The wide variety of readily available electronic media grants anyone the freedom to retrieve published references from almost any area of research around the world. Despite this privilege, keeping up with primary research evidence is almost impossible because of the increase in professional publishing across disciplines. Systematic reviews are a…

The origin of recursive frame analysis (RFA) is revisited and discussed as a postmodern alternative to modernist therapeutic models and research methods that foster hegemony of a preferred therapeutic metaphor, narrative, or strategy. It encourages improvisational performance while enabling a means of scoring the change and movement of the…

Behavior analysis has exploited conceptual tools whose experimental validity has been amply demonstrated, but their relevance to large-scale and fine-grained behavioral phenomena remains uncertain, because the experimental analysis of these domains faces formidable obstacles of measurement and control. In this essay I suggest that, at least at the…

A technique is presented for applying the Rule Space methodology of cognitive diagnosis to assessment in a semantically rich domain. The approach bases diagnosis on item characteristics that are more abstract than individual problem-solving steps. The method is illustrated through a test of architectural knowledge completed by 122 architects. (SLD)

Describes two variants of the form-priming paradigm (direct and mediated form priming) and summarizes the results obtained with each. With both variants, participants are presented with a target, to which a response is required, preceded by a prime. (28 references) (Author/CK)

In a study using preschool and elementary school children, the children's judgments of whether brief stories described valid instances of a concept shifted in a manner consistent with the authors' hypothesis that meanings typically develop from representations in which characteristic features predominate to those in which defining features become…

Four versions of several paragraphs had the same second sentence and were referentially coherent, but they differed in causal relatedness of the two sentences. Results showed that despite referential coherence, recognition and recall memory for the causes was poorest for the most and least related causes and best for causes of intermediate…

Results of a study indicated that adults reading for retention spent more time focusing on syntactic structure, while those reading for immediate comprehension focused more of their time on semantic content. However, the children (fifth graders) used reading strategies that involved mixtures of both of the adult components. (SL)

Describes the cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, including its underlying rationale and the different tasks with which it is combined. Introduces the type of stimuli used and the dependent and independent variables typically manipulated; discusses the paradigm's main advantages and drawbacks; and considers its most important areas of…

Given the current popularity of ethnographic methods of researching teaching and teachers, many investigators commonly confront the task of analyzing interview transcripts in order to uncover speakers' meaning systems and the embedded perspectives on knowledge and practice upon which those meaning systems rely. Others have written about conducting…

Discusses "cued shadowing," during which subjects listen to pairs of words or sentences and repeat a target word signalled by a cue. Rapid semantic and grammatical priming effects have been observed with this technique, both with word and sentence contexts and at different positions within sentence contexts, in normal children and adults, and in…

Describes the different priming procedures and experimental variables used for gaining access to the nature of the lexical representation of morphological information and summarizes the experimental data collected across different languages. Notes that responses to a target word in auditory word recognition tasks can be facilitated when the word…

Describes the semantic network technique of Rumelhart and Norman and by Lindsay and Normal for subject matter content analysis and explores its application to genetics. (CS)

Notes that in a typical word monitoring paradigm, subjects monitor ongoing language input for a pre-designated target word and that independent variables include the nature and position of the target word and the context in which it is embedded. Also notes that forms of this task are suitable for studies with young children and with individuals…

Papers given at an international conference applying the social sciences to the study of the relationships of languages include the following: "Reseaux sociaux et comportements langagiers en milieu de contact des langues" ("Social Networks and Language Behaviors in a Language Contact Setting") by M. Blanc and J. Hamers, with…