This study concerns children's representational knowledge, more specifically, their "invented notations" of music. A small-scale empirical study of four 5-year-old children and their teachers working on the representation of music is reported. The challenges posed by the teachers and how the children respond to these challenges are analysed. The…

In 2 experiments, eye movements were examined during searches in which elements were grouped into four 9-item clusters. The target (a red or blue "T") was known in advance, and each cluster contained different numbers of target-color elements. Rather than color composition of a cluster invariantly guiding the order of search though…

The different combinations involved in additive and subtractive colour mixing can often be difficult for students to remember. Using transmission graphs for filters of the primary colours and a numerical scheme to write out the relationships are good exercises in analytical thinking that can help students recall the combinations rather than just…

Oregon State Univ. has offered FST 102 "Maraschino Cherry" as a 1-credit orientation course since 1994. The maraschino cherry serves as a vehicle from which faculty give their disciplinary perspective, for example, the chemistry of the maraschino cherry, processing unit operations, microbiology and food safety, food law, sensory…

Most first-graders are interested in insects. In this article, the author describes a lesson, "Dragonflies and Fireflies," which is a first-grade lesson showing drawing, symmetry, neighboring colors (analogous) and watercolor techniques.

Two experiments examined developmental changes in children's visual recognition of common objects during the period of 18 to 24 months. Experiment 1 examined children's ability to recognize common category instances that presented three different kinds of information: (1) richly detailed and prototypical instances that presented both local and…

This paper reports on a simple experiment which enables splitting incident light into two different modes, each having a colour exactly complementary to the other. A brief historical development of colour theories and differences in a physicist's point of view with respect to an artist's one is discussed. An experimental system for producing…

We respond to the commentary of Franklin, Wright, and Davies ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102", 239-245 [2009]) by returning to the simple contrast between nature and nurture. We find no evidence from the toddler data that makes us revise our ideas that color categories are learned and never innate. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study uses history of science in teaching natural sciences from the early grades. The theoretical framework used is Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which is a theory with expanding applications in different fields of science. The didactical scenario, in which history of science is used in a CHAT context, refers to Newton's…

The applicability of Vantage Theory (VT), a model of (colour) categorization, to linguistic data largely depends on the modifications and adaptations of the model for the purpose. An attempt to do so proposed here, called Extended Vantage Theory (EVT), slightly reformulates the VT conception of vantage by capitalizing on some of the entailments of…

Cascade models of word production assume that during lexical access all activated concepts activate their names. In line with this view, it has been shown that naming an object's colour is facilitated when colour name and object name are phonologically related (e.g., "blue" and "blouse"). Prevor and Diamond's (2005) recent observation that…

There is now a large body of evidence suggesting that color and photographic detail exert an effect on recognition of visually presented familiar objects. However, an unresolved issue is whether these factors act at the visual, the semantic or lexical level of the recognition process. In the present study, we investigated this issue by having…

In many nonhuman species of vertebrates, females are attracted to red on male conspecifics. Red is also a signal of male status in many nonhuman vertebrate species, and females show a mating preference for high-status males. These red-attraction and red-status links have been found even when red is displayed on males artificially. In the present…

In this article, the author describes the design for her advanced oil-painting class. In this class, high-school students created a self-portrait painting and learned a glazing technique. The author also describes the students' evaluation of the class.

This study investigated the visual information that children and adults consider while switching or maintaining object-matching rules. Eye movements of 5- and 6-year-old children and adults were collected with two versions of the Advanced Dimensional Change Card Sort, which requires switching between shape- and color-matching rules. In addition to…