Summarizes findings on infants' capacity for object segregation. Maintains that infants can use featural and experiential information for segregation and individuation purposes long before 12 months of age. Disputes the claim that formation of object categories awaits early word learning, but acknowledges that language may play a key role in…

Four experiments examined whether reinstatement and reactivation reminder paradigms affected memory performance of 102 three-month-olds. Results indicated that a single reinstatement protracted retention twice as long after training as a single reactivation. The novelty of the reminder stimulus also affected duration and specificity of memory in…

Two picture-word interference experiments investigated whether or not words from a first and more dominant language are activates during lexical access in a foreign and less dominant language. Native speakers of Dutch were instructed to name pictures in English. Revealed that the Dutch name of a picture is activated during initial stages of the…

Investigated caption use, sound, and reading behavior of 76 children who had just completed 2nd grade. The present study indicated that beginning readers recognize more words when they view television that uses captions. Captions, by evoking efforts to read, appeared to help a child focus on central story elements and away from distracting…

The impact of premature birth on associative learning was evaluated using simple delay eyeblink conditioning in which a tone conditional stimulus was paired with an air puff unconditional stimulus. Fourteen preterm (28-31 weeks gestation) and 11 full-term infants completed at least 3 conditioning sessions, 1 week apart, at 5 months of age…

Affective and Neutral Tasks (faces with negative or neutral content, with different lighting and orientation) requiring reaction time judgments of poser identity were administered to 32 participants. Speed and accuracy were better for the Affective than Neutral Task, consistent with literature suggesting facilitation of performance by affective…

A dual-processing paradigm was used to investigate information processing limitations underlying specific language impairment (SLI). School-age children with and without SLI were asked to recall verbal and spatial stimuli in situations that varied the number of tasks that were required and the speed at which stimuli were presented. Children…

Imagery could add an extra dimension to analyses of lifelong learning, which need to draw on diverse sources and techniques. This article has two principal components. First I suggest that the use of images might be divided into three categories: as illustration; as evidence; and as heuristic. I go on to explore the latter two categories, first by…

Underpinned on the theories of individual differences and the information processing paradigm, the author hypothesized five different strategical information processing styles (SIPS): visuo-spatial, analytical, social, categorical, and verbal. An instrument was developed containing specific measurable descriptors for each of the five constructs.…

Two experiments show that action alters the shape categories formed by 2-year-olds. Experiment 1 shows that moving an object horizontally (or vertically) defines the horizontal (or vertical) axis as the main axis of elongation and systematically changes the range of shapes seen as similar. Experiment 2 shows that moving an object symmetrically (or…

Plant tropisms--their directional movement in response to stimuli--are a fundamental concept in plant science and excite students because they are the observable signs of life in plants. Unfortunately, the precollege teaching literature is full of tropism misconceptions. An inexpensive clock clinostat is invaluable for student gravitropism and…

In this study, the author examined two learning style measures that are available online, Felder's Index of Learning Styles and Jester's Learning Styles Survey. Most of the subscales contained in these measures were found to have poor reliability. Further, the author found that these measures exhibited little or no meaningful association with…

A parallel design, in which items across different scales within an instrument share common stimuli and subjects respond to the common stimulus for each scale, is sometimes used in questionnaires or inventories. Because the items across scales share the same stimuli, the assumption of local item independence may not hold, thereby violating the…

Combined-text picture books unite multiple genres, providing nuanced information on a single topic from the unique lens of each genre. By providing guided practice in reading and writing a combined-text picture book, teachers can help students develop sensitivity to different types of texts, to what they do and how they do it. Such sensitivity can…

The present investigation examined implicit and explicit memory in 20 children diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and 20 matched controls. Consistent with previous research, children with AD/HD performed more poorly than controls on an explicit test of long-term memory for pictures. New results were that (a) there was…