In a recent study we found that testing as a final activity in a skills course increases the learning outcome compared to spending an equal amount of time practicing. Whether this testing effect measured as skills performance can be demonstrated on long-term basis is not known. The research question was: does testing as a final activity in a…

A fear of snakes developed into an opportunity to teach students about the process of science: formulating questions, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating findings to the public. By using snakes to help students "think like a scientist," the authors engaged students in a five-day unit on inquiry while providing information about snakes…

Testing throws off classroom schedules any time of year. It can be especially disruptive during the first weeks of school, when teachers are establishing ordinary classroom procedures and building a sense of classroom community. The relaxed, safe atmosphere that teachers seek to establish at the beginning of the year can be threatened by the…

Extensive research has linked youth depression symptoms to low levels of perceived control, using measures that reflect "primary control" (i.e., influencing objective conditions to make them fit one's wishes). We hypothesized that depressive symptoms are also linked to low levels of "secondary control" (i.e., influencing the psychological impact…

Patients with anorexia nervosa frequently believe they are larger than they really are. The precise nature of this bias is not known: is it a false belief related to the patient's aesthetic and emotional attitudes towards her body? Or could it also reflect abnormal processing of the representation of the body in action? We tested this latter…

The gateway drug model is a popular conceptualization of a progression most substance users are hypothesized to follow as they try different legal and illegal drugs. Most forms of the gateway hypothesis are that "softer" drugs lead to "harder," illicit drugs. However, the gateway hypothesis has been notably difficult to…

The benefits of computer-assisted assessment via the Internet are well known in interest assessment as it relates information access. Individuals can use their assessment scores to easily access a wealth of career and major information. However, computer-assisted assessment also enables a unique assessment experience for each individual.…

Event-related brain potentials were recorded during RSVP reading to test the hypothesis that quantifier expressions are incrementally interpreted fully and immediately. In sentences tapping general knowledge ("Farmers grow crops/worms as their primary source of income"), Experiment 1 found larger N400s for atypical ("worms") than typical objects…

The effects of three practice schedules on beginning instrumental achievement were explored. A total of 19 seventh-grade clarinet and saxophone students completed one 18-minute practice session using either a blocked schedule causing a low level of cognitive (contextual) interference, a hybrid schedule causing a moderate level of interference, or…

Recent studies have found that masked word primes that are orthographic neighbors of the target inhibit lexical decision latencies (Davis & Lupker, 2006; Nakayama, Sears, & Lupker, 2008), consistent with the predictions of lexical competition models of visual word identification (e.g., Grainger & Jacobs, 1996). In contrast, using the…

A latent variable modeling approach for examining population similarities and differences in observed variable relationship and mean indexes in incomplete data sets is discussed. The method is based on the full information maximum likelihood procedure of model fitting and parameter estimation. The procedure can be employed to test group identities…

Context: Forty percent of AIDS cases are reported in the southern United States, the region with the largest proportion of HIV/AIDS cases from rural areas. Data are limited regarding provider perspectives of the accessibility and availability of HIV testing and treatment services in southern rural counties. Purpose: We surveyed providers in the…

Good educational ethnography whether done by sociologists or anthropologists, makes the familiar strange. The history of that proposition is outlined, and five strategies available to all ethnographers focused on teaching and learning, whether sociologists or anthropologists of education or not, are outlined. The vital importance of the working…

Recently, schools of education throughout the country have struggled with how to infuse, teach, and assess dispositions in systematic ways within their teacher education programs. This necessary and important work has proved to be time-consuming challenging. The following article describes the four-step process that the authors are currently…

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential impact of support materials on student spreadsheet skill acquisition. Specifically, this study examines the use of an online spreadsheet simulation tool versus a printed book across two independent student groups. This study hypothesizes that the online spreadsheet simulation tool will have a…