To enhance reading comprehension, several strategies have been identified in previous research conducted (Naiman et al. 1978; O'Malley & Chamot 1990; O'Malley, Chamot, Manzanares, Russo and Kypper 1985; Politzer and McGroarty 1985; Prokop 1989; Oxford 1990; Salataci and Akyel 2002; Tercanlioglu 2004). However, using different types of Reading…

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is intended as a reference document for language education including assessment. This article describes a project that investigated whether the CEFR can help test developers construct reading and listening tests based on CEFR levels. If the CEFR scales together with the detailed description of…

Recent experimental research in the field of neurophysiology has led to the discovery of two classes of visuomotor neurons: canonical neurons and mirror neurons. In light of these studies, we propose here an overview of two classical themes in the cognitive science panorama: James Gibson's theory of affordances and Eleanor Rosch's principles of…

The MESSIER, a measure of social and communication skills and the Vineland Social Maturity Scale were administered to 618 severe and profoundly mentally retarded adults. The goal of the study was to establish the potential utility of the MESSIER for classifying level of intellectual disability in this group. Comparing MESSIER scores to previously…

Is California's Imperial Valley a watershed? If so, at what level and by what topographic logic? Is it a region? If so, at what level and by what geographic logic? Are its boundaries natural, political, or multivalent on different scales? In short, this essay looks at the special (re)production of environmental conditions within a cyborg world.…

Three studies tested a self-categorization theory explanation for the third-person effect. In Study 1 (N = 49) undergraduate students judged the influence of the "National Enquirer," "Wall Street Journal," and TV show "Friends" on themselves, relative to low- and high-status outgroup members, and other undergraduate students. The profile of first-…

The standard approach guiding research on the relationship between categories and causality views categories as reflecting causal relations in the world. We provide evidence that the opposite direction also holds: categories that have been acquired in previous learning contexts may influence subsequent causal learning. In three experiments we show…

Findings are presented from a small-scale longitudinal study of first-year psychology students' learning. Three developmental hierarchies were derived in the analysis of the interview data, which described different aspects of the variation in students' accounts of their conceptions of essay writing. Although the findings did suggest that the…

Measures of clinical significance are frequently used to evaluate client change during therapy. Several alternatives to the original method devised by N. S. Jacobson, W. C. Follette, & D. Revenstorf (1984) have been proposed, each purporting to increase accuracy. However, researchers have had little systematic guidance in choosing among…

This study aims at presenting a grid for analysing the way the language employed in Greek school science textbooks tends to project pedagogic messages. These messages are analysed for the different school science subjects (i.e., Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and educational levels (i.e., primary and lower secondary level). The analysis is made…

This article describes an interactive professional development unit that engages both novice and experienced evaluators in (a) learning about the Essential Competencies for Program Evaluators (ECPE), (b) applying the competencies to program evaluation contexts, and (c) using the ECPE to reflect on their own professional practices. The article…

Evaluating the statistical process is considered a higher order skill and has received little emphasis in instruction. This study analyses thirty 15-year-old students' responses to two statistics assessment tasks, which required evaluation of a statistical investigation. The SOLO taxonomy is used as a framework to develop a hierarchy of responses.…

Two hypotheses have recently been put forward to account for listeners' ability to distinguish and learn contrasts between speech sounds in foreign languages. First, Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model and Flege's Speech Learning Model both predict that the ease with which a listener can tell one non-native phoneme from another varies directly…

Overt-relational and reactive-proactive subtypes of aggression have demonstrated a reliable network of relationships with social-adjustment variables and these variables have been shown to be effective predictors of future behavior problems and social maladjustment. In this study, the two measures representing these classification systems were…

Based on an examination of the earnings records of ex-offenders released from Virginia correctional institutions from fiscal year 1999 to 2003, this article provides an industrial profile testing the presumption that most ex-offenders are only able to find employment in low-level occupations, with low rates of job retention, and limited customer…