We used a novel linguistic training paradigm to investigate the experience-dependent acquisition, representation, and processing of novel emotional and neutral abstract concepts. Participants engaged in mental imagery (n = 32) or lexico-semantic rephrasing (n = 34) of linguistic material during five training sessions and successfully learned the…

Accumulating information and knowledge is a major task of development. A common assumption is that we build our storehouse of world knowledge, our semantic memory, through direct experience. Although direct experience is involved, to explain fully how we know all that we know, we also must consider processes that allow for integration of…

Even though the concept of species is central in biology, the history of species concept and the existence of different species concepts are rarely discussed in biology classroom. This is unfortunate, as teachers could use the plurality of species concepts to enrich discussion in the classroom. Therefore, knowing the students' perception of…

Our aim in this paper is to improve the efficiency of a learning process by using learners' traces to detect particular needs. The analysis of the semantic path of a learner or group of learners during the learning process can allow detecting those students who are in needs of help as well as identify the insufficiently mastered concepts. We…

This preliminary study investigated the effects of co-treatment by an adapted physical educator and speech-language pathologist on basic concept vocabulary learning in preschool children with Down syndrome as compared with the effects of treatment by either professional alone. In a Repeated Acquisition Design/Adapted Alternating Treatment study,…

Like language, semantic memory is productive: It extends itself through self-derivation of new information through logical processes such as analogy, deduction, and induction, for example. Though it is clear these productive processes occur, little is known about the time course over which newly self-derived information becomes incorporated into…

This study investigates representational code-switching (RCS) by considering three high school students' communications in the process of comparing and contrasting pairs of representations (e.g., equation and graph) in the context of rational functions. Supporting this study is research in the realms of students interacting with mathematical…

Entropy is a central concept in thermodynamics, but has been found to be challenging to students due to its abstract nature and the fact that it is not part of students' everyday language. Interviews with three pairs of engineering students (N = 6) were conducted and video recorded regarding their interpretation and use of the entropy concept, one…

Explanations are typically accompanied by hand gestures. While research has shown that gestures can help learners understand a particular concept, different learning effects in different types of gesture have been less understood. To address the issues above, the current study focused on whether different types of gestures lead to different levels…

We can now get purposefully directed in the way we assess our learners in light of the emergence of evidence from the field of neuroscience. Why higher-order learning or abstract concepts need to be the focus in assessment is elaborated using the knowledge of semantic and episodic memories. With most of our learning identified to be implicit, why…

This article overviews research on second language vocabulary instruction with a specific focus on semantic and thematic vocabulary-clustering types. The theoretical benefits associated with both the semantic and thematic approaches, as well as the potential problems associated with them, are discussed. The conclusion drawn is that reinforcing the…

In three experiments, we examine the effects of semantic context and word concreteness on the mapping of existing meanings to new words. We developed a new-word-learning paradigm in which participants were required to discover the meaning of a new-word form from a specific verbal context. The stimulus materials were manipulated according to word…

Our research aims to identify domain-specific similarities and differences of externalized cognitive structures. Cognitive structure, also known as knowledge structure or structural knowledge, is conceived as the manner in which an individual organizes the relationships of concepts in memory. By diagnosing these structures precisely, even…

False recognition, broadly defined as a claim to remember something that was not encountered previously, can arise for multiple reasons. For instance, a distinction can be made between conceptual false recognition (i.e., false alarms resulting from semantic or associative similarities between studied and tested items) and perceptual false…