Language is used in communicative contexts to identify and successfully transmit new information that should be later remembered. In three studies, we used question-answer pairs, a naturalistic device for focusing information, to examine how properties of conversations inform later item memory. In Experiment 1, participants viewed three pictures…

To draw valid and reliable conclusions from child studies involving facial expressions, well-controlled and validated (child) facial stimuli are necessary. The current study is the first to validate the facial emotional expressions of child models in school-aged children. In this study, we validated the Radboud Faces Database child models in a…

Teaching algorithmic thinking enables students to use their knowledge in various contexts to reuse existing solutions to algorithmic problems. The aim of this study is to examine how students recognize which algorithmic concepts can be used in a new situation. We developed a card sorting task and investigated the ways in which secondary school…

People read for many different reasons. These goals affect the cognitive processes and strategies they use during reading. Understanding "how" reading goals exert their effects requires investigation of whether and how they affect specific component processes, such as validation. We investigated the effects of reading goal on text-based…

The purpose of this research is to investigate how Young Enterprise (YE) student entrepreneurs develop new product/service opportunities, learn decision-making skills and achieve a sense of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. From a national survey of YE participants in the Netherlands, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was found to partially mediate…

According to several computational models, novel items can create a learning mode with dynamics favorable to new learning, and not to memory retrieval. In line with that idea, a new item in a recognition test has been found to create a bias toward calling subsequent items new as well. Here, we tested whether this bias, which we termed the…

The teaching of communication skills is a labour-intensive task because of the detailed feedback that should be given to learners during their prolonged practice. This study investigates to what extent our FILTWAM facial and vocal emotion recognition software can be used for improving a serious game (the Communication Advisor) that delivers a…

The present study tests whether presenting video modeling examples from the learner's (first-person) perspective promotes learning of an assembly task, compared to presenting video examples from a third-person perspective. Across 2 experiments conducted in different labs, university students viewed a video showing how to assemble an 8-component…

The training of tactical decision making increasingly occurs through serious computer games. A challenging aspect of designing such games is the modelling of human emotions. Two studies were performed to investigate the relation between fidelity and human emotion recognition in virtual human characters. Study 1 compared five versions of a virtual…

This paper presents the voice emotion recognition part of the FILTWAM framework for real-time emotion recognition in affective e-learning settings. FILTWAM (Framework for Improving Learning Through Webcams And Microphones) intends to offer timely and appropriate online feedback based upon learner's vocal intonations and facial expressions in order…

We present the results of an experiment on lexical recognition of human sign language signs in which the available perceptual information about handshape and hand orientation was manipulated. Stimuli were videos of signs from Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN). The videos were processed to create four conditions: (1) one in which neither…

In this article we report on two experiments about the perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech. The article addresses two questions: (1) how do visual cues from a speaker's face to emotion relate to auditory cues, and (2) what is the recognition speed for various facial cues to emotion? Both experiments reported below are based on tests…

In sign language studies, it is generally assumed that a sign can be divided into several phases in time (preparation, stroke, and retraction) and that the stroke contains all of the necessary information. However, this has not been tested empirically. In order to learn where the information truly resides, we present an experiment that…

The present study aimed at testing theoretical predictions of the fuzzy-trace theory about true and false recognition. The effects of semantic relatedness and study opportunity on true and false recognition of words from Deese, Roediger, McDermott lists (J. Deese, 1959; D. R. Read, 1996; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) were evaluated…

Earlier research showed that divided attention, an aspect of executive function, is limited in both children and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The current study explored divided attention capacity in adults with ASD and without intellectual disability (n = 36). Divided attention was tested using a computerized variant of a…