Learning strategies and affective factors could have a profound impact on student standardized mathematics performance. This study investigated gender differences in affective factors, learning strategies, and preferred learning situations, and how these variables affect math achievement of 15 year olds in the United States and Hong Kong on the…

Teachers should emphasize the educational importance of understanding, but not at the expense of overlooking the importance of memorization skills. Currently, mainstream educational theory embraces such attributes as insight, creativity, inquiry learning, and self expression. But such emphases lead to a bias and under-appreciation of the role of…

Background: Noise is typically conceived of as being detrimental to cognitive performance. However, given the mechanism of stochastic resonance, a certain amount of noise can benefit performance. We investigate cognitive performance in noisy environments in relation to a neurocomputational model of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)…

Today's language classroom is vastly different from that of the mid- to late 20th century. The study is a meta-analysis of recent research which provided the means to identify current and emerging trends in the field. Informed by this research, some identified trends that are shaping the 21st century language classroom are outdated practices such…

For more than three decades, the question ''What is memory development the development of?'' has guided research on children's memory. As theories and methodologies have evolved, so too has our knowledge of the mnemonic competencies of young children, and of age-related differences in memory performance. Unfortunately, however, current…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the effects of to-be-remembered (TBR) and intervening list length on free recall to determine whether selective rehearsal could explain the previous finding that recall was affected only by TBR list length. In Experiments 1 (covert rehearsal) and 2 (overt rehearsal), participants saw 5- and 20-word lists…

In influential research, R. N. Shepard, C. I. Hovland, and H. M. Jenkins (1961) surveyed humans' categorization abilities using tasks based in rules, exclusive-or (XOR) relations, and exemplar memorization. Humans' performance was poorly predicted by cue-conditioning or stimulus-generalization theories, causing Shepard et al. to describe it in…

Vocabulary acquisition research has been paid attention these years (e.g. Beck, McKeown & McCaslin, 1983; Harley, 1996; Huckin, Haynes, & Coady, 1993; Zahar, Cobb & Spada, 2001). A serious methodologies had been reported, including applying learner dictionaries (Nesi, 1999; Tribble, 2003), using forms of visual glossing (Al-Seghayer,…

Information Literacy (IL) competencies are defined as "the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively" and are considered essential for students in their academic lives and future careers (ALA, 1989). IL plays an important role in developing critical thinking and problem solving skills, and improving academic…

We measured long-term memory for a narrative film. During the study session, participants watched a 27-min movie episode, without instructions to remember it. During the test session, administered at a delay ranging from 3 h to 9 mo after the study session, long-term memory for the movie was probed using a computerized questionnaire that assessed…

The nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM) is known to be involved in the memorization of several conditioned responses. To investigate the role of the NBM in fear conditioning memorization, this neural site was subjected to fully reversible tetrodotoxin (TTX) inactivation during consolidation in adult male Wistar rats that had undergone fear…

The best research studies are more noteworthy for the issues they raise than for the questions they answer. Being informative is good; being heuristic is better. The two papers under consideration are heuristic as well as informative. Thus, Wong, Kasari, Freeman, and Paparella (2007) provide an answer to the question of what might influence the…

Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color,…

Background: Trials in developing countries suggest that improving young children's diet may benefit cognitive development. Whether dietary composition influences young children's cognition in developed countries is unclear. Although many studies have examined the relation between type of milk received in infancy and subsequent cognition, there has…

This manuscript uses interview data collected during a qualitative study in 2007 of a secondary US history e-learning course. The teacher, Mr. Harding, and 11 of the 13 students in the class were interviewed about their general perceptions of e-learning and the ability to effectively learn content online. The findings of the study show that nearly…