The purpose of the present explanatory mixed-method design is to examine the effectiveness of a developmental intervention, Embedded Metacognitive Prompts based on Nature of Science (EMPNOS) to teach the nature of science using metacognitive prompts embedded in an inquiry unit. Eighty-three (N = 83) eighth-grade students from four classrooms were…

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low…

The characteristics of the online environment alter how students and instructors interact. Scientific discourse among students and instructors in an online text-only synchronous environment was analyzed. In converting dialogue to text, many of the nonverbal cues, such as facial expression and tone of voice, which instructors use to gauge student…

Skin cancer is an increasing problem in Europe, America and Australasia, although largely preventable by avoiding excessive ultraviolet (UV) exposure. This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of qualitative research about the prevention of skin cancer attributable to UV exposure. The aim is to understand elements that may contribute…

Conducted in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms at the university level in China, this quasi-experimental study compared the effects of three different corrective feedback treatments on 72 Chinese learners' use of regular and irregular English past tense. Three classes were randomly assigned to a prompt group, a recast group, or a…

We studied 52 parent-child dyads reading an alphabet book to examine the nature of children's miscues and parents' feedback, and whether miscues and feedback were related to each other and to preliteracy skills. Letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and expressive vocabulary were assessed in 5-year-old nonreaders who were also audiotaped…

Semantic features have different levels of importance in indexing a target concept. The article proposes that semantic relevance, an algorithmically derived measure based on concept descriptions, may efficiently capture the relative importance of different semantic features. Three models of how semantic features are integrated in terms of…

Children's sensitivity to the shared, conventional nature of word meanings makes their word learning more efficient and less prone to error. After reviewing the evidence in support of this claim, we suggest that children's earliest appreciation of conventionality might be rooted in limitations in their theory-of-mind skills.

The very notion of productivity improvement involves measurement against a context. The success of computers and other quantitative approaches during the past half century has led to an ideational context wherein transmitters of information often assume that the content of their message is like code--ascertainable to the recipient by means of a…

Many students, especially those with disabilities, have difficulty in middle and high school with assignment organization and completion. This article presents a learning strategy to assist students in keeping a calendar or agenda book. The strategy presented cues students to specific actions they must take in order to remember assignments, study…

Although the effect of acoustic cues on speech segmentation has been extensively investigated, the role of higher order information (e.g., syntax) has received less attention. Here, the authors examined whether syntactic expectations based on subject-verb agreement have an effect on segmentation and whether they do so despite conflicting acoustic…

The compound-cue model of cognitive control in task switching explains switch cost in terms of a switch of task cues rather than of a switch of tasks. The present study asked whether the model generalizes to Lag 2 repetition cost (also known as backward inhibition), a related effect in which the switch from B to A in ABA task sequences is costlier…

Participants read lists of words and then made recognition judgments to pairs of words, each of which consisted of a prime word and a test word. At issue was the effect of a semantic relationship between the prime word and the test word on the recognition judgment to the test word. Under standard recognition conditions, semantic priming impeded…

Non-native speakers of English often experience problems in pronunciation as they are learning English, many such problems persisting even when the speaker has achieved a high degree of fluency. Research has shown that for a non-native speaker to sound most natural and intelligible in his or her second language, the speaker must acquire proper…

Background: While various treatment approaches have been shown to be effective in remediating word-finding difficulties in aphasic individuals, interest has recently been directed at the role of executive functions in affecting treatment outcomes. Aims: To examine the existence of a possible relationship between treatment generalization and…