Eyeblink conditioning given in the explicit presence of hippocampal ? results in accelerated learning and enhanced multiple-unit responses, with slower learning and suppression of unit activity under non-? conditions. Recordings from putative pyramidal cells during ?-contingent training show that pretrial ?-state is linked to the probability of…

Events in Australia have acted as provocations to thinking about the consequences of becoming a "package" and then being processed. The image of the human, as prisoner, together with narratives about the child and the nonhuman animal as package, are used here in order to understand the world we share with others. These disparate elements…

Time-place learning (TPL) offers the possibility to study the functional interaction between cognition and the circadian system with aging. With TPL, animals link biological significant events with the location and the time of day. This what-where-when type of memory provides animals with an experience-based daily schedule. Mice were tested for…

Playing the sounds of whales during a class period can initiate the awareness of the role of wonder in education. Students are inspired to avidly collect fascinating facts to pique their interest and open the door to learning science. Indeed, when asked, teachers typically identify their foremost practical challenge as trying to motivate…

This study reports on learning outcomes of one-credit writing-intensive (W) courses in the disciplines at a large public university where three-credit W courses are the norm. An evaluation of 210 final papers from four departments--Allied Health, Animal Science, Economics, and Nutritional Sciences--revealed that writing outcomes, as defined and…

Aquatic invasive species (AIS) present a great challenge to ecosystems around the globe, and controlling AIS becomes increasingly difficult when the potential vectors are related to recreational activities. An approach combining education and outreach efforts to control AIS may be the best course of action. A survey was designed to measure public…

The aim of this study was to explore the beliefs of elementary school students about mathematics and about themselves as mathematics learners. The participants, Israeli grade 4 and grade 6 students, completed questionnaires. Using an "animal metaphor" to tap beliefs, some students perceived mathematics as difficult and complicated, while…

How can early childhood teacher educators at the community college level create opportunities for their students to explore and relate to the natural world? This article discusses three learning opportunities in an early childhood associate-degree program that foster connections between preservice and inservice early childhood teachers and nature…

We investigated the kinds of biological properties that children aged 3-6 years attribute to animals, plants, and artifacts by administering a property attribution task and eliciting explanations for the resulting property attributions. Findings indicated that, from the age of 3 years, children more frequently attribute properties to animals than…

Emerging posthuman paradigms are beginning to influence approaches to educational research and pedagogy, including the "common worlds" investigations of relations among children and wild animals in early childhood settings. This paper turns to child-animal encounters in a secondary school wetlands project to explore some of the…

A laboratory experiment is described that extracts the tetrapyrrolic teal-colored biliverdin IXa, as its dimethyl ester, from commercially available emu eggshells. The extraction of ~10 mg samples of biliverdin is simple and requires two 3 h lab periods: A two-step acid digestion and liquid-liquid extraction, followed by short silica gel flash…

Classroom pet programs have become extremely popular in urban North American early childhood classrooms. This article challenges anthropocentric child-pet pedagogies by proposing common world pedagogies of "staying with the trouble." Drawing from a common world multispecies ethnography in one early childhood centre, the authors engage…

Because of the taboo in Chinese culture, there is little research on Chinese children's perception of "death". The research on preschoolers' cognition of "death" could deepen our research on children's cognition process, guide children's life education, and improve the psychologic intervention on the children who experience…

Different positive effects of interactions with animals, such as reduction of stress reactions, depressive mood, anxiety, aggression, and pain, and promotion of trust, calmness, motivation, and concentration have been documented by research on human-animal interaction (HAI), including animal assisted interventions (AAIs). Potential biological,…

Social behavior abnormalities in Fragile X syndrome (FXS) are characterized by social withdrawal, anxiety, and deficits in social cognition. To assess these deficits, a model of FXS, the "Fmr1" knockout mouse ("Fmr1" KO), has been utilized. This mouse model has a null mutation in the fragile X mental retardation 1 gene ("Fmr1") and displays…