Legislators have implemented an accountability system in an effort to increase school quality for all students. Policymakers assume that rewards and sanctions, based on results from high-stakes testing, can improve student achievement. The accountability system does not consider environmental factors that impact student outcomes. This study…

In Parkinson's disease (PD), it is possible that tonic increase of dopamine associated with levodopa medication overshadows phasic release of dopamine, which is essential for learning. Thus while the motor symptoms of PD are improved with levodopa medication, learning would be disrupted. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effect of…

The neurocognitive processing of environmental sounds and linguistic stimuli shares common semantic resources and can lead to the activation of motor programs for the generation of the passively heard sound or speech. We investigated the extent to which the cognition of environmental sounds, like that of language, relies on symbolic mental…

In this article we study a specific lattice classification of converse quadrilaterals, based on the relations between diagonals. This lattice contains 16 = 2[superscript 4] elements, which form a hypercube, and therefore it is a Boolean lattice. "Complementary" species of quadrilaterals thus appear and may be related in the lattice diagram. We…

Human infants grow up in environments populated by artifacts. In order to acquire knowledge about different kinds of human-made objects, children have to be able to focus on the information that is most relevant for sorting artifacts into categories. Traditional theories emphasize the role of superficial, perceptual features in object…

Taxometric procedures such as MAXEIG and factor mixture modeling (FMM) are used in latent class clustering, but they have very different sets of strengths and weaknesses. Taxometric procedures, popular in psychiatric and psychopathology applications, do not rely on distributional assumptions. Their sole purpose is to detect the presence of latent…

In mental health, family, and community counseling settings, master's-level counselors engage in unstructured clinical interviewing to develop diagnoses based on the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (4th ed., text rev.; "DSM-IV-TR"; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Although counselors receive education about…

Categorising e-learning is almost as problematic as defining the term. In an attempt to quantify/qualify the level of e-learning use in the tertiary sector in New Zealand, the Ministry of Education (MoE) established a classification system for courses in the tertiary sector. The value of this tool was disputed, and a new system was proposed but…

People construct knowledge through a set of highly diverse experiences. Despite being personal, this knowledge is strongly influenced by the specific context where it occurs. Such experience-based knowledge is referred to as "implicit theories" because it does not fit in with a systematic and theoretical knowledge context like that of…

This study traces the development of a vocabulary measure designed to assess multiple types of word knowledge. The assessment, which was administered in conjunction with a science unit about weather and the water cycle for third-and-fourth graders, included items for six knowledge types--recognition, definition, classification/example, context,…

Study abroad is associated with transformative experiences--that is, events that lead to a change in how a person sees the world. In this study the authors sought to ascertain whether there are common themes of transformative experiences and whether these transformations are related to particular types of study abroad programs. Principles guiding…

This study utilized a novel task design in an effort to identify the source of the second language processing advantage commonly reported in mixed language conditions, investigate switch cost asymmetry in non-balanced bilinguals, and identify task-related variables that potentially contribute to inconsistent results across studies with similar…

Multistage adaptive tests (MSTs) have gained increasing popularity in recent years. MST is a balanced compromise between linear test forms (i.e., paper-and-pencil testing and computer-based testing) and traditional item-level computer-adaptive testing (CAT). It combines the advantages of both. On one hand, MST is adaptive (and therefore more…

We often need to infer unknown properties of objects from observable ones, just like detectives must infer guilt from observable clues and behavior. But how do inferential processes change with age? We examined young and older adults' reliance on rule-based and similarity-based processes in an inference task that can be considered either a…

Under what conditions will people generalize and remember observed social information? Preschool- (n = 44) and young school-age (n = 46) children and adults (n = 40) heard short vignettes describing characters' actions and motives on a single occasion. Characters were introduced using either proper names or category labels. Test questions asked…