Ideomotor (IM) theory suggests that observing someone else perform an action activates an internal motor representation of that behaviour within the observer. Evidence supporting the case for an ideomotor theory of imitation has come from studies that show imitative responses to be faster than the same behavioural measures performed in response to…

We performed an event-related potential study to investigate the self-relevance effect in object recognition. Three stimulus categories were prepared: SELF (participant's own objects), FAMILIAR (disposable and public objects, defined as objects with less-self-relevant familiarity), and UNFAMILIAR (others' objects). The participants' task was to…

"First-generation" college students, whose parents have not attended college, are an increasing presence at elite colleges and universities. Admitting these students, however, is not enough to ensure that they can take full advantage of the opportunities available to them in college and succeed there. Indeed, research indicates that…

The father's role in children's L1 maintenance and L2 learning is a relatively unexplored area. This study considers the L1 and L2 proficiency of 30 Korean-English late bilinguals who immigrated to New Zealand during their adolescence and how their L1 and L2 proficiency is influenced by the language use of family members. Data were collected…

This empirical study was undertaken to test the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) by examining the impact of three tasks on vocabulary acquisition. It was designed to test and develop the involvement load hypothesis by examining the impact of different reading tasks on the L2 vocabulary acquisition. The results show that…

The assessment of oral language is now quite commonly done in pairs or groups, and there is a growing body of research which investigates the related issues (e.g. May, 2007). Writing generally tends to be thought of as an individual activity, although a small number of studies have documented the advantages of collaboration in writing in the…

Background: Adolescence is a time when intense emotions are elicited within the parent-adolescent relationship, often when autonomy subjectively is endangered. As emotion dysregulation is one of the risk processes for the development of psychopathology, adolescence may be perceived as a highly sensitive period for maladjustment. Inter-individual…

This study aimed at investigating the relations between students' strategic behaviour during problem solving, task performance and domain-specific self-concept. A total of 167 first- and second-graders were individually examined in tasks involving cubes assembly and in academic self-concept in mathematics. Students' cognitive, metacognitive, and…

Direct instruction (DI), a predetermined and systematic approach to the teaching/learning process, is advocated for teaching precise responses in the most efficient way to preschool handicapped students. Planning for DI includes specifying task sequences leading to a terminal behavior. Specific steps are followed in the presentation and curriculum…

A discussion of the use of task analysis as a method of determining the need for training. (Author/HB)

This two-part paper offers some guidelines for training in observation skills. Part one describes nine guidelines for observers. Part two delineates 10 tasks in observing and identifies ways of accomplishing them. Tasks include identifying goals of the learning task; gaining evidence of teacher's planning; determining student motivation level;…

This paper presents an analysis of the task characteristics of various academic areas. Multidimensional scaling was performed at the University of Illinois on 168 scholars' judgments about the similarities among 36 academic task areas, and 54 scholars at a small western college judged similarities among 30 areas. The method used in the study was…

The authors review the rationale for task analysis, discuss five guidelines for using task analysis with handicapped children, and describe six methods (such as brainstorming watching someone perform the task, and working backward from the terminal objective) for its application. (CL)

Depending on the type of behavior one wants to measure, competency tests are either written or performance oriented. Information and cognitive processing are best measured by written demonstrations of the knowledge. Skills ability is best measured by performance testing. (Author/JOW)

The author reviews the research on quality of tasks set by 35 secondary teachers for their pupils and notes that the majority of tasks fell into the category of low cognitive demand. Preliminary results from a second study point out the importance of seeing task-setting as a critical teaching skill. (CL)