For learning math, non-symbolic quantity skills, symbolic skills and the mapping between number symbols and non-symbolic quantities are all important precursors. Little is known, however, about the interrelated development of these skills. The current study focuses on numerical development by: (a) investigating the structure of non-symbolic,…

For self-regulated learning to be effective, students need to be able to accurately assess their own performance on a learning task and use this assessment for the selection of a new learning task. Evidence suggests, however, that students have difficulties with accurate self-assessment and task selection, which may explain the poor learning…

The fading of instructional scripts can be regarded as necessary for allowing learners to take over control of their cognitive activities during the acquisition of skills such as argumentation. There is, however, the danger that learners might relapse into novice strategies after script prompts are faded. One possible solution could be monitoring…

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a…

In two experiments, participants made inferences from weather maps, before and after they received instruction about relevant meteorological principles. Different versions of the maps showed either task-relevant information alone, or both task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Participants improved on the inference task after instruction,…

This study tested the effects of two instructional aids in a complex, dynamic environment, specifically, a business simulation. Participants studied (1) a "causal map," which depicted key variables in an interconnected network, (2) a textual outline of the same relationships, or (3) no-aid. With the relevant aid still available, the participants…

This longitudinal study investigated the cross-lagged associations between children's academic skill development, task-avoidant behaviour in the context of homework, and parental beliefs about their child's success from kindergarten to Grade 2. The participants were 1267 children. The children's pre-skills were assessed at the end of the…

In a 10-day training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations on German speaking 5th-graders' spelling skills for irregular words was examined. Poor spellers were less efficient in learning the spelling pronunciations than age-adequate spellers. On post-tests, 1 week after the last training day and between 5 and 12 weeks after post-test 1, poor…

Does authentic assessment or the perception of it affect how students study and learn? Does practical experience affect how assessment authenticity is perceived? And does practical experience influence how an authentic assessment affects student learning? Mixed methods design yielded insight into the answers to these questions. This article…

In this study we examined the effects of skill training, in particular mental abacus and music training, on working memory. Two groups of participants--children who had received mental abacus training and their controls--participated in Experiment 1. All participants performed the following span tasks: forward digit span, backward digit span,…