Second language (L2) writing researchers have enthusiastically adopted task complexity frameworks in their examination of the effects of complex task features on L2 written performance. However, such research often overlooks the effect(s) of such features on general L2 development as well as L2 writing development. Drawing from Manch?n and…

This study examined whether school-aged autistic children without co-occurring intellectual disabilities (autisticWoID) show similar difficulty on Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks as young autisticWoID children and if these difficulties are related to problems in domain-general aspects of cognition. Eighty-one autisticWoID and 44 neurotypical (NT)…

This dissertation is about a particular style of research. The philosophy of this style is that in order to scientifically understand deep learning, it is fruitful to investigate what happens when neural networks are trained on simple, mathematically well-defined tasks. Even though the training data is simple, the training algorithm can end up…

A considerable body of research has documented the emergence of what appears to be instrumental helping behavior in early childhood. The current study tested the hypothesis that one basic psychological mechanism motivating this behavior is a preference for completing unfinished actions. To test this, a paradigm was implemented in which 2-year-olds…

Task analysis is an evidence-based practice that promotes independence and instruction in inclusive settings. Although task analysis has an extensive history in the field of special education, recent research extends the application to both teachers and students, a pro-active approach, and promotes self-monitoring. When students with extensive…

In this article, we explore the extraction of recursive nested structure in the processing of binary sequences. Our aim was to determine whether humans learn the higher-order regularities of a highly simplified input where only sequential-order information marks the hierarchical structure. To this end, we implemented a sequence generated by the…

This study aims to describe the relationships between child-internal and child-external factors and the consonant accuracy of bilingual children. More specifically, the study looks at internal factors: expressive and receptive vocabulary, and external factors: language exposure and language status, of a group of 4-year-old bilingual Arabic-French…

Educational researchers have been confronted with a multitude of definitions of task complexity and a lack of consensus on how to measure it. Using a cognitive load theory-based perspective, we argue that the task complexity that learners experience is based on element interactivity. Element interactivity can be determined by simultaneously…

American Sign Language (ASL), like many different signed languages, has a systematic way of using pointing signs for multiple types of nominal reference. Possibly the most basic function of pointing is to indicate, direct and modulate reference to physical objects located in proximal and distal areas called exophoric demonstratives. This study…

Collaborative writing (CW) involves two or more students writing a single text together. Previous studies mainly focused on students' cognitive engagement in CW and investigated their attention to various language-related problems during task interaction. However, little CW research to date has considered that engagement in language-related…

While people approach creative actions in diverse ways, navigating them effectively requires self-regulatory effort. In this preregistered experiment, we examined whether simple self-regulation prompts, provided across the stages of the creative process, make the outcomes more creative. Participants (N = 332) engaged in one of three creativity…

Example-generation tasks have been suggested as an effective way to both promote students' learning of mathematics and assess students' understanding of concepts. E-assessment offers the potential to use example-generation tasks with large groups of students, but there has been little research on this approach so far. Across two studies, we…

The pervasive nature of media multitasking in the last fifteen years has sparked extensive research, revealing a nuanced but predominantly negative association with executive function. Given the cognitive demands and technological landscape of the modern battlefield, there is a critical interest in understanding how these findings may or may not…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine whether older adults exhibit reduced abilities in coordinating lexical retrieval and syntactic formulation during sentence production and whether an individual's working memory capacity predicts age-related changes in sentence production. Method: A total of 124 Korean-speaking individuals (79 young…

This study investigated the development of divergent thinking (DT) in early childhood. We followed 107 4-year-olds for 1.5 years. Children's DT was assessed with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) every 6 months, four times in total. Within the AUT, children were asked to generate unusual uses of common objects while explaining how they came up with…