We describe the scaling up of an evidence-informed model of care, Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP) in Los Angeles County, California. MAP complemented an array of evidence-based programs selected by the county as part of a large system reform effort designed to improve care for children and adolescents. In addition, we discuss the MAP model for training therapists and present data both on h...

For one and the same domain several alternative concept maps may exist, originating from different world views or purposes. Some of these concept maps may be valid, however not all of them. Thus, strategies for empirically and objectively validating concept maps in the respective context are necessary. We outline two methodological approaches for empirically validating concept maps, one for giv...

New neurons are produced each day in the hippocampus through the process of neurogenesis. Both mental and physical training can modify this process by increasing the number of new cells that mature into functional neurons in the adult brain. However, the mechanisms whereby these increases occur are not necessarily the same. Physical activity, especially aerobic exercise greatly increases the nu...

Cognitive neuroscience aims to map mental processes onto brain function, which begs the question of what "mental processes" exist and how they relate to the tasks that are used to manipulate and measure them. This topic has been addressed informally in prior work, but we propose that cumulative progress in cognitive neuroscience requires a more systematic approach to representing the mental ent...

Do non-human animals have rights? The answer to this question depends on whether animals have morally relevant mental properties. Mindreading is the human activity of ascribing mental states to other organisms. Current knowledge about the evolution and cognitive structure of mindreading indicates that human ascriptions of mental states to non-human animals are very inaccurate. The accuracy of h...

Mathematical expertise builds on a foundation of space, especially the ability to map exact numbers to linear space. This “mental number-line” is known to vary cross-culturally, but there is debate about the mechanisms responsible for its cultural elaboration. We investigated the role of co-speech gesture, a ubiquitous cultural activity, in stabilizing and entrenching the mental number-line wit...

We are reporting research on collaborative knowledge building compared to individual conceptual change during a professional study unit in Laurea University of Applied Sciences. As educational research that is a design experiment, a multicase, multi-method study. We used both individual and collaborative concept mapping in the same design experiment. The theme of the design experiment was ‘Copi...

Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) have found favor in a variety of theoretical and applied contexts that span the hard and soft sciences. Given the utility and flexibility of the method, coupled with the broad appeal of FCM to a variety of scientific disciplines, FCM have been appropriated in many different ways and, depending on the academic discipline in which it has been applied, used to draw a ran...