Background: The effects of increases in physical activity (PA) on early literacy skills in preschool children are not known. Methods: Fifty-four African-American preschool children from a low socioeconomic urban Head Start participated over 8 months. A 2-group, quasi-experimental design was used with one preschool site participating in the PA…

Gender matters in the classroom, but not in the way people may assume; girls are outperforming boys. Identity-based motivation (IBM) theory explains why: People prefer to act in ways that feel in-line with important social identities such as gender. If a behavior feels identity-congruent, difficulty is interpreted as meaning that the behavior is…

The present research was aimed at investigating recognition memory and recollective experience for a text in adolescents with and without learning difficulties. Adolescents (age 15 to 19) with learning difficulties were selected based on their performance on a standardized test for text comprehension and on the teachers' evaluations of their…

When playing percussion instruments, the main activity is done with the help of a motion or motor skills; to perform it, developed fine motor skills are necessary: the speed and precision of fingers, hands and palms. The aim of the research was to study and test the development of young adults' fine motor skills while learning to play percussion…

This study compares the effects of two different self-assessment tools--rubrics and scripts--on self-regulation, learning and self-efficacy in interaction with two other independent variables (type of instructions and feedback). A total of 120 secondary school students analyzed landscapes--a usual task when studying Geography--in one of twelve…

In a multi-study naturalistic quasi-experiment involving 269 students in a semester-long introductory philosophy course, we investigated the effect of teaching argument diagramming (AD) on students' scores on argument analysis tasks. An argument diagram is a visual representation of the content and structure of an argument. In each study, all of…

This study investigates the effect of the systemic approach in literacy achievement of the first grade students at Mu'tah University's Model School. The sample (N = 45) consisted of all first grade students, who were assigned into two groups; a control group taught traditionally while the other group was exposed to the system approach during the…

Objective: Children with ADHD have an increased risk of poor academic performance. It is important to identify cognitive processes that may be related to this academic failure. In Western schooling systems, especially language processing skills may be of relevance. The present study, therefore, compares the ability to comprehend complex sentences…

Background: Children with learning disabilities are identified by their severe learning problems and their deficient school achievement. On the other hand, children with sub-average school achievement "and" sub-average intellectual development are thought to suffer from a general intellectual delay rather than from specific learning disabilities.…

Twenty-four junior high school students with academic achievement in the 26-50 percentiles were given easier anagram tasks while their 183 classmates were given more difficult ones by means of a presentation trick using polarizing filters. The two series of anagram tasks were projected simultaneously on the same screen, but each of two groups of…

This study focused on the relationship between school performance and performance on a dichotic listening (DL) task in dyslexic children. Dyslexia is associated with impaired phonological processing, related to functions in the left temporal lobe. DL is a frequently used task to assess functions of the left temporal lobe. Due to the predominance…