To evaluate the claim that correct performance on unexpected transfer false-belief tasks specifically involves mental-state understanding, two experiments were carried out with children with autism, intellectual disabilities, and typical development. In both experiments, children were given a standard unexpected transfer false-belief task and a…

A modified elicited imitation task was used to examine the development of the ability to resist and overcome interference in the 2nd and 3rd years of life. In the modified task, distractor props were included in the test array, so that children could imitate the modeled sequence but could also produce actions with the additional props provided,…

Recent studies have attempted to understand the processes involved in joint attention because of its relevance to both atypical and normal development. Data from a recent study of young children with autism suggests that performance on a delay nonmatch to sample (DNMS) task associated with ventromedial prefrontal functions, but not an…

In this article, the authors describe their experience in extending a manual practice set to accounting software. The "Systems Understanding Aid" by Arens and Ward (2001) has been used for some time in the authors' Accounting Information Systems course. The extension involved requiring students to redo the project using Peachtree Complete…

The Model of Domain Learning (MDL) is an alternative perspective on expertise that arose from studies of student learning in academic domains, such as reading, history, physics, and biology. A comparison of the MDL and traditional models of expertise is made. The key components and stages of the MDL are then overviewed. Discussion concludes with a…

This study examined the concurrent and predictive relations between infant attention skills, joint attention, and emotion regulation. Infants' gaze following skills and duration of orienting were assessed at 6 months of age, and collaborative joint attention and emotion regulation skills were assessed at 24 months of age. The results indicated…

The well-documented evidence that bilinguals demonstrate cognitive advantages over monolinguals is used as a foundation for the hypothesis that bilinguals will be better able to solve certain spatial tasks, and a theoretical framework for this hypothesis is constructed. The paper describes an experiment to explore this hypothesis. A series of…

Deaf and hearing college students' mean reaction times (RTs) were compared on a mental calculation task in which they had to verify the accuracy of solutions to addition and multiplication problems. The deaf students were divided into higher and lower readers. Higher deaf readers and hearing students had similar RTs and accuracy on addition…

Four experiments investigate the differences between implicit and explicit sequence learning concerning their resilience to structural and superficial task changes. A superficial change that embedded the SRT task in the context of a selection task, while maintaining the sequence, did selectively hinder the expression of implicit learning. In…

Listening in a second or foreign language is a very demanding task because it involves both correctly interpreting incoming speech and responding appropriately to the speaker. This qualitative classroom-based investigation describes the types and frequency of reception strategies used by learners at three different proficiency levels in French…

The effect of increasing the number of stimuli to be recalled was investigated to evaluate whether sensitivity for memory impairment was enhanced in adults with Down syndrome when using higher task load. Three levels of load were compared across three groups of adults: those with cognitive deterioration, no cognitive deterioration over age 40, and…

Constraints are characteristics of the individual, the task, or the environment that mold and shape movement choices and performances. Constraints can be positive--encouraging proficient movements or negative--discouraging movement or promoting ineffective movements. Physical educators must analyze, evaluate, and determine the effect various…

This study compared the oral structure and oral-motor skills of 59 boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS), 34 boys with Down syndrome (DS), and 36 developmentally similar typically developing (TD) boys. An adaptation of the J. Robbins and T. Klee (1987) Oral Speech Motor Protocol was administered to participants and their scores on measures of oral…

Purpose: This study assessed the fast mapping performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) across the preschool to kindergarten age span in relation to their phonological memory and vocabulary development. Method: Fifty-three children diagnosed with SLI and 53 children with normal language (NL) matched for age and gender (30…

The purpose of this study was to examine technical features of new and existing curriculum-based measures of written expression in terms of writing task, duration, and scoring procedures. Twenty-five third-, 43 fifth-, and 55 seventh-graders completed passage-copying tasks in 1.5 min and picture, narrative, and expository writing prompts in 3-7…