The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether systematic instruction of informational texts can enhance kindergarteners' cognitive involvement in text discussion and comprehension skills. The sample consisted of 15 children aged 5-6 years old in a kindergarten classroom located in a rural area in Rethymno, Crete. A four-phase…

The difficulties that students face when reading science texts go beyond understanding vocabulary and syntactic structures. Comprehension of science texts requires students to infer how these texts function as a unit to communicate scientific meaning. To help students in this process, science texts sometimes employ logical connectives (e.g.,…

Single case studies can provide vital contributions to theory-testing in social science studies. Particularly, by applying the process-tracing method, case studies can test theoretical frameworks through a rigorous research design that ensures substantial empirical leverage. While most scholarly contributions on process-tracing focus on either…

This thesis examined middle school students' current understanding of variability using a constructed response item assessment question. Variability is an essential concept in the teaching and learning of statistics. However, many students have difficulty with the concept of variability especially when constructing boxplots. Using a framework…

Applied researchers are increasingly interested in whether and how treatment effects vary in randomized evaluations, especially variation not explained by observed covariates. We propose a model-free approach for testing for the presence of such unexplained variation. To use this randomization-based approach, we must address the fact that the…

This paper presents a phenomenological diagnosis of the implementation of ProDuct-based Instruction (PDI) in EFL's writing class in Thailand contexts. PDI is a new instructional method for teaching business English writing. Its key is in the products that are tangible and appeal to human senses; the product's tangibility serves as a scaffold to…

Inference-making is integral to reading comprehension, defined as information 'retrieved or generated during reading to fill in information left implicit in a text'. However, there are few studies regarding the inferencing of young emergent multilinguals that account for multilingualism and culture, attend to the learning processes influenced by…

Aims: Since many Saudi ESL students studying abroad have limited vocabulary and grammar knowledge and poor reading comprehension skills, this article proposes the integration of linguistic landscapes (LLs) in teaching English to Saudi students studying abroad to supplement the English language courses and textbooks they study. Definition of LLs:…

Computational models have shown that purely statistical knowledge about words' linguistic contexts is sufficient to learn many properties of words, including syntactic and semantic category. For example, models can infer that "postman" and "mailman" are semantically similar because they have quantitatively similar patterns of…

Background: Most of the studies in academic journals use p values to represent statistical significance. However, this is not a good indicator of practical significance. Although confidence intervals provide information about the precision of point estimation, they are, unfortunately, rarely used. The infrequent use of confidence intervals might…

The learned predictiveness effect or LPE is the finding that when people learn that certain cues are reliable predictors of an outcome in an initial stage of training (phase 1), they exhibit a learning bias in favor of these cues in a subsequent training involving new outcomes (phase 2) despite all cues being equally reliable in phase 2. In…

A valuable extension of the single-rating regression discontinuity design (RDD) is a multiple-rating RDD (MRRDD). To date, four main methods have been used to estimate average treatment effects at the multiple treatment frontiers of an MRRDD: the "surface" method, the "frontier" method, the "binding-score" method, and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate two levels of reading comprehension, namely literal and inferential, of two text types of narration and exposition in Iranian EFL learners. The elicitation instruments were four expository texts and four narrative ones. One hundred eighty upper-intermediate EFL learners were assigned the reading…

To overcome situational hurdles when researching transformative learning in adults, we outline a research approach using single-case research designs and smartphone data collection apps. This approach allows researchers to better understand learners' current lived experiences and determine the effects of transformative learning interventions on…