Previous studies of foreign policy decision making have largely focused on the choice among specified options rather than the prior question of how the options were specified in the first place. Such "problem representation" is the focus of this volume. How do the game theorists' options and utilities come about? The editors contend the representation of the problem to which the options are a response, the determinants of that representation, and its ramifications must all be analyzed. The contributors to the volume consider these issues, employing the methods of both international relations...

This volume consists of the proceedings of an international conference on cognition and instruction in history. The papers cover several broad areas: historical narratives and history teaching; the use of texts, documents and images in learning history; and historical explanation and understanding. The contributions aim to improve ideas of how history is understood by those who attempt (in schools or elsewhere) to master its complexities. It considers the tacit ideas about history or the past which children bring to history education, the reasoning that students of history employ, and the...

Based on extensive reasoning acquisition research, this volume provides theoretical and empirical considerations of the reasoning that occurs during the course of everyday personal and professional activities. Of particular interest is the text's focus on the question of how such reasoning takes place during school activities and how students acquire reasoning skills.

Emerging as the result of an international conference, this text aims to fill a gap in the study of how people learn and reason in the context of particular subject matter domains, and how instruction can be improved. The text focuses on history and the social sciences from a cognitive perspective.

Emerging as the result of an international conference, this text aims to fill a gap in the study of how people learn and reason in the context of particular subject matter domains, and how instruction can be improved. The text focuses on history and the social sciences from a cognitive perspective.

This special issue of Discourse Processes addresses the topic of argumentation, with a number of articles illustrating how individuals employ argumentation in various contexts. It discusses a number of general issues relevant to recent psychological research on argumentation including the definition, goals and functions, structure, evaluation of arguments and argumentation, and the relation of narrativity and argumentation.