The purpose of this study was to determine whether music instruction was related to significant gains in the development of young children's phonemic awareness, particularly in their phoneme-segmentation fluency. Beginning in January 2004 and continuing through the end of April 2004, each of four intact classrooms of kindergarten children (n =…

A motor task that requires fine control of upper limb movements and a cognitive task that requires executive processing--first performing them separately and then concurrently--was performed by 18 young and 18 older adults. The motor task required participants to tap alternatively on two targets, the sizes of which varied systematically. The…

This study describes high school students' conceptual development of the basic astronomical phenomena during real-time interactions with a Virtual Solar System (VSS). The VSS is a non-immersive virtual environment which has a dynamic frame of reference that can be altered by the user. Ten 10th grade students were given tasks containing a set of…

There is a distinction between girls and boys regarding the manifestation of sex-appropriate behaviour from an early age. There is evidence that boys and girls play and are reared differently, and also are reinforced differently to manifest behaviours regarded as playful. The purpose of this study was to identify if there were differences between…

Background: Deficits in executive functioning are supposed to have a predisposing influence on impulsive or aggressive behaviour. We tested the hypothesis that oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) children with or without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have problems in executive functioning. Method: Seventy-seven 7- to 12-year-old…

The experience of engaging with the knowledge and views of others is arguably as important as the actual knowledge with which one engages. Engagement is shaped by social and organizational norms, past experiences, personal preferences, and other factors. These authors each select a particular mixture of knowledge-engaging experiences (such as…

A review of the literature in science education shows that most students have difficulties in hypothetico-deductive reasoning. The author's objective in this study was to investigate the abilities of high school teachers and university teachers to understand the difference between the terms "hypothesis" and "prediction" in the…

In this study, the authors examined the construct validity of the Pervasive Developmental Disorder Rating Scale (PDDRS; R. C. Eaves, 1993), which is a screening instrument used to identify individuals with autistic disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders. The PDDRS is purported to measure 3 factors--arousal, affect, and…

The main hypotheses addressed in the research were (1) whether imprecision in the phonological representations of lexical items underlies the impaired expressive naming abilities of disabled readers, and (2) whether weak verbal memory might mediate the relationship between naming and reading skills. From samples of 93 first graders and 67 fourth…

Predictions derived from the central processing and script dependent hypotheses were assessed by measuring the reading ability of 116 Grade 2-5 Herero-English bilingual children in Namibia ranging in age from 7 to 12 and investigating possible predictors of word reading among measures of cognitive/linguistic processes. Tasks included measures of…

There are theoretical models concerning Multimedia and cognitive and motivational processes. However, such models are missing for emotional processes. In order to develop such a model, studies from literary text research were analyzed. Literary text research was chosen as a starting point because Multimedia environments often contain texts (or…

Objective: Current understanding of executive function deficits in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is derived almost exclusively from neuropsychological testing conducted in laboratory settings. This study compared children's performance on both neuropsychological and real-life measures of executive function and processing speed.…

Introduction: The distinction between mastery and performance goals has been the dominant theoretical approach to goal orientation study for the past three decades. Recent investigations have begun to provide evidence that further distinctions are necessary. It has also been implied that students' beliefs about the nature of intelligence play a…

This article develops a model of problem-based learning (PBL) and shows how PBL has been used for a decade in one graduate management program. PBL capitalizes on synergies among cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning. Although management education usually privileges cognitive learning, affective learning is equally important. By focusing on…

The current study focused on examining the relationships of positive social attitudes with aspects of well-functioning. "Universal-diverse orientation" (UDO), a social attitude characterized by awareness and acceptance of both the similarities and differences among people, was measured with the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity…