Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a complex maturation process of various cognitive abilities. Cognitive control, which includes response inhibition and working memory, is one of them. A typical study on response inhibition to visual stimuli presents distractors and targets on the same display (e.g., the computer screen).…

Student cognition and motivation, as well as institutional policies, determine student course grades and retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Regarding cognition, study skills relate to course grades, and grades relate to retention in STEM. Several aspects of motivation are related to both grades and…

Defining intelligence is a puzzle that has challenged educators and researchers for years. More recently, professionals are acknowledging that individuals possess many facets of intelligence and that learning is a complex combination of genetic factors, environmental influences, and life experiences that affect learning in unique ways (Salvia,…

It is well established that girls and boys perform differently in traditional examinations in most countries. This study looks at a sample of 754 school students in Kuwait (aged about 13) and explores how boys and girls differ in the performance in a range of tests related to learner characteristics. The fundamental question is how boys and girls…

In this study, qualitative evidence is collected--through classroom observations and teacher and student interviews--to study the effect of metacognition and the interaction between students' observable cognitive behaviour and the instructional task. This qualitative data is analysed to identify what factors support and improve students'…

Twenty preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to matched peers on counting abilities. SLI children demonstrated knowledge of rules associated with counting but exhibited marked difficulty in counting objects. They showed difficulty with rote counting, displayed a limited repertoire of number terms, miscounted…

In response to empirical evidence that suggests that children use more than one strategy in transitive inference tasks, an effort was made to model strategy development as it occurs under the dual constraints of a concept of order and task demands. In the model, when a task is presented, procedural memory is searched for a strategy that is…

Etiology-specific profiles of intellectual abilities were compared in 30 males (ages 6-12) with fragile X syndrome, Down's syndrome, or nonspecific mental retardation using the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. All three groups scored lower on sequential processing than on simultaneous processing or achievement, and etiology-specific…

Interest regarding neural information processing in autism is growing because atypical perceptual abilities are a characteristic feature of persons with autism. Central to our review is how characteristic perceptual abilities, referred to as "perceptual signatures," can be used to suggest a neural etiology that is specific to autism. We review…

Results indicate that although latent ability estimates may be significantly increased by a short intervention, modifiability depends on the type of intervention. Futhermore, it was found that general types of relationships may effectively mediate analogy item solving. (Author/BJG)

Two experiments investigated whether preschoolers attend to appearance instead of taxonomic relations in sorting sets of objects with conflicting appearances and taxonomic relations. Found that training and instructions have a significant effect on children's preference for sorting according to taxonomic relations or appearance, and that both…