Dialects vary in their allophonic patterns, which can affect listeners' phonological and lexical representations. I explore how different exposure to dialect-specific allophonic patterns for two vowels in American English, /ae ai/, affects listeners' lexical processing behaviors across three perception tasks: perceptual similarity, priming, and…

Much of the existing literature on intergroup attitudes in preschool does not look at the intersections of race and gender. Integrating key developmental and social theories, the current study asked 58 diverse preschoolers (31 white, 27 non-white) to make decisions about other children when given only racial and gender information. The…

This study investigated the developmental trajectories of three perceptual domains related to regional dialect competence: the linguistic domain, tested through an intelligibility in noise task; the objective indexical domain, tested through locality judgments and a free classification task; and the subjective indexical domain, tested through…

A critical component of scientific reasoning is the consideration of alternative explanations. Recognizing that decades of cognitive psychology research have demonstrated that relative cognitive accessibility, or "what comes to mind," strongly affects how people reason in a given context, we articulate a simple "cognitive…

Henson (1996) provided a number of demonstrations of error patterns in serial recall that contradict chaining models. One such error pattern concerned when participants make intrusions from prior lists: Rather than originating from random positions in the prior list, intrusions tend to be recalled in the same position as their position in the…

This article examines the mindset and process of undergraduate music majors conducting research in their discipline. While working with students in a writing-intensive music history class, the authors conducted several surveys, focus groups, and task-based assessments. Results indicated that most were overconfident in their research abilities,…

The ability to solve physics problems that require multiple concepts from across the physics curriculum--"synthesis" problems--is often a goal of physics instruction. Three experiments were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of two instructional methods employing worked examples on student performance with synthesis problems; these…

Requiring teachers to complete a performance-based assessment in the form of a teacher performance assessment is becoming a common way for initial teacher licensure or advancing a license. While some traditionally- and alternatively-licensed teachers from all content areas may have to complete some type of performance-based assessment for initial…

Students in an undergraduate psychology course on Learning and Cognition used SKO (formerly AutoTutor Lite), an Intelligent Tutoring System, to create interactive lessons in which a pedagogic agent (animated avatar) engages users in a tutorial dialogue. After briefly describing the technology and underlying psychological theory, data from an…

Online professional development (oPD) for teachers should focus on designing web-based learning opportunities that help practicing educators solve the tough problems of practice when working in their schools. Technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge can be integrated in the design of online professional development modules to enhance task…

This descriptive correlation study sought to examine the relationships between verbal immediacy, nonverbal immediacy, self-efficacy and task value. Respondents assessed the verbal and nonverbal immediacy of their course instructor, and then assessed their personal self-efficacy and task value motivation. Results showed a significant positive…

Mastering a cognitive skill requires many practice sessions, occurring over a period of days, weeks, months, or even years. Although a large body of research describes and explains gains made within a given practice session, few studies have investigated what happens to these gains across a delay, and none have examined effects of delays on…

This study investigated identification of fragmented Mandarin tones by non-native listeners. Monosyllabic Mandarin words were digitally processed to generate intact, silent-center, center-only, and onset-only syllables. The syllables were recorded with two carrier phrases such that the offset of the carrier tone and the onset of the target tone…

Loss of vigilance may lead to impaired performance in various applied settings including military operations, transportation, and industrial inspection. Individuals differ considerably in sustained attention, but individual differences in vigilance have proven to be hard to predict. The dependence of vigilance on workload factors is consistent…

The duty areas of agriculture/agribusiness task statements identified in an Ohio study can be an asset in the development of updated courses of study relevant to secondary-level students' needs. Teachers of vocational agriculture can use these common core tasks as a curriculum-discussion base with the local advisory committee. (Author/AJ)