The environment contains considerable information that is distributed across space and time, and the visual system is remarkably sensitive to such information via the operation of visual statistical learning (VSL). Previous VSL studies have focused on establishing what kinds of statistical relationships can be learned but have not fully explored…

Causal considerations must be relevant for those making decisions. Whether to bring an umbrella or leave it at home depends on the causal consequences of these options. However, most current decision theories do not address causal reasoning. Here, the authors propose a causal model theory of choice based on causal Bayes nets. The critical ideas…

One account of how pronunciation variants of spoken words (center-> "senner" or "sennah") are recognized is that sublexical processes use information about variation in the same phonological environments to recover the intended segments [Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1998). Mechanisms of phonological inference in speech perception.…

This paper uses time series data from a widely used assessment to identify colleges and universities that demonstrate positive trends on a range of educational effectiveness measures, describe observed patterns of improvement, and examine informants' accounts of factors that contributed to the improvements. This study informs broad questions about…

The "Project WILD Aquatic K-12 Curriculum and Activity Guide" emphasizes aquatic wildlife and aquatic ecosystems. It is organized in topic units and is based on the Project WILD conceptual framework. Because these activities are designed for integration into existing courses of study, instructors may use one or many Project WILD Aquatic activities…

The work reported in this paper reflects a collaborative effort of many individuals representing multiple organizations. It began during a session at the October 2008 meeting of TILSA when a representative of a member state asked the group if any of their programs had experienced unexpected fluctuations in the annual state assessment scores, and…

Although stress is frequently claimed to impede foreign language (FL) reading comprehension, it is usually not explained how. We investigated the effects of stress, working memory (WM) capacity, and inferential complexity on Spanish FL readers' inferential processing during comprehension. Inferences, although necessary for reading comprehension,…

The study examined the knowledge of the functional relations between potential difference, magnitude of current, and resistance among seventh graders, ninth graders, 11th graders (in technical schools), and college students. It also tested the efficiency of a learning device named "functional learning" derived from cognitive psychology on the…

Recent studies of visual statistical learning (VSL) have demonstrated that statistical regularities in sequences of visual stimuli can be automatically extracted, even without intent or awareness. Despite much work on this topic, however, several fundamental questions remain about the nature of VSL. In particular, previous experiments have not…

Purpose: The aim was to identify the source of idiom understanding difficulties in children with specific reading comprehension failure. Method: Two groups (ns = 15) of 9- to 10-year-olds participated. One group had age-appropriate word reading and reading comprehension; the other group had age-appropriate word reading but poor reading…

People often make inferences with incomplete information. Previous research has led to a mixed picture of how people treat missing information. To explain these results, the authors follow the Brunswikian perspective on human inference and hypothesize that the mechanism's accuracy for treating missing information depends on how it is distributed…

An evidential causal relation like, "Because most distinguished students got bad grades, the teacher made some mistakes in evaluating his students' papers," is more difficult to process than a factual one like, "Because he got tired after a long semester, the teacher made some mistakes in evaluating his students' papers" (Noordman & de Blijzer,…

Under the premise that vocabulary learning in a Spanish as a second language in-class environment may be affected by the instructional approach adopted by the instructors or the materials followed, this study explores the influence of rather distant teaching styles, such as implicit and explicit approaches, on the learning outcome of Spanish…

The evaluation of educational interventions requires assessments that consistently (reliably) produce data from which accurate (valid) inferences about the test subjects can be made for some stated purpose. Despite codified definitions of all these terms, there remains vibrant debate about the assessment design process and how measures of…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect that teacher choice of intervention has on their level of procedural implementation and quality of implementation. The following research questions helped to guide the study: (1) Do teachers randomly assigned to the intervention "choice" group have higher ratings of procedural fidelity…