Natural language contains many examples of sound-symbolism, where the form of the word carries information about its meaning. Such systematicity is more prevalent in the words children acquire first, but arbitrariness dominates during later vocabulary development. Furthermore, systematicity appears to promote learning category distinctions, which…

Recent studies of second language (L2) construction learning using artificial linguistic systems have begun to closely examine the role of individual differences, including personality. In such studies, adult participants learn form-meaning mappings after exposure, with scores on generalization tests as a standard criterion for learning. This…

In the current study, we investigated the ways in which the acquisition and transfer of spatial knowledge were affected by (a) the type of spatial relations predominately experienced during learning (routes determined by walkways vs. straight-line paths between locations); (b) environmental complexity; and (c) the availability of rotational…

This investigation tests Wittrock's generative learning model as an explanation for the positive relationship found between quizzing and student performance in a number of studies. Results support the theory, suggesting that quizzes structured to include multiple levels of Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill and Krathwohl's (1956) taxonomy, and thereby…

This article reports 2 experiments examining the changing role of iconicity in symbol learning and its implications regarding the mechanisms supporting symbol-to-referent mapping. Experiment 1 compared 18- and 26-month-olds' mapping of iconic gestures (e.g., hopping gesture for a rabbit) vs. arbitrary gestures (e.g., dropping motion for a rabbit).…