The current study reported an empirical investigation that tested the collective and individual effects of morphological awareness and cognate awareness on Japanese word learning among Chinese learners of Japanese. 131 Chinese learners of Japanese participated in this study. They completed morphological awareness measurements (morpheme…

In our everyday life, we often need to anticipate the potential occurrence of events and their consequences. In this context, the way we represent contingencies can determine our ability to adapt to the environment. However, it is not clear how agents encode and organize available knowledge about the future to react to possible states of the…

Although instructional explanations are commonly used to introduce learners to new learning content, previous studies have often shown that their effects on learning outcomes are minimal. This failure might partly be due to mental passivity of the learners while processing introductory explanations and to a lack of opportunity to revise potential…

The study examined the knowledge of the functional relations between potential difference, magnitude of current, and resistance among seventh graders, ninth graders, 11th graders (in technical schools), and college students. It also tested the efficiency of a learning device named "functional learning" derived from cognitive psychology on the…

This study concerned the role of gestures that accompany discourse in deep learning processes. We assumed that co-speech gestures favor the construction of a complete mental representation of the discourse content, and we tested the predictions that a discourse accompanied by gestures, as compared with a discourse not accompanied by gestures,…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated learning of the value of money from product prices in an unfamiliar currency when the prices are proportional to quantity. In support of the second stage of a hypothesized 2-stage process of learning, Experiment 1, in which 32 undergraduates participated, shows that response times for inferences of…

Many students find it difficult to learn the kinds of knowledge and thinking required by college or high school courses in mathematics, science, or other complex domains. Thus they often emerge with significant misconceptions, fragmented knowledge, and inadequate problem-solving skills. Most instructors or textbook authors approach their teaching…