How do children infer the meaning of a novel verb? One prominent proposal is that children rely on syntactic information in the linguistic context, a phenomenon known as "syntactic bootstrapping". For example, given the sentence "The bunny is gorping the duck," a child could use knowledge of English syntactic roles to infer…

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted education, necessitating alternative methods to traditional face-to-face teaching. This dramatic change, in tandem with increasing awareness of the metaverse--a virtual reality (VR) world wherein humanity might learn, work and socialise--has made a clear need for a better understanding of the…

This article offers a systematic review of studies of personality and the dimensions of temperament and character, personality pathology, and personality disorders (PDs) in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria for the review, from which seven studies were meta-analyzed. Results indicate that ASD is…

The influence of a model's age on young children's behaviour has been a subject of considerable debate among developmental theorists. Despite the recent surge of interest, controversy remains about the nature of peer influence in early life. This article reviews studies that investigated the influence of a model's age on young…

Behaviors characteristic of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often interfere with students' and their classmates' learning, and interventions targeting these behaviors may be particularly important in schools. This article reviews studies in which researchers manipulated environmental stimulation during task presentation…

This article critically reviews the extant literature on scientific creativity and metaphorical thinking. Metaphorical thinking is based on a conceptual transfer of relationships or mapping, from a well-known source domain to a poorly known target domain, which could result in creative outcomes in sciences. Creativity leads to products that are…

The last decades, an increasing literature on prenatal influences on child behaviour, including temperament, has emerged. This review will give an overview of animal and human studies that have focused specifically on the relation between prenatal stress exposure and offspring behaviour or temperament in early life. The concept and assessment of…

Considers assumptions underlying current cognitive science research on concepts: (1) novel information is first processed via similarity judgments and later by explanatory components; (2) children initially have a similarity-based component for learning concepts--the explanatory component develops on its foundation. Argues that these assumptions…

Critically evaluates habituation and related models for studying infant memory, focusing on methodological and substantive limitations which restrict the derivation of information from them. The essay considers existing research on the development of object permanence as an alternative source of information about infant memory. (Author/DB)

Reviews research on the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical system in normal infants. Special attention is paid to the environmental stimuli and psychological processes regulating the stress responses of this system. (NH)

Working memory is where we "think" as we learn. A notion that emerges as a synthesis from several threads in the research literatures of cognition, motivation, and connectionism is that motivation in learning is the process whereby working memory resource allocation is instigated and sustained. This paper reviews much literature on motivation and…

The paper defines the term "culture shock" and discusses the changes that this state can make in a person's behavior. Culture shock refers to the emotional and physiological reaction of high activation that is brought about by sudden immersion in a new culture. Because one's own culture shields one from the unknown and reduces the need to make…

Reviews empirical studies from a wide variety of fields to show that computer-based multimedia instruction may be able to help people learn more information more quickly compared to traditional classroom lecture. Topics include interactivity; control of learning pace; novelty; and learners with low prior knowledge or aptitude. (103 references)…

This article presents information drawn from research on brain processes that impact perception, memory, learning, and understandings about the world. This information is related to the use of interactive video and the Web in distance education through a discussion of how best to enhance learning--or mitigate problems caused--through the use of…