Presents results of an exploratory study on advanced-level French second language (L2) learners' metalinguistic awareness. Specifically, learner performance was examined carrying out three steps of a written and oral grammaticality judgment test. Subjects' ability to identify and correct an error, and to provide the rule, were examined, and…

Three experiments examine the acquisition of word-initial consonant clusters by adult second language learners. Native speakers of Spanish acquiring English participated in a metalinguistic judgment task, a perception task, and a production task. The judgment task indicates that beginning, intermediate and advanced second language learners have an…

Background: Rett syndrome (RS) is a pervasive developmental disorder with cognitive and neuromotor impairments (including loss of handiness and loss of communicative skills). Objective: To verify whether girls with RS use their gaze intentionally, by observing their performance in three cognitive tasks: (1) verbal instruction condition (look at…

This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of 30 hemodynamic experiments comparing first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing in a range of tasks. The results suggest that reliably stronger activation during L2 processing is found (a) only for task-specific subgroups of L2 speakers and (b) within some, but not all regions…

A six-month longitudinal study (N = 33) proved the influence of a diversified sport enrichment program on the development of creative thinking in team ball sports among gifted children. A contrast between a gifted control group and a non-gifted treatment group showed that the creative performance of the gifted children significantly improved…

We show how an interactive website can help first-year undergraduates acquire independent study skills, and provide a user-friendly way of approaching challenging material in introductory level evolution and ecology. Students embraced the opportunity to undertake self-assessment tasks online, which allowed them to gauge their understanding and…

Background: Depressed adults may show impairment in switching attention from one task to another. Rumination on negative thoughts is associated with the onset and persistence of depressive episodes. It is unclear if such mood-related ruminations are specifically associated with slowed ability in switching attention from one task to another.…

Background: There is growing literature suggesting that some children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can show a significant bias in attention away from left space. Here we examine mechanisms that may underpin these effects in both clinical and non-clinical child populations. Unilateral spatial inattention…

Cognitive theories disagree about the processes and the number of abilities involved in transitive reasoning. This led to controversies about the influence of task characteristics on individuals' performance and the development of transitive reasoning. In this study, a computer test was constructed containing 16 transitive reasoning tasks having…

Research on conceptual change is still a powerful framework for empirical investigations on students' learning of science. During recent years, an increasing body of research has explored students' concepts prior and subsequent to instruction, leading to an extensive documentation of students' concepts including the difficulties and opportunities…

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners in a variety of industries have considered work redesign among a constellation of strategies to promote employee recruitment and retention, development, motivation, and performance. Although educational policymakers in the middle to late 1990s shifted their attention to standards, systemic…

When students are working with hand held technology, such as graphics calculators, we usually only see the outcomes of their activities in the form of a contribution to a written solution of a mathematical problem. It is more difficult to capture their process of thinking or actions as they use the technology to solve a problem. In this paper we…

Relations among patterns of conceptual and procedural knowledge and grade were examined in 90 six- to eight-year-olds in order to explore addition and subtraction development. Conceptual knowledge was assessed by examining children's responses to pairs of problems reflecting various part-whole relations. Children solved related problems as part of…

Five experiments are reported in which the picture naming performance of bilingual speakers in a language-switching task was explored. In Experiment 1, Spanish learners of Catalan and Korean learners of Spanish were asked to perform a switching task between their first and dominant language (L1, Spanish or Korean) and their second language (L2,…

This study investigated the effect of phonological sensitivity of two comparable groups of grades 4 and 5 Chinese children, one a Putonghua-speaking group ("n" = 77) from Beijing and the other a Cantonese-speaking group ("n" = 80) from Hong Kong on English and Chinese pseudoword reading. It was hypothesized that the Beijing…