Two experiments investigated effects of emergent features on perceptual judgments of comparative magnitude in three diagrammatic representations: kiviat charts, bar graphs, and line graphs. Experiment 1 required participants to compare individual values; whereas in Experiment 2 participants had to integrate several values to produce a global…

Two eye-tracking experiments examine whether adults and 4- and 5-year-old children use the presence or absence of accenting to guide their interpretation of noun phrases (e.g., "the bacon") with respect to the discourse context. Unaccented nouns tend to refer to contextually accessible referents, while accented variants tend to be used for less…

Virtually all theories of visual word recognition assume (typically implicitly) that when a pathway is used, processing within that pathway always unfolds in the same way. This view is challenged by the observation that simple variations in list composition are associated with qualitative changes in performance. The present experiments demonstrate…

The mnemonic model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) proposed by D. C. Rubin, D. Berntsen, and M. K. Bohni presents some provocative and potentially insightful ideas about this mental disorder. D. C. Rubin et al. suggested that PTSD is caused and maintained through a "pathogenic memory" (D. C. Rubin et al., 2008, p. 985) of a negative event…

This study examines the impact of the costs of college and student financial support in the college choice process, especially as it relates to the economically disadvantaged. Although higher education research has given some significant consideration to the role of socioeconomic status on educational choice, this paper investigates both the…

Suprasegmental acoustic patterns in speech can convey meaningful information and affect listeners' interpretation in various ways, including through systematic analog mapping of message-relevant information onto prosody. We examined whether the effect of analog acoustic variation is governed by the acoustic properties themselves. For example, fast…

Professional practice can be conceptualised holistically, and in fact during the 1990s the "Australian model" of integrated or holistic competence emerged empirically. This piece outlines that story, and then develops a more rigorous conceptual analysis of what it is to make competent practical judgements, through inferences, in…

The present study examines whether children display different frequencies of behaviors at birthday party as compared to non-birthday party settings, and elucidates in which setting behavior is more predictive of later child functioning. Behavior in birthday and non-birthday contexts was examined at 12 and 24 months of age for 56 children with…

The present studies examined whether the retrieval of an old "reactivated" memory could be brought under the control of new contextual cues. In Experiment 1 rats trained in one context were exposed to different contextual cues either immediately, 60 or 120 min after a cued reactivation of the training memory. When tested in the shifted context,…

Over the first years of life, infants gradually develop the ability to retrieve their memories across cue and contextual changes. Whereas maturational factors drive some of these developments in memory ability, experiences occurring within the learning event may also impact infants' ability to retrieve memories in new situations. In 2 experiments…

Pre-testing and post-testing is a commonly used method in Physics Education Research to assess student learning gains. It is well recognized in the community that timings and incentives in delivering conceptual tests can impact test results. However, it is difficult to control these variables across different studies. As a common practice, a…

Using 18 years of data from more than 1,300 four-year colleges and universities in the United States, we investigate the extent to which institutional characteristics and contextual factors influence the propensity of colleges to indicate that they engage in affirmative action in their admissions decisions. Consideration of race/ethnicity in…

Can teachers contact the inner coherence of mathematics while working in a context fragmented by always-new objectives, criteria, and initiatives? How, more importantly, can learners experience the inner coherence of mathematics while working in a context fragmented by testing, modular curricular, short-term learning objectives, and lessons that…

Over the course of the twentieth century changing circumstances have prompted American Jewish educators to develop new educational strategies to address these needs, and these developments are an important aspect of the sociology of American Jewish education. Using the method of historical sociology, I examine the educational configuration at…

After more than 20 years of lamentation, exhortation, and little improvement, writes the author, perhaps it is time to ask a fundamental question: Can critical thinking actually be taught? People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once learned, it can be…