Practitioners of adult education have a long history of teaching for social change. They may, however, be uncomfortable using quantitative methods to assess the impact of their learning activities, or they might lack access to statistical analysis software. Quantitative methods help the practitioner determine whether behavioral or attitudinal…

Phonotactics--constraints on the position and combination of speech sounds within syllables--are subject to statistical differences that gradiently affect speaker and listener behavior (e.g., Vitevitch & Luce, 1999). What statistical properties drive the acquisition of such constraints? Because they are naturally highly correlated, previous…

Humans are remarkably sensitive to the statistical structure of language. However, different mechanisms have been proposed to account for such statistical sensitivities. The present study compared adult learning of syntax and the ability of two models of statistical learning to simulate human performance: Simple Recurrent Networks, which learn by…

This document presents the key principles underpinning effective evaluations as applied to policy initiatives in the field of lifelong learning (LL) and the various methods available to implement them. The following are among the topics discussed in Chapters 1-6: (1) the distinction between monitoring, modeling, and evaluation and considerations…

This document explores the question of how the United Kingdom can attract more people into education and training. The introduction discusses the international seminar on which the document is based. "What Triggers Participation?" offers a conceptual framework for the seminar's findings. "A Comparative Perspective" examines…

This document contains 127 papers and innovative sessions and three poster sessions presented at a conference on human resource development (HRD). A program overview, author index, keyword index, and a CD-ROM version of the document are also included. The papers are grouped by the conference's 44 symposiums, which were devoted to the following…