Sentence comprehension relies on the abilities to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. The present study investigated whether Mandarin-speaking preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to use verb information predictively to anticipate the upcoming linguistic input during real-time…

In this study, the relationship between vocabulary and gesture use is examined in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at different language stages. A total of 72 children with ASD between the ages of 3.0 and 8.2 years participated in the study. Gesture use was assessed by using observation-based procedures, while the number of different…

Current theories of phonological development make contrasting predictions about the role of vocabulary growth and orthographic knowledge in the emergence of segmental phonological representations. Testing these predictions in children is made difficult by the metacognitive nature of tasks used to assess phonological representations. In this study,…

Purpose: Hearing loss is associated with changes in brain volume in regions supporting auditory and cognitive processing. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a systematic association between hearing ability and brain volume in cross-sectional data from a large nonclinical cohort of middle-aged adults available from the UK…

The current study used microanalytic interviews and behavioral traces to examine sequential phase relations among forethought, performance, and self-reflection processes, and to investigate the predictive influence of these processes on mathematics performance of 96 eighth grade students. Consistent with expectations, students' microanlaytic goals…

In this study, it was aimed to compare different normalization methods employed in model developing process via artificial neural networks with different sample sizes. As part of comparison of normalization methods, input variables were set as: work discipline, environmental awareness, instrumental motivation, science self-efficacy, and weekly…

Creativity is a dynamic process which generates ideas that are both novel and of value. However there is little understanding in what drives creativity in students and how to help teachers or education experts to detect creative thinking. This paper begins to address this gap by providing a platform and experiments for studying how creative…

Teachers may wish to use open-ended learning activities and tests, but they are burdensome to assess compared to forced-choice instruments. At the same time, forced-choice assessments suffer from issues of guessing (when used as tests) and may not encourage valuable behaviors of construction and generation of understanding (when used as learning…

A historic period of state divestment in public higher education, exacerbated by the "Great Recession" and attendant financial repercussions, has significantly altered public higher education financing. The most significant impact has been cost shift from the state to students via increasing tuition rates. These changes threaten student…

In this dissertation I argue that truth-conditional semantics for vague predicates, combined with a Bayesian account of statistical inference incorporating knowledge of truth-conditions of utterances, generates false predictions regarding negations and metalinguistic inference. I thus propose a fundamentally probabilistic semantics for vagueness…

This longitudinal study (2002-2014) investigates the stability of rating characteristics of a large group of raters over time in the context of the writing paper of a national high-stakes examination. The study uses one measure of rater severity and two measures of rater consistency. The results suggest that the rating characteristics of…

Solving arithmetic word problems is a complex task that requires individuals to activate their working memory resources, as well as the correct performance of the underlying executive processes involved in order to inhibit semantic biases or superficial responses caused by the problem's statement. This paper describes a study carried out with 135…

Despite the importance of retirement savings, many individuals retire with lack of adequate retirement savings. While calculating retirement savings needs was found to enhance retirement savings, little is known about what underlies this enhancement. Applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we developed a model in which psychological factors…

Reading comprehension is the goal of reading, and making inferences is vital. Authors usually expect readers to make multiple types of inferences, including anaphoric, background knowledge, predictive, and retrospective. Common core assessments include all of these, yet instructional materials focus mostly on only one type, retrospective. This…

Maternal depression and anxiety are potential risk factors to children's language environments and development. Though existing work has examined relations between these constructs, further work is needed accounting for both depression and anxiety and using more direct measures of the home language environment and children's language development.…