Over the first weeks and months following birth, infants' initial, broad-based perceptual sensitivities become honed to the characteristics of their native language. In this article, we review this process of emerging specialization within the context of a cascading "critical period" (CP) framework, in which periods of maximal openness…

Long-term fear memory formation in the hippocampus and neocortex depends upon brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling after acquisition. Incremental, appetitive odor discrimination learning is thought to depend substantially on the differentiation of adult-born neurons within the olfactory bulb (OB)--a process that is closely associated…

Interpersonal relationships between teachers and students play a crucial role in teachers' professional identity, yet have hardly been focused on in research. This study aimed to explore teachers' interpersonal role identity over time by focusing on teachers' appraisals of classroom situations and the relation with their interpersonal identity…

Seeing articulatory gestures enhances speech perception. Perception of auditory speech can even be changed by incongruent visual gestures, which is known as the McGurk effect (e.g., dubbing a voice saying /mi/ onto a face articulating /ni/, observers often hear /ni/). In children, the McGurk effect is weaker than in adults, but no previous…

The article investigates how nurturing touch practices, such as gentle brush massage, finger massage and body massage, are applied in 10 Danish toddlers' early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Thirteen practitioners contributed to the study with written narratives on their experiences with nurturing touch practices and how they…

This study explored transactional associations among visuomotor integration, attention, fine motor coordination, and mathematics skills in a diverse sample of one hundred thirty-five 5-year-olds (kindergarteners) and one hundred nineteen 6-year-olds (first graders) in the United States who were followed over the course of 2 school years.…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present difficulties in forming relations among items and context. This capacity for relational binding is also involved in spatial navigation and research on this topic in ASD is scarce and inconclusive. Using a computerised version of the Morris Water Maze task, ASD participants showed particular…

Purpose: Short-term and working memory vary across individuals and life span. Studies of how cochlear implant (CI) users remember spoken words often do not fully disentangle perceptual influences from memory assessment because stimulus identification is rarely checked; instead, correct perception is assumed by using simple or practiced stimuli.…

This article discusses giftedness from the inside out, focusing on what the differences mean to the gifted child's experience of life--the effects both their intensity and their cognitive abilities have on their inner experience and awareness. Mindfulness is especially valuable and important for the profoundly gifted child. Two programs that use…

Purpose: The study investigated the prevalence of risk factors for auditory processing and language disorders among adolescents residing at a local juvenile detention center. Method: A total of 782 adjudicated adolescents with normal hearing were screened with the Randomized Dichotic Digits Test (Strouse & Wilson, 1999) and the Dichotic Words…

Two experiments investigated how people use buildings and street configurations to reorient in large-scale environments. In immersive virtual environments, participants learned objects' locations in an intersection consisting of 4 streets. The objects' locations were specified by 2 cues: a building and/or the street configuration. During the test,…

The demand for practicing registered nurses outweighs the supply, resulting in a nursing shortage. Nursing schools are grappling with high attrition and low NCLEX pass rates. Mentoring is an evidence-based strategy used in post-secondary education, including nursing school, to help students persist to graduation and pass NCLEX. Nursing faculty are…

This study explored transactional associations among visuomotor integration, attention, fine motor coordination, and mathematics skills in a diverse sample of one hundred thirty-five 5-year-olds (kindergarteners) and one hundred nineteen 6-year-olds (first graders) in the United States who were followed over the course of 2 school years.…

Burnout is a common problem in practicing social workers. This study investigated the effect of burnout, role ambiguity and coping strategies among graduate social work students in field placement. This was accomplished through the usage of the Maslach Burnout Inventory Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS), the Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity…

This study introduces the construct of teacher leadership in the Saudi EFL higher education context. The key aims of this study are to understand the notion of teacher leadership from the EFL teachers' perspective, to identify various leadership roles EFL teachers undertake in this context, and to explore challenges associated with teacher…