There is growing recognition that working memory and selective attention are highly related. However, a key function of selective attention--ignoring distractors--is much less understood in the domain of working memory. In the attention domain, it is now clear that distractors' task relevance and stimulation of multiple senses at a time (i.e.,…

An emerging body of studies demonstrates that practicing retrieval of studied information, by comparison with restudying or no treatment, can facilitate subsequent learning and retrieval of new information, a phenomenon termed the 'forward testing effect' (FTE) or 'test-potentiated new learning." Several theoretical explanations have been…

The study aimed at exploring the relationship between social media disorder and academic procrastination, and to thereby investigate the mediating effects of intrusive thinking and fatigue. By enrolling 412 undergraduate college students in India, the interconnectedness of the four variables was investigated using Social Media Disorder scale by…

Multitasking activities among students using various technological devices is common during lectures, and many studies have demonstrated their deleterious effects on various learning outcomes. In contrast, fewer studies have examined ways to reduce multitasking and stimulate engagement in learning. The present study provides an educational…

It was shown previously that observers can learn to exploit an uneven spatial distribution of singleton distractors to better shield visual search from distractors in the frequent versus the rare region (i.e., distractor location probability cueing; Sauter, Liesefeld, Zehetleitner, & Müller, 2018). However, with distractors defined in the same…

In the Stroop task, congruency effects (i.e., the color-naming latency difference between incongruent stimuli, e.g., the word BLUE written in the color red, and congruent stimuli, e.g., RED in red) are smaller in a list in which incongruent trials are frequent than in a list in which incongruent trials are infrequent. The traditional explanation…

Whereas some evidence exists that math anxiety may interfere with math performance from the very beginning of primary school, no study to date has attempted to investigate whether math anxiety may also interfere with early math learning (i.e., the encoding of new math knowledge) and not only with recalling already mastered contents in test…

Problem-solving is one of the 21st-century skills. However, students still have difficulty solving sequences and series word problems. The purpose of this research is to analyze students' errors in solving sequences and series word problems based on problem-solving steps of Polya. The research method is descriptive qualitative. The research…

This study examined the viewpoints of lecturers and students regarding the roles of smartphones in the classroom: how legitimate is it to use them in class, and in what ways? Does the usage of smartphones impair in-class learning processes, and if it does, can we tie specific uses with specific disruptions to the class? Conversely, could it be…

The article is devoted to the issue of learning from the cognitive perspective. As life-long learning is an integral part of our modern life, the authors were attracted by the phenomenon when even young people demonstrate cognitive "resistance" to learning. This particular study is focused on cognitive destructions as challenges to…

International short-term study tours are a fast-growing format for outbound education and provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students in the creative industries disciplines. This success has encouraged researchers to seek a comprehensive view of the various concrete experiences that contribute to student learning during study…

Three experiments investigated the learning of simple associations in a color-word contingency task. Participants responded manually to the print colors of 3 words, with each word associated strongly to 1 of the 3 colors and weakly to the other 2 colors. Despite the words being irrelevant, response times to high-contingency stimuli and to…

This study investigates secondary-task interference on eye movements through learning with multimedia. We focus on the relationship between the influence of the secondary task on the eye movements of learners, and the learning outcomes as measured by retention, matching, and transfer. Half of the participants performed a spatial tapping task while…

It has been repeatedly argued among vocabulary researchers that semantically related words should not be taught simultaneously because they can interfere with each other. However, the question of what types of relatedness cause interference has rarely been examined carefully. In addition, there are disagreements among the past studies that have…

The item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) manipulation (Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003) produces larger Stroop interference for mostly congruent items than mostly incongruent items. This effect has been attributed to dynamic control over word-reading processes. However, proportion congruence of an item in the ISPC manipulation is…