Prediction is a great skill to have in any walk of life: it can, in fact, save lives at times. While the two investigations posed in this column may not be that dramatic, they might just increase one's appreciation of some important connections between grids and rectangles and the divisors of numbers that appear in the dimensions of those…

This article discusses Johnston's estimate of the number of signing Deaf people in Australia and queries whether it adequately accounts for nonnative signers or reflects the numbers who make use of services in Auslan. It concurs with Johnston's projection of a decline in the size of this population, and discusses the ways in which the Deaf…

Most theories of decision making suggest that, when options imply tradeoffs between their attributes, conflict increases as tradeoff size increases, because greater sacrifices are to be incurred in choosing one option instead of another. An alternative view is that conflict decreases as tradeoff size increases, because stronger arguments can be…

The national lottery is often portrayed as a game of pure chance with no room for strategy. This misperception seems to stem from the application of probability instead of expectancy considerations, and can be utilized to introduce the statistical concept of expectation.

This study considers whether an earlier and more extensive search for child care, and a match of the type used to the type preferred, predicts arrangement stability. We used the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care to estimate multinomial logit models of arrangement changes over 3-month intervals…

Writing meaningful conclusions, drawing accurate inferences, and making relevant predictions are essential skills that many adolescents lack. The differences among conclusions, inferences, and predictions, although subtle, must be recognized to accurately analyze and interpret lab data. During one of the authors' 14 years as a physics and…

This research examines the relationship between the concept of CAUSE as it is characterized in psychological models of causation and the meaning of causal verbs, such as the verb "cause" itself. According to focal set models of causation ([Cheng (1997]; [Cheng and Novick (1991 and Cheng and Novick (1992]), the concept of CAUSE should be more…

History education lends itself to considering historical problems from the perspective of people of that time and exploring their thinking or "predictions" about the problems' possible effects. Building lessons around the use of prediction-making humanizes history because it allows students to investigate historical events and understand…

Like many childhood disorders, prevalence rates of AD/HD differ significantly across gender, with male-to-female ratios ranging from 2:1 to 9:1 depending on the sample (APA, 1994). Limited research has been conducted thus far in an effort to better understand these differential prevalence rates. However, it has been proposed that the current…

Variation in verbal morphology is a phenomenon which has been the object of linguistic research for a long time. Two competing sets of predictions have been put forth to account for the distribution of verbal inflections in learner language: The Aspect Hypothesis posits that learners predominantly use inflections to indicate categories of lexical…

This research examined the nature of parent-child conversations at an informal science education center housed in an active gravitational-wave observatory. Each of 20 parent-child dyads explored an interactive exhibit hall privately, without the distraction of other visitors. Parents employed a variety of strategies to support their children's…

A one-year follow-up study examined the role of developmental challenges, personality (dependency, self-criticism, and personal efficacy), and support systems in adaptation among Israeli emerging adults (N = 236) participating in a preparatory academic program. Participants were assessed during their enrollment in the preparatory academic program…

Efforts to establish what psychological processes make up the framework through which beginning reading skills are developed led to this study, aimed at identifying perceptual, learning, cognitive, memory, and language variables which influence beginning reading of normal and educable mentally retarded children. A total of 172 first-grade…

The present prospective study has followed a cohort of inner city men from adolescence (14 plus or minus 2) until age 65. While previous studies of shorter duration have identified numerous childhood factors that powerfully influence outcomes in young adulthood, this study examined the effect of these well-documented prognostic factors on…

This paper investigates the relationship between ability to detect changes in prosody and reading performance in Spanish. Participants were children aged 7-8 years. Their tasks consisted of reading words, reading non-words, stressing non-words and reproducing sequences of two, three or four non-words by pressing the corresponding keys on the…