This article investigates the experience of individual learners who have been allocated learning support in the further education system in England. The particular focus is on interviewees' constructions of their emotional and psychic experiences. Through the adoption of a psycho-social perspective, learners' tendency to "idealise" their…

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) show variability in their sensory behaviors. In this study we identified clusters of toddlers with ASDs who shared sensory profiles and examined differences in affective symptoms across these clusters. Method: Using cluster analysis 170 toddlers with ASDs were grouped based on parent…

This paper begins with a consideration of some important themes dealt with in the paper by Treagust and Duit. These include the relationship between research on conceptual change and educational practice, the significance of emotion and identity in the process of conceptual change, and role of cognitive conflict in motivating change. I then argue…

Subjective well-being has often been studied as a context-free construct, reflecting overall life satisfaction and characteristic levels of positive affect and negative affect. But there has also been much interest in domain-specific aspects of subjective well-being, such as job satisfaction. The authors provide a brief overview of the two primary…

Research Findings: We examined whether "affective social competence," or the ability to effectively send and receive emotional signals and to manage one's own emotional experience, contributes to preschool children's peer relations. Forty-two previously unacquainted preschoolers were observed while participating in a week-long playschool. Greater…

Due to the alarming signals of declining proficiency level among English Language learners in Malaysia, this study set out to learn more about the learners' perceptions of the teachers' code-switching in English Language classrooms. The objectives of this study were to investigate: a) learners' perceptions of teachers' code-switching, b) the…

This study assesses reading processes and/or strategies needed to deploy deep processing that could push learners towards syntactic-based constructions in L2 classrooms. Research has found L2 acquisition to present varying degrees of success and/or fossilization (Bley-Vroman 1989, Birdsong 1992 and Sharwood Smith 1994). For example, learners have…

Stress generation is a process in which individuals, through their depressive symptoms, personal characteristics, and/or behaviors, contribute to the occurrence of stressful life events. While this process has been well documented in adults, few studies have examined it in children. The present study examines whether cognitive and interpersonal…

Stress-related growth is defined as the perception or experience of deriving benefits from encountering stressful circumstances and, thus, has been identified as a protective factor against stress. The current study revised and subsequently validated scores on an existing measure of stress-related growth in a sample of racial/ethnic minority…

A sample of 196 participants (mean age 45.94 years, 54% women) completed inventories assessing upward and downward positive and negative social comparisons and general well-being. Widows and widowers were higher on upward negative comparisons than divorced or married persons while being lower on well-being measures of life satisfaction and…

The present study investigated the degree of convergence between three different measures of vicarious affective responsiveness (affective empathy)--verbal self-report, facial expression and change in heart rate--in typically developing children (N=29, aged 8-10 years), when presented with an emotionally evocative film. Although convergence…

We sought to clarify the nature of the face processing strength commonly observed in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) by comparing the face recognition ability of persons with WS to that of persons with autism and to healthy controls under three conditions: Upright faces with neutral expressions, upright faces with varying affective…

A deficit in empathy has consistently been cited as a central characteristic of Asperger syndrome (AS), but previous research on adults has predominantly focused on cognitive empathy, effectively ignoring the role of affective empathy. We administered the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a multi-dimensional measure of empathy, and the Strange…

Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education. In particular, the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether a video-induced positive and negative mood has a differential effect on subsequent problem-solving activities in a web-based environment. The study also examined whether task conditions (task demands) moderated the mood effect. As in traditional experimental mood-effect studies, the affective video…