Training can improve perceptual sensitivities. We examined whether the temporal dynamics and the incidental versus intentional nature of training are important. Within the context of a birdsong rate discrimination task, we examined whether the sequencing of pretesting exposure to the stimuli mattered. Easy-to-hard (progressive) sequencing of…

In 4 experiments, we used self-paced reading and eye tracking to demonstrate that readers are, under some conditions, sensitive to the presuppositions of definite versus indefinite determiner phrases (DPs). Reading was faster when the context stereotypically provided a single possible referent for a definite DP or multiple possible referents for…

Mixed Group Validation (MGV) is an approach for estimating the diagnostic accuracy of tests. MGV is a promising alternative to the more commonly used Known Groups Validation (KGV) approach for estimating diagnostic accuracy. The advantage of MGV lies in the fact that the approach does not require a perfect external validity criterion or gold…

The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation's Program Evaluation Standards is probably the most recognized and applied set of evaluation standards globally. The most recent edition of The Program Evaluation Standards includes five categories and 30 standards. The five categories are Utility, Feasibility, Propriety, Accuracy, and…

Prior research has considered the sequential order of function words, after the contextual words of the text have been removed, as a stylistic indicator of authorship. This research describes an effort to enhance authorship attribution accuracy based on this same information source with alternate classifiers, alternate n-gram construction methods,…

The frequency-lag hypothesis proposes that bilinguals have slowed lexical retrieval relative to monolinguals and in their nondominant language relative to their dominant language, particularly for low-frequency words. These effects arise because bilinguals divide their language use between 2 languages and use their nondominant language less…

Language-impaired individuals with autism perform poorly on tests such as non-word repetition that are sensitive clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI). This has fuelled the theory that language impairment in autism represents a co-morbid SLI. However, the underlying cause of these deficits may be different in each disorder. In a…

If estimates are based on samples, they should be accompanied by appropriate standard errors and confidence intervals. This is true for scientific research in general, and is even more important if estimates are used to inform and evaluate policy measures such as those aimed at attaining the Europe 2020 poverty reduction target. In this article I…

We report two experiments that investigated the regulation of memory accuracy with a new regulatory mechanism: the plurality option. This mechanism is closely related to the grain-size option but involves control over the number of alternatives contained in an answer rather than the quantitative boundaries of a single answer. Participants were…

Previous research has demonstrated that preschoolers can use situation-specific (e.g., visual access) and person-specific (e.g., prior accuracy) cues to infer what others know. The present studies investigated whether 4- and 5-year-olds appreciate the differential informativeness of these types of cues. In Experiment 1 (N = 50), children used…

In unequal societies the effectiveness of formal education depends on the socioeconomic status (SES) of students. Studies have shown that poverty affects the development of the brain in ways that might compromise future learning, thus increasing the differences between groups with different SES. Interest is growing in the development of tools that…

The authors assessed 4,865 middle and high school students for the ability to recognize and understand written and spoken morphologically simple words, morphologically complex words, and the syntactic structure of sentences and for the ability to answer questions about facts presented in a written passage and to make inferences based on those…

One hundred dyads of low-income, Spanish-speaking mothers and their bilingual children (age = 12-18; M = 14.12, SD = 1.89) who have language brokered for the mother (i.e., culturally or linguistically mediated between the mother and English speakers) were surveyed. Multiple goals theory posits that mothers and children who do not recognize and…

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) may differ from typical readers in aspects other than reading. The notion of a general deficit in the ability to acquire and retain procedural ("how to") knowledge as long-term procedural memory has been proposed. Here, we compared the ability of elementary school children, with and without…

The main purpose of this study was to examine possible gender differences in how junior high school students integrate printed texts and diagrams while solving science problems. We proposed the response style hypothesis and the spatial working memory hypothesis to explain possible gender differences in the integration process. Eye-tracking…