-evaluation dominate in principle-based thought in adolescence. We demonstrate that the best predictors of school learning in each cycle are the cycle’s cognitive priorities. Also learning in different domains, e.g., language and mathematics, depend...
Human Development, 2018
[2018], for their commentaries on our paper which summarizes and updates our developmental theory... more [2018], for their commentaries on our paper which summarizes and updates our developmental theory of intelligence [Demetriou, Makris, Kazi, Spanoudis, Shayer, & Kazali, 2018]. This theory, drawing on a long series of empirical studies (see references in the target article) and three powerful research traditions focusing on the human mind, aims to account for three aspects of the human mind: the mental processes involved in real-time understanding and problem solving (cognitive tradition [

Intelligence, 2021
This paper focuses on general intelligence, g. We first point to broadly accepted facts about g: ... more This paper focuses on general intelligence, g. We first point to broadly accepted facts about g: it is robust, reliable, and sensitive to learning. We then summarize conflicting theories about its nature and development (Mutualism, Process Overlap Theory, and Dynamic Mental Field Theory) and suggest how future research may resolve their disputes. A model is proposed for g involving a core meaning-making mechanism, noetron, drawing on Alignment, Abstraction, and Cognizance, perpetually generating new mental content. Noetron develops through several levels of control: episodic → attentional → inferential → truth → epistemic control in infancy, preschool, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, respectively. Finally, we propose an agenda for future brain, assuming a brain noetron, and artificial intelligence research, assuming an artificial noetron, that might uncover the underlying brain mechanisms of g and generate artificial general intelligence.

This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and discusses its educational implication... more This paper summarizes a theory of cognitive development and discusses its educational implications. The paper first outlines a set of principles that might allow tuning developmental priorities with educational priorities. It postulates, in contrast to several classic developmental theories, that developmental priorities change with development. It outlines the cognitive profile of four successive developmental cycles and presents evidence showing that developmental priorities change from interaction control in infancy to representational control in preschool to inferential control in primary school to logical truth control in adolescence. Studies are then summarized showing that the cognitive priorities of each cycle are the best predictors of school achievement in this or later cycles. Finally, we outline developmental changes in general problem-solving skills and show that learning in different domains, such as language and mathematics, depends on an interaction between the gener...

We investigate the hypothesis that Executive Functions (EFs) are implicated in the learning of sc... more We investigate the hypothesis that Executive Functions (EFs) are implicated in the learning of science and mathematics by examining the relation between performance in two Science and Mathematics Conceptual Understanding and Conceptual Change (CU&C) tasks, and two Stroop-like Inhibition and Shifting EF tasks, in a group of 69 4 th and 6 th grader children. The results showed high correlations between accuracy performance in the CU&C and EF tasks even when Intelligence Ability (IA) and Age were partialed out. A path analytic model showed that performance in the CU&C tasks could be explained by performance in the EF and IA tasks, which were positively related to each other. Further analyses showed that accuracy of performance particularly in the CU&C tasks could be predicted by performance in the EF tasks, with high or medium EF scores being a prerequisite for placement in the group of high CU&C achievers.

Meta-cognition: a recent review …, Jan 1, 2008
This chapter focuses on self-awareness and self-representation of cognitive processes. Specifical... more This chapter focuses on self-awareness and self-representation of cognitive processes. Specifically, we will present a series of studies that examined if persons from early childhood to late adolescence were aware of the similarities and differences between cognitive processes used to solve different types of problems, such as problems requiring spatial, mathematical, and causal reasoning. Obviously, answering this question is important both for the general theory of intelligence and mind, but also for practical reasons. In the general theory of mind, self-awareness and awareness about other persons' minds is an important quality of the mind itself. That is, to be mindful implies, by definition, to be aware of one's own mind's functioning and its products. In fact, modern cognitive science takes consciousness and ensuing self-awareness for granted and attempts to specify how it emerges, how it works, and how it affects processing of real world problems. The general theory of intelligence, strangely, has remained rather impervious to these modern trends. That is, modern theories of intelligence still continue, like the good old days when the study of intelligence was culminating , to conceive of the human intellect as devoid of awareness and consciousness. As a result, the IQ measurement enterprise has not yet shown any interest in integrating measures of these processes into tests of intelligence.

Children's understanding of human and super-natural mind
Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga [Barrett, J. L., Richert, R. A., & Driesenga, A. (2001). God's be... more Barrett, Richert, and Driesenga [Barrett, J. L., Richert, R. A., & Driesenga, A. (2001). God's beliefs versus mother's: The development of nonhuman agents concepts. Child Development, 72(1), 50–65] have suggested that children are able to conceptualize the representational properties held by certain super-natural entities, such as God, before they achieve representational understanding of the human mind. The two experimental conditions of the present study aimed at cross-checking the above suggestion. One hundred and twenty children aged from 3 to 7 years were involved in both conditions. In the first, a modified perspective-taking and appearance-reality task, similar to that adopted in Barrett et al.'s study, was used. The task in the second addressed another aspect of representational understanding of the human mind, that is, the early emerging of the rule that knowledge is constrained by perception. The results of the study showed that younger children systematically treat God as a human protagonist regarding the representational properties they possess. Moreover, it was found that children are able to reason, accurately, about God's representational properties, only upon reaching their 5th year of age, when their representational understanding of the human mind becomes stable and robust.
Keywords: Anthropomorphism; Representational properties; Super-natural entities; Theory of mind
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Papers by NIKOLAOS MAKRIS
Keywords: Anthropomorphism; Representational properties; Super-natural entities; Theory of mind