Sixty Korean speakers of English who had lived in the United States were tested for their ability to judge the grammaticality of English sentences in 12 grammatical categories in a reaction-time task. Findings suggest that a sensitive period exists in second-language (L2) acquisition as evidenced by faster performance by early-learner L2 groups.…

Children referred for evaluation of learning impairment (n=100) and 243 typical children were evaluated on a visual filtering task. With each additional processing demand, response times increased disproportionately for children with learning impairments. Overall response time predicted academic skills and cognitive ability, but was more strongly…

A study of the semantic processing abilities of undergraduates with learning disabilities (LD) (n=11) and controls (n=11) found no significant differences on the Test of Adolescent/Adult Word Finding; however, students with learning disabilities demonstrated a significantly greater number of delayed responses. Students with LD also showed delays…

A computerized test of preparedness for effortful processing (alerting attention), response to orienting cues (orienting attention), and response to the interference of competing demands (executive attention) was administered to a diverse sample of 249 children (47% female, 4.96 to 7.27 years) to assess developmental properties and…

The use of online discussion boards has grown extensively in the past 5 years, yet some researchers argue that our understanding of how to use this tool in an effective and meaningful way is minimal at best. Part of the problem in acquiring more cohesive and useful information rests in the absence of a comprehensive, theory-driven metric to assess…

The relative importance of internal and external letter features of words in children's developing reading was investigated to clarify further the nature of early featural analysis. In Experiment 1, 72 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds read aloud words displayed as wholes, external features only (central features missing, thereby preserving word shape…

Inspection time (IT) and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores from 75 school children aged 6-13 years in 2001 were compared with the performances of 70 children aged 6-13 years who had attended the same primary school in 1981 ["J. Exp. Child Psychol." 40 (1985) 1.]. ITs for the 2001 sample were measured with the same four-field…

People are often more accurate in recognizing faces of ingroup members than in recognizing faces of outgroup members. Although own-group biases in face recognition are well established among adults, less attention has been given to such biases among children. This is surprising considering how often children give testimony in criminal and civil…

This study investigates the relationship between selected predictors of achievement in playing unrehearsed music (sight reading) and the changing complexity of sight reading tasks. The question under investigation is, how different variables gain or lose significance as sight reading stimuli become more difficult. Fifty-two piano major graduates…

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in…

This study recounts a practicing teacher's attempt to describe reflections during the course of teaching at the primary level. A self-study was conducted to address teacher thinking during "bumpy moments" in teaching, offering an insight into how we might capture the details of teachers' unseen reflections. Through an analysis of the many "bumpy…

This study investigated the efficacy of sound-field amplification (SFA) for improving the speed with which students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) follow teacher directions. We used a multiple baseline design across six students in general education classrooms. Latency data were collected under nonamplified and amplified conditions…

The article draws on interpretive frameworks from diffusion research and social network analysis to explore one particular "travelling reform"--outcomes-based education--that went global. The argument is made that by virtue of studying late adopters of a travelling reform one is examining globalisation. The cases in point for late…

In recent research, two qualitatively different classes of mental operations have been identified. The performance of one type of cognitive task requires attention, in the sense of mental effort, for its execution, while the second type can be performed automatically, independent of attentional control. Further research has shown that automatic…

A program of research was conducted to study transitions from preoperational to concrete operational forms of spatial imagery (area 1), to compare results from spatial imagery studies based on open-ended measures (such as drawings) with results based on reaction time measures (area 2), and to study anticipatory imagery in the contexts of memory…