In three experiments, we compared the effectiveness of rainbow writing and retrieval practice, two common methods of spelling instruction. In experiment 1 (n = 14), second graders completed 2 days of spelling practice, followed by spelling tests 1 day and 5 weeks later. A repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated that spelling accuracy…

This study examined young children's deception in a conflict situation. A puppet show was prepared involving a protagonist who went into hiding, an enemy who wanted to catch the protagonist, and a friend who was looking for the protagonist. In the no-conflict condition, the enemy asked the children about the location of the protagonist. In the…

Research has demonstrated that providing labels helps children notice key features of examples. Much less is known about how different labels impact children's ability to make inferences about the structure underlying mathematical notation. We tested the impact of labeling decimals such as 0.34 using formal place-value labels ("3 tenths and 4…

Purpose/Objective: To develop and implement a "Tasting Challenge" activity that is feasible for schools to influence and measure the willingness of elementary students to try new foods. Methods: The Tasting Challenge was as part of a classroom activity. Children were individually offered jicama and edamame to taste and rate (yummy, ok,…

This study investigates the development of metalinguistic skills, particularly ambiguity detection, and whether training accelerates this development for prereaders in kindergarten (5;5-6;6). It is the first to compare homophone detection with lexically ambiguous sentence detection in which the same homophones appear. The experimental group…

This paper presents the analysis of two teaching experiments carried out in the context of the mathematics laboratory in a primary school (grades 3 and 4) with the use of the pascaline Zero + 1, an arithmetical machine. The teaching experiments are analysed by coordinating two theoretical frameworks, i.e. the instrumental approach and the Theory…

The aim of this study was to explore preschool children's perceptions of their performance under competitive and non-competitive conditions (NCC) and their satisfaction. Eighty preschool children (40 boys, 40 girls) aged 4-6 years (M age?=?5.48, SD?=?0.57) took part in this study. Preschool children built a tower under competitive and NCC and…

Italian has regular spelling-sound correspondences; however, assignment of lexical stress is unpredictable. Sensitivity to stress neighborhood information was investigated by constructing three types of three-syllabic nonwords: nonwords with word-endings characterized by a strong neighborhood of dominant stress words (dominant), nonwords with…

An experiment involving 90 students in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades investigated how visual examples and grade (our surrogate for age) affected variability in a drawing task. The task involved using circles as the main element in a set of drawings. There were two examples: One was simple and single (a smiley face inside a circle); the other,…

Resumptive pronouns are often regarded as a last-resort strategy for rescuing illicit long-distance dependencies. Previous work has demonstrated a facilitative role for resumptive pronouns in production as well as in comprehension, though not a grammatical option in the languages. This study examined whether the same pattern is found in Cantonese,…

The goal of the current research was to better understand when and why feedback has positive effects on learning and to identify features of feedback that may improve its efficacy. In a randomized experiment, second-grade children (N = 75) received instruction on a correct problem-solving strategy and then solved a set of relevant problems.…

Researchers are increasingly interested in working memory (WM) training. However, it is unclear whether it strengthens comprehension in young children who are at risk for learning difficulties. We conducted a modest study of whether the training of verbal WM would improve verbal WM and passage listening comprehension and whether training effects…

A growing number of studies have been conducted on digital game-based learning (DGBL). However, there has been a lack of attention paid to individuals' self-efficacy and learning performance in the implementation of DGBL. This study therefore investigated how the badge mechanism in DGBL enhanced users' self-efficacy in the subject domain of…

Experimentation skills are a central component of scientific thinking, and many studies have investigated whether and when primary-school children develop adequate experimentation strategies. However, the answers to these questions vary substantially depending on the type of task that is used: while discovery tasks, which require children to…

Despite the importance of spelling for both writing and reading, there is considerable disagreement regarding how spelling skills are best acquired. During this and virtually all of the last century, some scholars have argued that spelling should not be directly or formally taught as such instruction is not effective or efficient. We conducted a…