Retention (i.e., response maintenance) is rarely the primary variable of interest when examining skill acquisition procedures. Trial presentation type (i.e., acquisition targets only vs. interspersal of previously acquired targets) within discrete-trial training is one procedural component that researchers have hypothesized may affect performance…

Learning takes time: Performance usually starts poorly and improves with practice. Do children intuit this basic phenomenon of skill learning? In preregistered Experiment 1 (n = 125; 54% female; 48% White; collected 2022-2023), US 7- to 8-year-old children predicted improved performance, 5- to 6-year-old children predicted flat performance, and…

Example-generation tasks have been suggested as an effective way to both promote students' learning of mathematics and assess students' understanding of concepts. E-assessment offers the potential to use example-generation tasks with large groups of students, but there has been little research on this approach so far. Across two studies, we…

This study explores whether AI-generated adaptive feedback or static feedback is favourable for student interest and performance outcomes in learning statistics in a digital learning environment. Previous studies have favoured adaptive feedback over static feedback for skill acquisition, however, without investigating the outcome of students'…

In a study of 370 postsecondary students in electronics, engineering, and other science classes, we investigated collaborative problem-solving (CPS) skills that best predict performance at individual levels in an online electronics environment. The results showed that while monitoring was a consistent predictor across levels, other skills such as…

An inherent component of tool-use actions is the transformation of the user's operating movement into the desired effect. In this study, the relevance of this transformation for young children's learning of tool-use actions was investigated. Sixty-four children at the age of 27-30 months learned to use levers which either simply extended…

Procedural fidelity is defined as the extent to which the independent variable is implemented as prescribed. Research using computerized tasks has shown that fidelity errors involving consequences for behavior can hinder skill acquisition. However, studies examining the effects of these errors once skills have been mastered are lacking. Thus, this…

We investigated the influence of the time-of-day and sleep on skill acquisition (i.e., skill improvement immediately after a training-session) and consolidation (i.e., skill retention after a time interval including sleep). Three groups were trained at 10 a.m. (G10[subscript am]), 3 p.m. (G3[subscript pm]), or 8 p.m. (G8[subscript pm]) on a…

Recent instructional reforms in science education aim to change the way students engage in learning in the discipline, as they describe that students are to engage with disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and the practices of science to make sense of phenomena (NRC, 2012). For such sensemaking to become a reality, there is a need to…

Manding is an important skill for children to learn to access not only preferred items but also information that can be crucial to their success in academic, professional, or social settings. There is a need to continue research to best teach mands for information. The current study examined the effectiveness of using incidental teaching to teach…

Critical thinking is routinely identified as a goal for student learning in higher education. Critical thinking, however, is difficult to define or teach, often left as an educational aspiration that is challenging to operationalize and assess. Therefore, many interventions targeting critical thinking are isolated and tend to focus on the…

The interactions among cognitive, affective, and linguistic factors have received scant attention in task-based writing research. To address this gap, this study aims to examine the relationships among task complexity, task motivation, task engagement, and syntactic complexity in second language (L2) writing. One hundred L2 learners enrolled in an…

The present study deals with the influence of specific motor experiences on efficient grasp planning. Forty 5- to 6-year-old children learned to use an unfamiliar tool with either a thumb-up or a thumb-down grip to accomplish a task. Before and after training, the extent to which children would rotate the tool using an awkward initial grip…

Secondary school students often learn new cognitive skills by practicing with tasks that vary in difficulty, amount of support and/or content. Occasionally, they have to select these tasks themselves. Studies on task-selection guidance investigated either procedural guidance (specific rules for selecting tasks) or strategic guidance (general rules…

Taking the visual perspective of another individual is an important skill in social communication, and is termed visual perspective-taking (VPT). Individuals with autism spectrum disorder who have deficits in social interaction show relatively lower performance on VPT tasks than individuals who achieve age-appropriate developmental milestones.…