This paper reports two experiments that investigated the role of verbal behavior in the emergence and generalization of contextually controlled equivalence classes. During both experiments, participants were trained with two different combinations of the same easily nameable, yet formally unrelated, pictorial stimuli. Match-to-sample baselines for…

Collecting "bugs" is an authentic, engaging approach for students to learn about various arthropods and their habitat. Students are able to construct knowledge from field notes involving direct observation, drawing, and classification of these animals. This activity has continuously provided successful measurable content outcomes in which students…

Fears profiles among children and adolescents were explored using the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-American version (FSSC-AM; J.J. Burnham, 1995, 2005). Eight cluster profiles were identified via multistage Euclidean grouping and supported by homogeneity coefficients and replication. Four clusters reflected overall level of fears (i.e., very…

In spite of substantial investment in retention in Indiana higher education, there have been only a few well-designed studies that evaluate the effects of these interventions.

Recent research in semantics and pragmatics has revived the debate about whether there are two cognitively distinct categories of conversational implicatures: generalised and particularised. Generalised conversational implicatures are so-called because they seem to arise more or less independently of contextual support. Particularised implicatures…

To claim that young children's biological thought is anthropocentric or that their induction depends on similarity rather than categories is to overlook the role of experience in reasoning. We tested four groups of 4-year-olds differing in two aspects of exposure to biological information: (a) their direct experience with nature (urban versus…

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that emotional stimuli elicit greater amplitude late positive-polarity potentials (LPPs) than neutral stimuli. This effect has been attributed to arousal, but emotional stimuli are also more semantically coherent than uncategorized neutral stimuli. ERPs were recorded during encoding of positive,…

Two experiments examined young children's use of behavioral frequency information to make behavioral predictions and global personality attributions. In Experiment 1, participants heard about an actor who behaved positively or negatively toward 1 or several recipients. Generally, children did not differentiate their judgments of the actor on the…

Although fiction plays a prominent role in the interdisciplinary field of medical humanities (MH), it is physically and intellectually isolated from non-fiction in academic health sciences libraries. Using the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (LAMD) as a tool for selection and subject analysis, we suggest a method of integrating fiction…

The meaning of the category and concept of mild mental retardation is explored through the words of fictional characters and the accounts of real people who have been injured and stigmatized by the label. Examples of the extremes to which people have gone to avoid or escape the term mental retardation are provided. The classification of mild…

The devotion of this special issue of EER to the language of environmental and sustainable developmental education (SDE) serves as a timely reminder that SDE cannot simply be seen as a culturally neutral or value-free package that can be "delivered". In a variety of ways, contributors to this volume address the issues involved in re-engineering…

Drawing upon self-categorization theory, we predicted that the content of children's stereotypes concerning the gender in-group would be contextually variable. Two studies are reported, each looking at five-, seven-, and 10-year-old children's stereotypes of the gender in-group in two different contexts. Study 1 examined judgements of the…

Issues like faith and Church, religion and religiousness are not valued particularly highly among the young. At the same time a search for the meaning of life and an orientation in one's own behaviour still seem to be significant and transcendent focal points are being sought to deal with these issues. This article questions the value that…

In this study, the Turkish students' understanding level of electric circuits consisting of two bulbs and one battery was investigated by using open-ended questions. Two-hundred fifty students, whose ages range from 11 to 22, were chosen from five different groups at primary, secondary and university levels in Trabzon in Turkey. In analyzing…

Kolb (2004) and others have defined learning style as a preference by which students learn and remember what they have learned. This presentation will include a summary of learning style research published in the "Engineering Design Graphics Journal" over the past 15 years on the topic of learning styles and graphics education. The…