The DP Hypothesis proposes that nominal phrases can be analyzed as consisting of Determiner Phrase (DP) on top of Noun Phrase (NP); however, there is a debate on whether this hypothesis works for all languages. Given that previous studies on Chinese leave this question unresolved, this dissertation investigates new empirical evidence to test…

The College Course Map (CCM) is a taxonomy system for coding postsecondary education courses in NCES research studies. Originally developed in 1988 in support of the postsecondary transcript study in the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72), the taxonomy was updated in 1993 for the High School and Beyond Study…

Early identification and intervention of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can have beneficial effects that extend into later life. However, currently used instruments have difficulties detecting children who may have an ASD. The current study investigated the utility of a newly published measure, Autism Spectrum Rating Scales (ASRS). Participants…

The act of categorization produces conceptual representations in memory while knowledge organization (KO) systems provide conceptual representations that are used in information storage and retrieval systems. Previous research has explored how KO systems can be designed to resemble the user's internal conceptual structures. However, the more…

This study focused on the 28 institutions that are members of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and offer Master's in Teacher Leadership programs that they describe on their websites. Those programs were researched looking for similarities and differences across programs, specifically researching their…

Evidence that learning rule-based (RB) and information-integration (II) category structures can be dissociated across different experimental variables has been used to support the view that such learning is supported by multiple learning systems. Across 4 experiments, we examined the effects of 2 variables, the delay between response and feedback…

Mastery of fundamental movement skills (FMS) is an important factor in preventing weight gain and increasing physical activity. To master FMS, performance evaluation is necessary. In this study, we investigated the reliability of a new observational assessment tool. In Phase I, 110 video clips of children performing five locomotor, and six…

Existing methods of indexing the vocational activities of adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have made significant contributions to research. Nonetheless, they are limited by problems with sensitivity and reliability. We developed an index of vocational and educational outcomes that captures the full range of activities experienced by…

Conceptual expansion, one of the core operations in creative cognition, was investigated in the present ERP study. An experimental paradigm using novel metaphoric, nonsensical and literal phrases was employed where individual differences in conceptual knowledge organization were accounted for by using participants' responses to categorize the…

Conceptions of learning are drawn from an individuals' learning experiences, which are theoretically built upon the phenomenographic research method. Seven conceptions of learning in the domain of science are identified: "memorizing," "testing," "calculating and practicing," "increase of knowledge," "application," "understanding," and "seeing in a…

This paper investigates whether an abstract linguistic construction shows the kind of prototype effects characteristic of non-linguistic categories, in both adults and young children. Adapting the prototype-plus-distortion methodology of Franks and Bransford (1971), we found that whereas adults were lured toward false-positive recognition of…

Two-year-olds use the sentence structures verbs appear in--"subcategorization frames"--to guide verb learning. This is syntactic bootstrapping. This study probed the developmental origins of this ability. The structure-mapping account proposes that children begin with a bias toward one-to-one mapping between nouns in sentences and participant…

Von Davier et al. (this issue) describe two analyses that aim at determining whether the constructs measured with a number of observed items are categorical or continuous in nature. The issue of types versus traits has a long history and is relevant in many areas of behavioral research, including personality research, as emphasized by von Davier…

Older adults perform much like younger adults on language. This similar level of performance, however, may come about through different underlying brain processes. In the present study, we evaluated age-related differences in the brain areas outside the typical language areas among adults using a category decision task. Our results showed that…

The paper describes how specific descriptors for the Conservation-Restoration profession have been developed by the European Confederation of Conservator-Restorers' Organizations. The result of which is in accordance with the threefold rubric of Knowledge, Skills and Competence as defined by the European Qualifications Framework. Instead of giving…